Pope's Message to the Pontifical
Mission Societies: Full Text
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Below is the full text of the Pope's Message to the
Pontifical Mission Societies.
MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
to the Pontifical Mission Societies
*****
to the Pontifical Mission Societies
*****
When they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will
you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is
not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own
authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria
and to the end of the earth”. When he had said this, as they were looking
on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight (Acts 1:6-9).
The Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into
heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. Nonetheless, they went
forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed
the word through accompanying signs (Mk 16:19-20).
Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his
hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them, he parted from them and was
taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem
with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God (Lk 24:50-53).
*****
This year I had decided to participate in your annual
General Assembly on Thursday, 21 May, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord.
The Assembly was subsequently cancelled because of the pandemic that
affects us all. I would now like to send this Message in order to share
what I had intended to say to you personally. This Christian feast, in
the remarkable times in which we are living, appears to me even more fruitful
as a source of reflection for the journey and mission belonging to each one of
us and to the entire Church.
We
celebrate the Ascension as a feast, yet it commemorates the departure of Jesus
from his disciples and from this world. The Lord ascends to heaven and
the Eastern liturgy narrates the astonishment of the angels in seeing a man who
in his flesh rises to be seated at the right hand of the Father. Even so,
while Christ is at the point of ascending to heaven, the disciples, who had
seen him risen, still do not seem to understand what is happening. He is
about to bring his Kingdom to fulfilment and they are still caught up in their
own ideas. They ask him if he is going to restore the kingdom to Israel
(cf. Acts 1:6). Yet, when Christ leaves them, instead of
being sad, they return to Jerusalem “with great joy”, as Luke tells us (cf.
24:52). It would be odd if something had not occurred. Indeed,
Jesus had already promised them the power of the Holy Spirit, who was to
descend upon them at Pentecost. This is the miracle that changes
everything. They become more confident when they entrust everything to
the Lord. They are filled with joy. Moreover, that joy is the
fullness of consolation, the fullness of the presence of the Lord.
Paul writes to the Galatians that the Apostles’ fullness of
joy is not the effect of pleasant feelings that make them happy. It is an
overflowing joy that can only be experienced as a fruit and gift of the Holy
Spirit (cf. 5:22). Receiving the joy of the Spirit is a grace.
Moreover, it is the only force that enables us to preach the Gospel and
to confess our faith in the Lord. Faith means bearing witness to the joy
that the Lord gives to us. A joy such as this cannot be the result of our
own efforts.
Jesus told his disciples that he would send them the Spirit,
the Comforter, prior to his departure. In this way, he also entrusted the
apostolic work of the Church to the Spirit for all time, until his return.
The mystery of the Ascension, together with the outpouring of the Spirit
at Pentecost, indelibly marks the mission of the Church: it is the work of the
Holy Spirit and not the consequence of our ideas and projects. This is
the feature that makes missionary activity bear fruit and preserves it from the
presumption of self-sufficiency, much less the temptation to commandeer
Christ’s flesh, ascended to heaven, for narrowly “clerical” projects and aims.
When
the ongoing work and efficacy of the Holy Spirit is not appreciated in the
Church’s mission, it means that even the most carefully chosen missionary
language becomes like “words of human wisdom” aimed at glorifying oneself or
concealing one’s own interior deserts.
The joy of the Gospel
Salvation is an encounter with Jesus, who loves and forgives
us by sending the Spirit who comforts and defends us. Salvation is not
the consequence of our missionary initiatives nor of our talking about the
incarnation of the Word. For each one of us, salvation can take place
only through the lens of an encounter with the one who calls us. For this
reason, the mystery of predilection begins and can only begin with an outburst
of joy and gratitude. The joy of the Gospel is that “great joy” of the
poor women who on Easter morning went to the tomb of Christ, found it empty,
then encountered the risen Jesus and raced home to tell the others (cf. Mt 28:8-10).
Only because we have been chosen and singled out can we bear witness to the
glory of the risen Christ before the entire world.
In every human context witnesses are those who vouch for
what someone else has done. In this sense, and only in this sense, can we
be witnesses of Christ and his Spirit. As described in the conclusion of
the Gospel of Mark, after the Ascension the apostles and disciples “went forth and
preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word
through accompanying signs” (16:20). By his Spirit, Christ testifies to
himself through the works that he fulfils in and with us. As Saint
Augustine explains, the Church would not pray to the Lord to ask that faith be
given to those who do not know Christ unless she believed that it is God
himself who directs and draws our wills towards himself. The Church would
not make her children pray to the Lord to persevere in the faith of Christ if
she did not believe that it is the Lord himself who possesses our hearts.
Indeed, if she asked him for these things, but thought that she could give them
to herself, it would mean that all her prayers would be empty words, rote
formulas or platitudes imposed by ecclesiastical custom rather than authentic
prayer (cf. On the Gift of Perseverance. To Prosper and Hilary, 23,
63).
Unless we realize that faith is a gift of God, even the prayers which the
Church raises to God are meaningless. Nor do they reflect a sincere
passion for the happiness and salvation of others and for those who do not
recognize the risen Christ, however much time we may spend on planning for the
conversion of the world to Christianity.
If we
recognize that the Holy Spirit ignites and preserves the faith in our hearts,
everything changes. Indeed, the Spirit enkindles and enlivens the
Church’s mission, bestowing all those individual accents and styles that make
the proclamation of the Gospel and the confession of the Christian faith
something different from all political, cultural, psychological or religious
forms of proselytism.
I
considered many of these features of mission in my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium, and here I shall recall a few of them.
Attractiveness.
The mystery of the Redemption entered into and continues to work in the
world through an attraction that can draw the hearts of men and women because
it is and appears more alluring than the seductions which appeal to the
selfishness that is a result of sin. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John,
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him” (6:44).
The Church has always insisted that this is the reason why we follow
Jesus and proclaim his Gospel: through the force of attraction wrought by
Christ himself and by his Spirit. The Church, as Pope Benedict XVI has
said, grows in the world through attraction and not through proselytism
(cf. Homily, Mass for the Inauguration of the Fifth General
Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Aparecida, 13 May
2007: AAS 99 [2007], 437). Saint Augustine says that Christ reveals
himself by attracting us. Moreover, he cites the poet Virgil, who states
that all are attracted to what gives them pleasure. Jesus does not just
persuade our wills, but awakens our pleasure (Commentary on the Gospel of
John, 26, 4). If one follows Jesus, happy to be attracted by him,
others will take notice. They may even be astonished. The joy that
radiates from those attracted by Christ and by his Spirit is what can make any
missionary initiative fruitful.
Gratitude and Gratuitousness. The joy of
proclaiming the Gospel always shines brightly against the backdrop of a
grateful memory. The Apostles never forgot the moment that Jesus touched
their hearts: “It was about four in the afternoon” (Jn 1:39).
The reality of the Church shines forth whenever gratitude is manifested
within her by the free initiative of God, for “he loved us” first (1 Jn 4:10)
and “it is only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). The
loving predilection of God surprises us, and surprise by its very nature cannot
be owned or imposed by us. One cannot be “necessarily surprised”.
Only in this way can the miracle of gratuitousness, the gratuitous gift
of self, blossom. Nor can missionary fervour ever be obtained as the
result of reasoning or calculation. To be “in a state of mission” is a
reflection of gratitude. It is the response of one who by gratitude is
made docile to the Spirit and is therefore free. Without a recognition of
the predilection of the Lord, who inspires gratitude in us, even knowledge of
the truth and of God himself would, presented as a goal to be achieved by our
own efforts, in fact become a “letter that brings death” (cf. 2 Cor 3:6),
as Saint Paul and Saint Augustine were the first to point out. Only in
the freedom of gratitude can one truly know the Lord, whereas it is useless and
above all improper to insist on presenting missionary activity and the
proclamation of the Gospel as if they were a binding duty, a kind of
“contractual obligation” on the part of the baptized.
Humility. Since truth and faith, happiness and
salvation are not our own possessions, a goal achieved by our own merits, then
the Gospel of Christ can be proclaimed with humility. One can never think
of serving the Church’s mission by employing arrogance as individuals and
through bureaucracies, with the pride of one who misunderstands even the gift
of the sacraments and the most authentic words of the Christian faith, seeing
them as merited rewards. One cannot be humble out of good manners or the
desire to appear attractive. We are humble when we follow Christ, who said to
his disciples: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29).
Saint Augustine asks why, after the resurrection, Jesus let himself be
seen by his disciples and not by those who had crucified him, concluding that
Jesus did not want to give the impression of “challenging his killers in some
way. For Jesus, it was actually more important to teach humility to his
friends, rather than uphold the truth before his enemies” (Sermon 284,
6).
To facilitate, not to complicate. Another
authentic feature of missionary work is its imitation of the patience of Jesus,
who always showed mercy to others as they continued to grow. A small step
forward in the midst of great human limitations can be more pleasing before God
than the great strides made by those who go through life without great
difficulties. A missionary heart recognizes the real condition of real
people, with their own limits, sins and frailties in order to become “weak
among the weak” (cf. 1 Cor 9:22). “Going forth” on
mission to reach human peripheries does not mean wandering without direction
and meaning, like those frustrated vendors who complain that people are too
unsophisticated to be interested in their wares. Sometimes this means
slowing our pace in order to lead a person who is still by the wayside.
At times this means imitating the father in the parable of the prodigal
son, who leaves the doors open and looks out each day awaiting the return of
his son (cf. Lk 15:20). The Church is not a customs
office and anyone who participates in the mission of the Church is called not
to impose unnecessary burdens on people already worn out or to require
demanding programmes of formation in order to enjoy what the Lord gives easily,
or to erect obstacles to the will of Jesus, who prays for each of us and wants
to heal and save everyone.
Proximity to life “in progress”. Jesus met his
first disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee while they were focused on
their work. He did not meet them at a convention, a training workshop, or
in the Temple. It has always been the case that the proclamation of
Jesus’ salvation reaches people right where they are and just how they are in
the midst of their lives in progress. Amid the needs, hopes and problems
of everyday life we find the place where one who has acknowledged the love of
Christ and received the gift of the Holy Spirit can offer an account of his or
her faith, hope, and charity to those who ask for it. By journeying
together with others, alongside everyone. Especially given the times in
which we live, this has nothing to do with designing “specialized” training
programmes, creating parallel worlds, or constructing “slogans” that merely
echo our own thoughts and concerns. I have elsewhere spoken of those in
the Church who proclaim loudly that “this is the hour of the laity”, while in
the meantime the clock seems to have stopped.
The “sensus fidei” of the People of God. There
is one reality in the world that has a kind of “feel” for the Holy Spirit and
his workings. It is the People of God, called and loved by Jesus, who for
their part continue to seek him amid the difficulties of their lives. The
People of God beg for the gift of his Spirit: entrusting their expectation to
the simple words of their prayers and never entertaining the presumption of
their own self-sufficiency. The holy People of God are gathered together
and anointed by the Lord, and in virtue of this anointing are made infallible
“in credendo”, as the Tradition of the Church teaches. The working of
the Holy Spirit equips the faithful People with an “instinct” of faith,
the sensus fidei, which helps them not to err when believing the
things of God, even if they do not know the theological arguments and formulas
that define the gifts they experience. The mystery of the pilgrim people,
who with their popular piety travel to shrines and entrust themselves to Jesus,
Mary and the saints, draws from this and shows that it is connatural to the
free and gratuitous initiative of God, apart from our pastoral planning.
A special care for the little ones and the poor.
Any missionary impulse, if derived from the Holy Spirit, manifests
predilection for the poor and vulnerable as a sign and reflection of the Lord’s
own preference for them. Those directly involved with the Church’s
missionary initiatives and structures should never justify their lack of
concern for the poor with the excuse, widely used in particular ecclesiastical
circles, of having to concentrate their energies on certain priorities for the
mission. For the Church, a preference for the poor is not optional.
All these demands and approaches are part of the Church’s
mission, guided by the Holy Spirit. Normally, in ecclesiastical language
and speech, the necessity of the Holy Spirit as the source of the Church’s
missionary activity is acknowledged and affirmed. Yet this acknowledgement
can at times be reduced to a type of “ceremonial nod” to the Most Holy Trinity,
a stock introductory preface to our theological discussions and pastoral plans.
There are many situations in the Church where the primacy of grace
appears to be no more than a theoretical concept or an abstract formulation.
Instead of leaving room for the working of the Holy Spirit, many
initiatives and entities connected to the Church end up being concerned only
with themselves. Many ecclesiastical establishments, at every level, seem
to be swallowed up by the obsession of promoting themselves and their own
initiatives, as if that were the objective and goal of their mission.
To this point, I have sought to reiterate criteria and
starting points for the missionary activity of the Church that I explained in
greater detail in my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
I have done so because I believe that for the PMS it is beneficial and
fruitful – and indeed urgently necessary – to discuss these criteria and
suggestions in this stage of their journey.
The PMS at the Present Time.
Talents to develop, temptations and maladies to avoid
Where should we look in considering the present and future
of the PMS? What are the dead weights that risk burdening the journey?
The identity of the Pontifical Mission Societies has certain
hallmarks. In a manner of speaking, some are genetic, whereas others have
developed through a lengthy historical process and are often overlooked or
taken for granted. Yet these features can safeguard and enhance, above
all in the present time, the contribution of this “network” to the universal
mission to which the entire Church is called.
The Missionary Societies arose spontaneously from
missionary fervour expressed by the faith of the baptized. There has always
been a deep relationship between the Missionary Societies and the
infallible sensus fidei in credendo of the faithful People of
God.
The Missionary Societies, since their beginning, have
moved along two “tracks”, or better along two parallel channels, that
in their simplicity have always been close to the heart of the People of God:
those of prayer and of charity in the form of
almsgiving which “saves from death, and purges all sin” (Tob 12:9),
the “intense love” that “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8).
The founders of the Mission Societies, beginning with Pauline Jaricot,
did not invent the prayers and works to which they entrusted their hopes for
the proclamation of the Gospel. They simply drew them from the infinite
treasury of those familiar and habitual gestures of the People of God on its
pilgrimage through history.
The Mission Societies, which arose spontaneously from the
life of the People of God, in their simple and concrete configuration
were recognized by the Church of Rome and her Bishops, who in the last century
sought to adopt them as a unique expression of their own service to the
universal Church. Hence the title “Pontifical” was conferred upon these
Societies. From that time on, the PMS have always shown themselves to be
an instrument of service in support of the particular Churches in the work of
proclaiming the Gospel. In this same way, the Pontifical Mission
Societies have readily served the Church as part of the universal ministry
exercised by the Pope and by the Church of Rome, which “presides in charity”.
In this way, carrying out their work and without becoming embroiled in
complex theological disputes, the PMS have countered the claims of those who,
also in ecclesiastical circles, wrongly contrast charisms and institutions,
reading their relationship through the lens of a fallacious “dialectic of
principles”. For in the Church even permanent structural elements, such
as the sacraments, the priesthood, and apostolic succession are continuously to
be recreated by the Holy Spirit and are not simply realities at the Church’s
disposal (cf. Card. J. Ratzinger, The Theological Locus of Ecclesial
Movements, Address given at the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements,
Rome, 27-29 May 1998).
The Missionary Societies, since their initial diffusion,
have been structured as a widespread network spread throughout the
People of God, wholly anchored and indeed “immanent” in the network of
preexisting institutions and realities in the Church’s life, such as dioceses,
parishes, and religious communities. The particular vocation of persons
engaged in the Missionary Societies has never been lived or perceived as an
alternative path, a relationship “external” to the ordinary forms of the life
of the particular Churches. The summons to pray and gather resources for
the missions has always been exercised as a service to ecclesial communion.
The Missionary Societies, which in time became a network
spread throughout the world, mirror in their own configuration the variety
of accents, situations, problems, and gifts that characterize the life of the
Church in the various parts of the world. This plurality can serve as a
safeguard against ideological homogenization and cultural unilateralism.
In this sense, the PMS reflect the mystery of the universality of the
Church, in which the incessant work of the Holy Spirit creates harmony from
different voices, even as the Bishop of Rome, in his service of charity, exercised
also through the Pontifical Mission Societies, safeguards unity in faith.
All the characteristics described above can help the
Pontifical Mission Societies to avoid certain pitfalls and pathologies on their
journey and that of many other ecclesial institutions. Let me present a
few of these.
Pitfalls to avoid
Self-absorption. Church organizations and
agencies, quite apart from the good intentions of their individual members,
sometimes end up turning in on themselves, devoting energy and attention primarily
to promoting themselves and to advertising their own initiatives. Some
seem to be dominated by an obsession to continually redefine their own
importance and their own bailiwicks within the Church, under the guise of
relaunching their specific mission. In this way, as Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger once said, they can foster the misleading idea that a person is
somehow more Christian if he or she is occupied with intra-ecclesial
structures, whereas in reality nearly all the baptized are daily living lives
of faith, hope, and charity, without ever participating in Church committees or
concerned for the latest news about ecclesiastical politics (cf. Una
compagnia sempre riformanda, Speech at the IX Meeting in Rimini, 1
September 1990).
Control anxiety. Institutions and agencies
sometimes set out to help ecclesial communities by employing the gifts
generated in them by the Holy Spirit, yet over time they presume to exercise
supremacy and control over the very communities they are meant to serve.
This attitude is almost always accompanied by the claim that they are
exercising the role of “overseers” called to determine the legitimacy of other
groups. They end up acting as if the Church was a product of our own
calculations, plans, agreements and decisions.
Elitism. An elitist feeling, the unspoken
notion of belonging to an aristocracy, takes hold at times among those who are
part of groups and organized institutions in the Church: a superior class of
specialists who strive to increase their own influence in collusion or in
competition with other ecclesiastical elites, and train their members according
to secular notions of activism or technical-professional competence, but always
with the main goal of promoting their own oligarchic privileges.
Isolation from the people. The elitist
temptation in some organizations connected to the Church can be accompanied at
times by a sentiment of superiority and of intolerance towards the rest of the
baptized, towards the people of God who may attend parishes and visit shrines,
but are not “activists” busy in Catholic organizations. The People of God
is viewed as an inert mass, always in need of being awakened and mobilized
through a “consciousness-raising” consisting in arguments, appeals and
teachings. As if the certainty of faith was the consequence of persuasive
speech or training methods.
Abstraction. Once they become self-absorbed,
institutions and entities connected to the Church lose contact with reality and
fall prey to abstraction. They needlessly multiply instances of strategic
planning in order to produce projects and guidelines that serve only as means
of self-promotion for those who come up with them. They take problems and
dissect them in intellectual laboratories where everything has been domesticated
and is viewed through the lens of their own ideology. Everything, even
references to the faith or verbal appeals to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, once
taken outside of their proper context, can thus end up rigidified and unreal.
Functionalism. Self-absorbed and elitist
organizations, even within the Church, often end up staking everything on the
imitation of secular models of worldly efficiency, like those rooted in
competition, whether economic or social. Opting for functionalism gives
the illusion of being able to “sort matters out” in a balanced way, keeping
things under control, maximizing one’s own relevance, and improving the
everyday management of existing structures. However, as I already said to
you at our 2016 meeting, a Church afraid of entrusting herself to the grace of
Christ and focusing on the efficiency of its bureaucracy is already dead, even
if structures and programmes that favour the interest of “self-absorbed” clergy
or lay people linger for centuries.
Recommendations for the Journey
Looking at the present and towards the future, and
considering the resources needed for the PMS to overcome the pitfalls of the
journey and move forward, I would like to offer a few suggestions as an aid for
your discernment. Since you have undertaken your own process of
re-evaluation of the PMS, which you would like to be guided by the thinking of
the Pope, I offer for your attention some general criteria and starting points,
without entering into details, not least because different situations may require
adaptations and modifications.
1) To the best of your ability, and without undue
speculation about the future, preserve or recover the role of the PMS
as part of the larger People of God from which they arose. It
would prove beneficial to seek a greater “immersion” in the reality of people’s
lives. Following Jesus means emerging from our own problems and
concerns. It would be worthwhile to enter into concrete circumstances and
conditions, while seeking to reintegrate the capillary effect of actions and contacts
of the PMS within the greater network of Church institutions (dioceses,
parishes, communities, and groups). By prioritizing your specific
presence in the People of God, with its bright spots and difficulties, you can
better elude the pitfall of abstraction. One must provide answers to real
questions and not just formulate and multiply proposals. Perhaps concrete
contact with real life situations, and not just discussions in boardrooms or
theoretical analyses of our own internal dynamics, will generate useful
insights for changing and improving operating procedures and adapting them to
different contexts and circumstances.
2) I suggest proceeding in such a way that the essential
structure of the PMS remains bound to the practice of prayer and of gathering
resources for mission, in all its simplicity and practicality. This
would clearly demonstrate the relationship of the PMS to the faith of the
People of God. With all necessary flexibility and adaptations, this basic
design of the PMS should neither be forgotten nor distorted. Asking the
Lord to open hearts to the Gospel and asking everyone to tangibly support
missionary work: these are simple and practical things that everyone can
readily do in this present time when, even amid the scourge of this pandemic,
there is a great desire to encounter and remain close to the heart of the
Church’s life. So seek new paths, new forms of service, but try not to
complicate what in reality is quite simple.
3) The PMS are and must be experienced as an instrument
of service for the mission of the particular Churches, against the
backdrop of the mission of the universal Church. This is the
ever-precious contribution that the Societies make to the spread of the Gospel.
All of us are called to nurture by means of love and gratitude, as well
as by our works, the seeds of divine life that the Spirit of Christ causes to
blossom and grow where he wills, even in the deserts. Please, in your
prayer ask above all that the Lord make everyone better prepared to recognize the
signs of his activity, in order then to reveal them to the whole world.
Even this can be helpful: to ask that, in the depths of our own hearts,
our prayer to the Holy Spirit may not be reduced to a mere formality in our
meetings and homilies. It is not helpful to theorize about
super-strategies or mission “core guidelines” as a means of reviving missionary
spirit or giving missionary patents to others. If, in some cases,
missionary fervour is fading, it is a sign that faith itself is fading.
In such cases, the attempt to revive the flame by strategies and speeches will
end up only weakening it all the more, causing the desert to expand.
4) The service undertaken by the PMS naturally brings its
staff into contact with countless realities, situations and events
that are part of the great ebb and flow of the life of the Church on every
continent. In this contact, we may encounter numerous problems and forms
of inertia that can mark ecclesial life, but also the gratuitous gifts of
healing and consolation that the Holy Spirit disseminates in daily life, in
what might be called the “middle class of holiness”. Rejoice and savour
these encounters that you experience thanks to the work of the PMS, and let
yourselves be astonished by them. I think of the reports of many miracles
that happen to children, who perhaps encounter Jesus thanks to the initiatives
proposed by the Holy Childhood. Yours is a labour that can never be
reduced to an exclusively bureaucratic-professional scope. When it comes
to mission, bureaucracies or functionaries should never exist. Your
gratitude can in turn become a gift and witness for all. With the means
that you have at your disposal, and quite naturally, you can recount the
comforting story of persons and communities in which the miracle of faith
gratuitously shines with hope and charity.
5) Gratitude for the wonders worked by the Lord among his
chosen ones, the poor and the little ones to whom he reveals those things
hidden from the wise (cf. Mt 11:25-26), can make it easier for
you too to avoid the pitfalls of self-absorption and leave
yourselves behind as you follow Jesus. The very notion of a self-centred
missionary effort, which spends time contemplating and celebrating its own
initiatives, would be absurd. Do not waste time and resources, then, in
looking at yourself in a mirror, devising plans centred on internal mechanisms,
functionality and the efficiency of your own bureaucracy. Look outside.
Do not look at yourselves in the mirror. Break every mirror in the
house! The criteria employed in implementing programmes should aim not at
burdening the network of the PMS but at making structures and procedures more
flexible. National Directors, for example, should be working to identify
potential successors, taking as their sole criterion proposing persons with
great missionary zeal, not just members of their own small group.
6) Regarding the collection of resources to
help the missions, I have already spoken during our past gatherings about the
risk of turning the PMS into an NGO, where everything is devoted to locating
and appropriating funds. This depends more on the attitude with which
things are done than the goals that are achieved. It can certainly be
advisable and even appropriate when fundraising to use creativity and even
updated methods for seeking funding from potential and worthy sources.
However, if in some areas the collection of donations lessens, even
because of the waning of Christian memory, the temptation may arise to resolve
the problem ourselves by “covering up” the situation and gambling on some
better fundraising system developed by groups specializing in large donors.
Our pain at the loss of faith and the reduction of resources should not
be covered up but rather placed in the hands of the Lord. In any case,
asking for offerings for the missions should continue to be directed first and
foremost to the larger body of the baptized, also through different ways of
taking up the collection for the missions carried out in every country in
October on the occasion of World Mission Day. The Church continues to
advance thanks to the widow’s mite and the contributions of innumerable people
healed and consoled by Jesus, who for this reason, overflowing with gratitude,
donate whatever they have.
7) The use of the donations received is
always to be evaluated with an appropriate sensus Ecclesiae regarding
the distribution of funds in support of structures and projects capable of
advancing the apostolic mission and the preaching of the Gospel in various ways
and in diverse parts of the world. Attention should always be paid to the
most fundamental necessities of communities while at the same time avoiding a
welfare culture, which instead of assisting missionary zeal ends up making
hearts lukewarm and feeding phenomena of parasitic dependency, also within the
Church. Your contribution should aim at giving concrete answers to
objective needs, without squandering resources in initiatives marked by
abstraction, self-absorption or generated by clerical narcissism. Do not
yield to inferiority complexes or the temptation to imitate those
super-functional organizations that collect funds for good causes and then use
a good percentage of them to finance their own bureaucracy and to publicize
their brand name. Even publicity can at times become a way of promoting
one’s own interests by showing how one works for the poor and those in need.
8) As for the poor, you too must not
forget them. This was the recommendation at the Council of Jerusalem
that the apostles Peter, James and John passed on to Paul, Barnabas and Titus,
who came to discuss their mission among the uncircumcised: “Only, we were to be
mindful of the poor” (Gal 2:10). Following that
recommendation, Paul organized collections for the benefit of the brethren of the
Church of Jerusalem (cf. 1 Cor 16:1). The preferential
option for the poor and the little ones has always been present since the
origins of the mission of proclaiming the Gospel. Works of spiritual and
corporal charity on their behalf are expressions of a “divine preference” that
serves as a constant challenge to the faith of all Christians, who are called
to have the same attitude as that of Jesus (cf. Phil 2:5).
9) The PMS, in their worldwide network, reflect the
rich variety of the “people with a thousand faces”, gathered together by
the grace of Christ and marked by missionary fervour. That zeal is not
always intense and lively in the same way everywhere. Even so, the same
urgency of confessing Christ dead and resurrected finds expression in a variety
of accents and adapts to diverse contexts. The revelation of the Gospel
is not identified with any one culture and when it encounters new cultures that
have not yet received the Christian message, a specific cultural form must not
be imposed along with the preaching of the Gospel. Today, also in the
work of the PMS, there is no need for extra baggage but rather the effort to
value differences and relate them to the essentials of the faith we share.
Any attempt to standardize the form of our message may obscure the
universality of the Christian faith, even promoting clichés and slogans
fashionable in certain circles and in particular countries that are culturally
and politically dominant. In this regard, the special relationship that
unites the PMS to the Pope and to the Church of Rome represents a resource and
a support for freedom from fleeting fads, certain unilateral schools of thought
or the cultural homogenization associated with neo-colonialism. These are
phenomena that, regrettably, are not absent from ecclesiastical contexts.
10) The PMS are not an autonomous entity in the
Church, acting in a vacuum. Among their distinctive features always
to be cultivated and renewed is the special bond uniting them to the Bishop of
the Church of Rome, which presides in charity. It is comforting to know
that this bond manifests itself in a work carried out joyfully, without seeking
applause or staking claims. A work that precisely in its gratuitousness
is intertwined with service to the Pope, the servant of the servants of God.
I would ask that the distinctive sign of your closeness to the Bishop of
Rome be precisely this: the sharing of the love of the Church, a reflection of
her own love for Christ, experienced and expressed quietly, without pride or a
concern for “turf wars”. Daily efforts born of charity and the mystery of
gratuitousness, which support countless persons who remain deeply thankful, yet
perhaps even unaware of whom to thank, since they may never have heard of the
PMS. The mystery of charity, within the Church, works in this way.
We continue to advance together, even amid trials, thanks to the gifts
and the consolations of the Lord. In the meantime, and at every step, we
joyfully acknowledge that all of us are useless servants, beginning with
myself.
Conclusion
Move forward with enthusiasm! There is much to do on
the journey that awaits you. If there are changes to make in procedures,
it is good that these point towards unburdening rather than increasing the
load, aiming at operational flexibility and not producing more rigid
bureaucracies that involve the threat of introversion. An excessive
centralization, rather than helping, can complicate missionary outreach.
Even a purely national organization of initiatives can jeopardize the
nature of the PMS network, as well as the exchange of gifts between the
Churches and local communities lived as the tangible fruit and sign of charity
among brothers and sisters in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
In any event, always demand that every consideration
regarding the operational aspect of the PMS be illuminated by the one thing
necessary: a spark of true love for the Church as a reflection of love for
Christ. Yours is a service rendered to apostolic fervour, namely to that
impulse of Christian life which only the Holy Spirit can bring about within the
People of God. Think about doing your work well, “as if everything
depended on you, while knowing that everything in fact depends on God” (Saint
Ignatius of Loyola). As I already mentioned to you in one of our
encounters, imitate the ready spirit of Mary. When she visited Elizabeth,
Mary did not do so on her own: she went as a servant of the Lord Jesus, whom
she carried in her womb. She said nothing about herself, but simply
brought her Son and praised God. It was not about her. She went as
the servant of the One who is the sole protagonist of missionary activity.
Nonetheless, she wasted no time, going in haste and doing what was needed
to look after her kinswoman. She teaches us this same readiness, the
haste born of fidelity and adoration.
May Our Lady watch over you and the Pontifical Mission
Societies, and may her Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, bless you. For before
ascending to heaven, he promised to be with us always, to the end of time.
Given in Rome, at Saint John Lateran, the 21st of May 2020,
the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord.
FRANCISCUS
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