MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 2024

Go and invite everyone to the banquet (cf. Matthew 22:9)

Dear brothers and sisters!

The theme I have chosen for this year’s World Mission Day is taken from the Gospel parable of the wedding banquet (cf. Matthew 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.

1.            ‘Go and invite!’ Mission as a tireless going out to invite others to the Lord’s banquet.

In the king’s command to his servants we find two words that express the heart of the mission: the verbs ‘to go out’ and ‘to invite’. As for the first, we need to remember that the servants had previously been sent to deliver the king’s invitation to the guests (cf. vv. 3-4). Mission, we see, is a tireless going out to all men and women, in order to invite them to encounter God and enter into communion with him. Tireless! God, great in love and rich in mercy, constantly sets out to encounter all men and women, and to call them to the happiness of his kingdom, even in the face of their indifference or refusal. Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd and messenger of the Father, went out in search of the lost sheep of the people of Israel and desired to go even further, in order to reach even the most distant sheep (cf. John 10:16). Both before and after his resurrection, he told his disciples, ‘Go!’, thus involving them in his own mission (cf. Luke 10:3; Mark 16:15). The Church, for her part, in fidelity to the mission she has received from the Lord, will continue to go to the ends of the earth, to set out over and over again, without ever growing weary or losing heart in the face of difficulties and obstacles.

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 adgentes that Jesus entrusted to his disciples: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 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.

Let us not forget that every Christian is called to take part in this universal mission by offering his or her own witness to the Gospel in every context, so that the whole Church can continually go forth with her Lord and Master to the ‘crossroads’ of today’s world. ‘Today’s drama in the Church is that Jesus keeps knocking on the door, but from within, so that we will let him out! Often we end up being an “imprisoning” Church which does not let the Lord out, which keeps him as “its own”, whereas the Lord came for mission and wants us to be missionaries’ (Address to Participants in the Conference organised by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, 18 February 2023). May all of us, the baptised, be ready to set out anew, each according to our state in life, to inaugurate a new missionary movement, as at the dawn of Christianity!

To return to the king’s command in the parable, the servants are told not only to ‘go’, but also to ‘invite’: ‘Come to the wedding!’ (Matthew 22:4). Here we can see another, no less important, aspect of the mission entrusted by God. As we can imagine, the servants conveyed the king’s invitation with urgency but also with great respect and kindness. In the same way, the mission of bringing the Gospel to every creature must necessarily imitate the same ‘style’ of the One who is being preached. In proclaiming to the world ‘the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead’ (Evangelic Gaudium, 36), missionary disciples should do so with joy, magnanimity and benevolence that are the fruits of the Holy Spirit within them (cf. Galatians 5:22). Not by pressuring, coercing or proselytizing, but with closeness, compassion and tenderness, and in this way reflecting God’s own way of being and acting.

2.            ‘To the marriage feast’. The eschatological and Eucharistic dimension of the mission of Christ and the Church.

In the parable, the king asks the servants to bring the invitation to his son’s wedding banquet. That banquet is a reflection of the eschatological banquet. It is an image of ultimate salvation in the Kingdom of God, fulfilled even now by the coming of Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, who has given us life in abundance (cf. John 10:10), symbolized by the table set with succulent food and with fine wines, when God will destroy death forever (cf. Isaiah 25:6-8)…

3.            ‘Everyone’. The universal mission of Christ’s disciples in the fully synodal and missionary Church. The third and last reflection concerns the recipients of the King’s invitation: ‘everyone’. As I emphasized, ‘This is the heart of mission: that “all”, excluding no one. Every mission of ours, then, is born from the heart of Christ in order that he may draw all to himself’ (Address to the General Assembly of the Pontifical Missionary Societies [Mission], 3 June 2023). Today, in a world torn apart by divisions and conflicts, Christ’s Gospel remains the gentle yet firm voice that calls individuals to encounter one another, to recognize that they are brothers and sisters, and to rejoice in harmony amid diversity. ‘God our Saviour desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth’ (1 Timothy 2:4). Let us never forget, then, that in our missionary activities we are asked to preach the Gospel to all: ‘Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, [we] should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet’ (Evangelic Gaudium, 14)…

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…

Finally, let us lift our gaze to Mary, who asked Jesus to perform his first miracle precisely at a wedding feast, in Cana of Galilee (cf. John 2:1-12). The Lord offered to the newlyweds and all the guests an abundance of new wine, as a foreshadowing of the nuptial banquet that God is preparing for all at the end of time. Let us implore her maternal intercession for the evangelizing mission of Christ’s disciples in our own time. With the joy and loving concern of our Mother, with the strength born of tenderness and affection (cf. Evangelic Gaudium, 288), let us go forth to bring to everyone the invitation of the King, our Saviour. Holy Mary, Star of Evangelization, pray for us!

Rome, Saint John Lateran, 25 January 2024, Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul.    

Franciscus