Baptized and sent: the Church of Christ on mission in the world.

11th Missionary Day

Thus, our mission is rooted in the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of the Church, because inherent in Baptism is the sending forth expressed by Jesus in the Easter mandate: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you, filled with the Holy Spirit, for the reconciliation of the world." This sending forth is incumbent upon Christians, so that no one may lack the proclamation of their vocation as an adopted child, the certainty of their personal dignity, and the intrinsic value of every human life from conception to natural death. Widespread secularism, when it becomes a positive and cultural rejection of God's active fatherhood in our history, prevents any and all authentic universal fraternity, which manifests itself in mutual respect for the life of each person.

The opening of culture and community to the salvific newness of Jesus Christ requires overcoming all undue ethnic and ecclesial introversion. Even today, the Church continues to need men and women who, by virtue of their Baptism, generously respond to the call to leave their own homes, their families, their homeland, their own language, their local Church… Thus, missio ad gentes, Mission, always necessary in the Church, contributes fundamentally to the ongoing process of conversion of all Christians. Faith in the Easter of Jesus, the ecclesial baptismal mission, the geographical and cultural departure from oneself and one's own home, the need for salvation from sin and liberation from personal and social evil, all demand mission to the ends of the earth.

A renewed Pentecost opens wide the doors of the Church, so that no culture remains closed in on itself and no people remain isolated, but open themselves to the universal communion of faith. Let no one remain closed in on themselves, in the self-referentiality of their own ethnic and religious belonging. The Easter of Jesus breaks the narrow limits of worlds, religions and cultures, calling them to grow in respect for the dignity of man and woman, towards an ever fuller conversion to the Truth of the Risen Lord, who gives true life to all.

To Mary, our Mother, we entrust the mission of the Church. United to her Son from the Incarnation, the Virgin set herself in motion, allowing herself to be totally involved in the mission of Jesus; a mission that, at the foot of the cross, would also become her own: to collaborate as Mother of the Church in generating, in the Spirit and in faith, new sons and daughters of God.

(Pope Francis, message for the year 2019)