Lives that speak – Missionary Rosary

Rome (Italy). On Sunday 23 October 2022, World Mission Day, the online missionary Rosary proposed and animated by the Councilor for the Missions of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Sr. Ruth del Pila Mora, took place with the Sector collaborators and the active participation of the Provincial Coordinators for Missions ad gentes,

The initiative extended to various FMA communities that from all over the world asked to connect to share this moment. In the opening greeting, Sr. Ruth thanked for the availability and involvement of all the participants and the Communities and urged them to have a special remembrance in the decades dedicated to each Continent, for all the missionary sisters and brothers who work in contexts threatened by war, persecutions, violence of all kinds, to invoke Peace.

The Councilor then invited the two Emeritus Councilors of the Missions Sector connected online, Sr. Lina Chiandotto from Cambodia, and Sr. Ciri Hernandez, currently in Rome at the Generalate, to take the word for a brief greeting. Their presence was for all a reason for joy and praise to God for what He wrote in the charismatic missionary history of the FMA Institute through these “Lives that speak”.

“You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8) Lives that speak was in fact the theme of World Mission Sunday 2022, remembered by Pope Francis in the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, as “an important occasion to awaken in all the baptized the desire to participate in the universal mission of the Church, through witness and proclamation of the Gospel.” The Pope encouraged everyone “to support missionaries with prayer and concrete solidarity, so that they can continue the work of evangelization and human promotion throughout the world”.

To reach the five continents with prayer, the decades of the online Missionary Rosary were prayed in different languages:  French, Vietnamese, Spanish, Polish, Cibemba, and Swalii, English, Italian, Portuguese, Syrian Arabic, and, thanks to the media, new missionaries, FMA missionaries, and communities were able to experience closeness, despite the distance in kilometers, by living a synodal experience in the composition of a rich missionary linguistic polyphony.

In the Message for the Missionary Day 2022, the Holy Father highlighted the community-ecclesial character of missionary commitment and stressed that the call is for everyone:

“Every baptized person is called to the mission in the Church and on the mandate of the Church: therefore, the mission is done together, not individually, in communion with the ecclesial community and not on one’s own initiative”.

He also reiterated the need to extend the proclamation beyond its borders to reach everyone:

“The Church of Christ was, is, and will always be ‘outgoing’ towards new geographical, social, existential horizons, towards human ‘border’ places and situations, to bear witness to Christ and His love for all men and women of all peoples, cultures, social states. In this sense, the mission will always also be missio ad gentes, as the Second Vatican Council taught us, because the Church will always have to go further, beyond its own borders, to testify to all the love of Christ”.

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