“"Building ecclesial communion is the key to the mission."”

Even the men of our time, perhaps not always consciously, ask believers not only to "speak" of Jesus, but to "make Jesus visible," to make the Face of the Redeemer shine in every corner of the earth before the generations of the new millennium and especially before the young people of every continent, privileged recipients and agents of the Gospel proclamation. They must feel that Christians carry the Word of Christ because He is the Truth, because in Him they have found meaning, the truth for their lives.

These considerations refer to the missionary mandate that all the baptized and the entire Church have received, but which cannot be credibly fulfilled without a profound personal, communal, and pastoral conversion. In fact, the awareness of the call to proclaim the Gospel stimulates not only each individual believer, but all diocesan and parish communities to integral renewal and to open themselves ever more to missionary cooperation among the Churches, to promote the proclamation of the Gospel in the heart of every person, every people, culture, race, nationality, in all latitudes. This awareness is nourished through the work of priests. Fidei Donum, From consecrated persons, catechists, and lay missionaries, in a constant search to promote ecclesial communion, so that the phenomenon of "interculturality" can also be integrated into a model of unity, in which the Gospel is a leaven of freedom and progress, a source of fraternity, humility, and peace. In fact, the Church "is in Christ as it were a sacrament, that is, a sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of all humankind.".

Ecclesial communion is born from the encounter with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who, in the proclamation of the Church, reaches humanity and creates communion with Himself and consequently with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ establishes the new relationship between humanity and God. “It is He who reveals to us that “God is love””.” (1 John 4, 8) and, at the same time, teaches us that the fundamental law of human perfection and, therefore, of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love. Thus, to those who believe in divine love, it gives them the certainty that opening the path of love to all men and establishing universal brotherhood are not vain things.”.

(Pope Benedict XVI, message for the year 2010)