Pope at Vespers: The Lord is
calling you to bear witness
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| Celebration of Vespers for the start of Missionary Month (Vatican Media) |
Pope Francis presides over the celebration of Vespers in
Saint Peter’s Basilica to open the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October.
In his homily, he urges us to be witnesses in a missionary Church that is
always “on the go”.
By Vatican News
1 October is the feast day of Saint Therese of the Child
Jesus, affectionately known as “The Little Flower”. Although she never left her
Carmelite cloister, she is the universal patron of missions, along with Saint
Francis Xavier.
Three missionary models
Pope Francis recalled both of them in his homily. Saint
Therese, he said, “made prayer the fuel for missionary activity in the world”.
Saint Francis Xavier, said the Pope, is perhaps “the greatest missionary of all
time, after Saint Paul”.
Together with the Venerable Pauline Jaricot, a French
laywoman who helped create the foundations of the Pontifical Missionary
Societies, they “give us a jolt”, said the Pope. They challenge us to “emerge
from our shell and to renounce our comforts for the sake of the Gospel”.
Using our talents
Pope Francis began by reflecting on Saint Matthew’s Gospel
that recounts the parable of the talents. “God has entrusted us with his
greatest treasures: our own lives and the lives of others”, he said. God calls
us “to make our talents bear fruit, with boldness and creativity”.
This extraordinary Missionary Month, said the Pope, “should
jolt us and motivate us to be active in doing good. Not to be notaries of faith
and guardians of grace, but missionaries”.
Being a witness
Being a missionary, said Pope Francis, means “living as
witnesses”. Witness, in fact, “is the key word: a word with the same root as
the word ‘martyr’”. “Martyrs live by spreading peace and joy, by loving
everyone, even their enemies, out of love for Jesus”, continued the Pope. “Let
us ask ourselves this month: how good a witness am I?”
Mission not omission
Returning to the parable, the Pope noted how Jesus describes
the fearful servant as “wicked and lazy”. He was wicked, said Pope Francis, for
not doing good: “he sinned by omission”. “To live by omission is to deny
our vocation: omission is the opposite of mission”.
Sins against mission
We sin against mission, said the Pope, when we fail to
spread joy, “when we think of ourselves as victims, that no one loves or understands
us”. We sin against mission “when we yield to resignation”, or when we
complain “that everything is going from bad to worse, in the world and in the
Church”. We sin against mission “when we become slaves to the fears that
immobilize us”, or when we live life as a burden and not a gift, putting
ourselves at the centre, “and not our brothers and sisters who are waiting to
be loved”.
A Church on the go
If the Church “is not on the go, it is not Church”, stated
Pope Francis. A Church on the go is a missionary Church “that does not waste
time lamenting things that go wrong… a Church that does not seek safe oases to
dwell in peace, but longs to be salt of the earth and a leaven in the
world”.
We are all missionaries
Today we begin the Missionary Month of October, said the
Pope, “accompanied by a religious woman, a priest and a lay woman. They remind
us that no one is excluded from the Church’s mission”.
The Lord is calling you
In this month, said Pope Francis, “the Lord is also calling
you”, fathers and mothers of families, young people. “You, who work in a
factory, a store, a bank or a restaurant; you who are unemployed; you are in a
hospital bed… The Lord is asking you to be a gift wherever you are, and just as
you are, with everyone around you”.
The Lord is asking you “not simply to go through life, but
to give life”, said the Pope, “not to complain about life, but to share in the
tears of all who suffer”.
“The Lord will not leave you alone in bearing witness”, concluded
Pope Francis. “You will discover that the Holy Spirit has gone before you and
prepared the way for you. Courage!”
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