The power of the Holy Spirit

30th Missionary Day

«You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.» (Act 1, 8).

The Spirit is present in the Church and guides it in its mission to the peoples.. It is comforting to think that it is not we, but He Himself who is the protagonist of the mission. This gives serenity, joy, hope, and courage. It is not the results that should concern the missionary, because those are in God's hands: he must strive with all his resources, letting the Lord act in depth. The Spirit, moreover, broadens the perspective of the ecclesial mission to the ends of the whole world. Every year, World Mission Day calls us to this, highlighting the need to never circumscribe the horizons of evangelization, but to always keep them open to the dimensions of all humanity.

Even the fact that in the Church, born from the cross of Christ, there still exists today... persecution and martyrdom, This becomes a strong sign of hope for the mission.

"Mission renews the Church, reinvigorates its faith and identity, and gives it new enthusiasm and motivation.".

I therefore invite you to reaffirm, against all pessimism, your faith in the action of the Spirit, who calls all believers to holiness and missionary commitment. We have just celebrated the 175th anniversary of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, founded in Lyon in 1822 by a young laywoman, Pauline Jaricot, whose cause for canonization is underway. With happy intuition, this initiative fostered in the Church the growth of some fundamental values, now disseminated by the Pontifical Mission Societies: the value of the mission itself, capable of regenerating in the Church the vitality of faith, which increases when there is a commitment to communicating it to others: "It is by giving faith that it is strengthened"; the value of the universality of missionary commitment, since everyone, without exception, is called to collaborate generously in the mission of the Church; Prayer, the offering of one's own sufferings, and the witness of life as primary elements for the mission, within reach of all sons and daughters of God.

Finally, I recall the value of the missionary vocation "ad vitam": if the entire Church is missionary by virtue of its very nature, then missionaries, both men and women, "ad vitam" are its paradigm.

(St. John Paul II, message of the year 1998)