Message for Mission Sunday 2012

Vatican Radio  27 January 2012

Pope Benedict XVI today issued his Message for World Mission Sunday, to be celebrated in October of this year. The theme of this year’s Message is taken from the Motu proprio, Porta fidei with which Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the Year of Faith: “called to radiate the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us.”

The Pope’s Message is divided into four parts, preceded by an introduction that places this year’s World Mission Sunday in the context of the 50th anniversary of the second Vatican Council, the Conciliar declaration Ad gentes, the Year of Faith and the Synod assembly on the New Evangelization.

The four parts of the message are dedicated to:

Missionary ecclesiology;

The priority of evangelizing;

Faith and proclamation;

Proclamation that becomes charity.

Concluding his message, Pope Benedict XVI invokes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the work of evangelization ad gentes, and particularly on those who dedicate their labour to its cause, so that - by the grace of God - the work of evangelization ad gentes might ever more decisively make its way in the world and in human history. In the words of Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope Benedict prays, “Accompany us, O Lord, your missionaries to evangelize in the land, put the right words on their lips, make their efforts fruitful” and implores the intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church and Star of Evangelization, that she might accompany all the missionaries of the Gospel. (Full text Page 45)

God Is Capable Of Multiplying Our Gestures Of Love
(VIS 29/7/2102   Castelgandolfo.)

The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and its association with the Eucharist, and the importance of sharing our possessions, were the central themes of the Pope’s remarks before praying the Angelus today. 

In the narrative of feeding the five thousand as recounted in today’s Gospel, “in feeding so many people, the boy shared the little he had: five loaves and two fish. Thus “the miracle did not come from nowhere, it came from an ordinary boy’s desire to share what he had. Jesus does not ask us what we do not possess, but shows us that if each of us offers the little we have, a miracle can always happen. God is able to multiply every one of our small deeds of love and make us share in His gift”.

In this episode “the crowds were struck by wonder. They saw Jesus as a new Moses, worthy of power, and the new manna as a guarantee for the future. But they stopped at the material aspect, at what they ate, while the Lord, realising ‘they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself’. Jesus is not an earthly king who rules, but a king who serves, who bends to man’s level to meet not only his material hunger, but his deeper hunger, his hunger for guidance, meaning and truth, his hunger for God”.

“Let us ask the Lord to help us rediscover the importance of nourishing ourselves not only with bread, but with truth, love, Christ, the body of Christ.