Here I am, send me

The mission, the “outgoing Church” are not a program, an intention to be realized by effort of will. It is Christ who brings the Church out of herself. In the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, you move because the Spirit pushes you and carries you. God always loves us first and with this love he meets and calls us. Our personal vocation comes from the fact that we are sons and daughters of God in the Church, his family, brothers and sisters in that charity that Jesus witnessed to us.

All, however, have a human dignity founded on the divine call to be children of God, to become, in the sacrament of Baptism and in the freedom of faith, what they have always been in the heart of God.
Understanding what God is telling us in these times of pandemic becomes a challenge also for the mission of the Church. Illness, suffering, fear, isolation challenge us. The poverty of those who die alone, of those who are abandoned to themselves, of those who lose their jobs and wages, of those who have no home and food, questions us. Forced to be physically distant and to stay at home, we are invited to rediscover that we need social relationships, and also the community relationship with God. Far from increasing distrust and indifference, this condition should make us more attentive to our way of relating. with the others. And prayer, in which God touches and moves our hearts, opens us to the needs of love, dignity and freedom of our brothers, as well as to care for all creation.

The impossibility of coming together as a Church to celebrate the Eucharist has made us share the condition of so many Christian communities that cannot celebrate Mass every Sunday. In this context, the question that God asks: "Who will I send?" Is asked again and expects a generous and convinced response from us: "Here I am, send me!" (Is 6,8). God continues to look for whom to send to the world and to the peoples to bear witness to his love, his salvation from sin and death, his liberation from evil (cf. Mt 9: 35-38; Lk 10: 1-12).


From the message of Francis for World Mission Sunday 2020
NP October 2020