Highlights from the message of Pope Francis for the celebration of World Mission Sunday 2024.
Go and invite everyone to the banquet (cf. Mt 22:9)
The theme I have chosen for this year’s World Mission Day is taken from the Gospel parable of the wedding banquet (cf. Mt 22:1-14). After the guests refused his invitation, the king, the main character in the story, tells his servants: “Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find” (v. 9). Reflecting on this key passage in the context of the parable and of Jesus’ own life, we can discern several important aspects of evangelization. These appear particularly timely for all of us, as missionary disciples of Christ, during this final stage of the synodal journey that, in the words of its motto, “Communion, Participation, Mission”, seeks to refocus the Church on her primary task, which is the preaching of the Gospel in today’s world.
“Go and invite!” Mission as a tireless going out to invite others to the Lord’s banquet.
I take this opportunity to thank all those missionaries who, in response to Christ’s call, have left everything behind to go far from their homeland and bring the Good News to places where people have not yet received it, or received it only recently. Dear friends, your generous dedication is a tangible expression of your commitment to the mission ad gentes that Jesus entrusted to his disciples: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). We continue to pray and we thank God for the new and numerous missionary vocations for the task of evangelization to the ends of the earth.
“To the marriage feast”. The eschatological and Eucharistic dimension of the mission of Christ and the Church.
We know that among the first Christians missionary zeal had a powerful eschatological dimension. They sensed the urgency of the preaching of the Gospel. Today too it is important to maintain this perspective, since it helps us to evangelize with the joy of those who know that “the Lord is near” and with the hope of those who are pressing forward towards the goal, when all of us will be with Christ at his wedding feast in the kingdom of God. While the world sets before us the various “banquets” of consumerism, selfish comfort, the accumulation of wealth and individualism, the Gospel calls everyone to the divine banquet, marked by joy, sharing, justice and fraternity in communion with God and with others.
“Everyone”. The universal mission of Christ’s disciples in the fully synodal and missionary Church.
The mission for all requires the commitment of all. We need to continue our journey towards a fully synodal and missionary Church in the service of the Gospel. Synodality is essentially missionary and, vice versa, mission is always synodal. Consequently, close missionary cooperation is today all the more urgent and necessary, both in the universal Church and in the particular Churches. In the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council and my Predecessors, I recommend to all dioceses throughout the world the service of the Pontifical Mission Societies. They represent the primary means “by which Catholics are imbued from infancy with a truly universal and missionary outlook and [are] also a means for instituting an effective collecting of funds for all the missions, each according to its needs” (Ad Gentes, 38). For this reason, the collections of World Mission Day in all the local Churches are entirely destined to the universal fund of solidarity that the Pontifical Society of the Propagation of the Faith then distributes in the Pope’s name for the needs of all the Church’s missions. Let us pray that the Lord may guide us and help us to be a more synodal and a more missionary Church (cf. Homily for the Concluding Mass of the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, 29 October 2023).
Read the Holy Father’s complete message at this Vatican website.