Jubilee of the Missions

The days 4th-5th October 2025 are being marked as the Jubilee of the Missions, with a particular invitation to religious and lay participants in the Church's missionary activity to join in the events in Rome. It coincides with the Jubilee of Migrants, being marked on the same days.

The Decree Ad Gentes of the Second Vatican Council (n.6) defined the term "missions" as follows:

"Missions" is the term usually given to those particular undertakings by which the heralds of the Gospel, sent out by the Church and going forth into the whole world, carry out the task of preaching the Gospel and planting the Church among peoples or groups who do not yet believe in Christ. These undertakings are brought to completion by missionary activity and are mostly exercised in certain territories recognized by the Holy See. The proper purpose of this missionary activity is evangelization, and the planting of the Church among those peoples and groups where it has not yet taken root.

In a chapter addressing the nature of missionary work, the Decree (nn.10-18) goes on to identify three stages to that work: the presence of a Christian witness,  the preaching of the Gospel and building of a Christian community through catechesis and the Sacraments of initiation, and then the forming of self-sustaining Christian life.

The missionary work of the Church is overseen by the secretariats of the four Pontifical Mission Societies, which sit within the Dicastery for Evangelisation (see organisational structure here). In collaboration with the Dicastery for Evangelisation, they are sponsoring a conference The Missio ad Gentes today: Toward new Horizons to mark the Jubilee of Missions. The website of the Pontifical Mission Societies is very informative about the founding and work of the four different societies.

In May 2023, Pope Francis dedicated a General Audience address to the person of St Francis Xavier, one of two patron saints of the missions. It was part of a series addressing the theme of a passion for evangelisation and presenting examples of apostolic zeal. At the start of his address, Pope Francis drew attention to an aspect of the missionary impulse, the leaving of one place to preach the Gospel in another, as he gave an account of Francis Xavier's missionary life:

And a missionary is great when he or she goes. ...

[Francis Xavier] was the first of a numerous band of passionate missionaries in modern times, to depart, ready to endure immense hardships and dangers, to reach lands and meet peoples from completely unknown cultures and languages, driven only by the powerful desire to make Jesus Christ and his Gospel known.

 In October that same year, Pope Francis dedicated an Apostolic Exhortation C'est la confiance to the second patron saint of the missions, St Therese of Lisieux.

The name of Jesus was constantly on her lips, as an act of love, even to her last breath. She had also written these words in her cell: “Jesus is my one love”. It was her interpretation of the supreme statement of the New Testament: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8.16).

A missionary soul

As with every authentic encounter with Christ, this experience of faith summoned her to mission. Therese could define her mission in these words: “I shall desire in heaven the same thing as I do now on earth: to love Jesus and to make him loved”. She wrote that she entered Carmel “to save souls”. In a word, she did not view her consecration to God apart from the pursuit of the good of her brothers and sisters. She shared the merciful love of the Father for his sinful son and the love of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who were lost, astray and wounded. For this reason, Therese is the Patroness of the missions and a model of evangelization.

The final pages of her Story of a Soul are a missionary testament. They express her appreciation of the fact that evangelization takes place by attraction, not by pressure or proselytism. It is worthwhile reading her own words in this regard: “ Draw me, we shall run after you in the odour of your ointments. O Jesus! It is not even necessary to say: When drawing me, draw the souls whom I love! This simple statement, ‘Draw me’ suffices. I understand, Lord, that when a soul allows herself to be captivated by the odour of your ointments, she cannot run alone; all the souls whom she loves follow in her train; this is done without constraint, without effort, it is a natural consequence of her attraction for you. Just as a torrent, throwing itself with impetuosity into the ocean, drags after it everything it encounters in its passage, in the same way, O Jesus, the soul who plunges into the shoreless ocean of your Love, draws with her all the treasures she possesses. Lord, you know it, I have no other treasures than the souls it has pleased you to unite to mine”.

Novena for Pentecost: Baptism in the Spirit and Evangelisation

The liveliness of worship often associated with those who have experienced Baptism in the Spirit is matched by a similar liveliness in efforts to make known the person and teaching of Jesus, that is, in evangelisation. It combines a confidence in the content of evangelisation and a boldness in announcing that content. People transformed by the Spirit come to speak of Christ from their own personal experience of the encounter with Him, and from an understanding of the Gospel that is rooted in that experience. Schools of evangelisation equip their members with both the knowledge of the Gospel and an understanding of techniques for preaching the Gospel, the Sion Catholic Community for Evangelisation being one example. Street evangelisation, processions, city missions (in London, Spirit in the City, affected in recent times by the COVID pandemic, is an example) and the use of internet media are fruits of this renewed commitment to evangelisation.

A feature of the Renewal is that many of its initiatives - city missions, new communities - are led by lay people, and often inspired by a particular charism among the laity. That having been said, events such as missions typically manifest a strong collaboration of lay people, priests and religious. The harmonious nature of this collaboration does not reflect the more common relationship of hierarchy - that is, of the religious or ordained providing the leadership - but might be better described as a relationship of communion in which each individual vocation is able to fulfil its own purpose alongside the others. The spiritual dynamism unleashed by Baptism in the Spirit takes on a particular importance in the context of the "new evangelisation" in countries now less imbued with the Christian culture that was in the past a feature of their societies.

A last observation of significance with respect to evangelisation, seen as a fruit of Baptism in the Spirit, is that it is undertaken with respect for Church authority. It is not unusual for training on matters such as doctrine and methods of evangelisation to be based on the documents of the Popes and of the dicasteries of the Holy See. At the level of principle, it is this that enables the experience of communion on the ground that is typical of the Charismatic Renewal.

Madeleine Delbrel: reaching out to those at the margins of society

I came across these two passages from the writings of Madeleine Delbrel whilst reflecting on the way in which Frank Duff during his life had a kind of charism on behalf of the marginalised. An early work of the Legion of Mary was with prostitutes in Dublin, but that is not the only example of Frank Duff's mission to the poor and marginalised. An article about this can be found here. From “Poverty and the Poor” in Madeleine Delbrel The Joy of Believing pp.98-99.

Note 1964 

The poor are not only brothers and sisters to be loved in a brotherly way because they are our brothers and sisters, they are also "our lords the poor" because the poor man is Our Lord. He is the sacrament of our encounter with Christ, of our love given to Christ - there is nothing Platonic about the parable of the Last Judgement. 

So, whatever the form that poverty takes in our life, we can only be faithful to Jesus himself if the poor may come into our particular nitty gritty life situation and feel at home there, just as Christ is at home with us: that is to say if they are not given the wrong kind of "priority" (there are multiple kinds of priority but each has its own concrete expression). 

One can write reams about the poverty of Christ - drawing conclusions about what an imitation of that poverty would be like and what kind of implica­tions this might have for us. What is beyond discus­sion is that whatever our life it must, if it is to be Christian, protect a place for Christ in our flesh and blood encounters - our meetings, our welcomes, our ways of relating - to the poor. 

The poor man by reason of poverty itself often repels us (cf. Francis kissing the leper). He brings into our way of life the very contradiction that is Christ. 

It is the real presence of Christ in the poor man, when this is really believed and the poor man is known as a person, that can transform the encounter with him from a purely "social problem" into some­thing essentially and authentically Christian. 

The poor must not be someone who is tolerated and put up with but someone who is waited for and expected. The poor must not have to receive from us .orne kind of regulation staple treatment (e.g. a bowl of hot soup and a shower) "we do this as far as this," "we do that as far as ... " The poor man never owes us anything. It is we who owe him what we owe Christ. 

It is this same faith that allows us to receive Christ: through the eucharist into ourselves; through the poor into our lives. 

Who is my neighbor? - Any human being.Who are the poor? - Usually someone who, from a social point of view, is "outside": "outside" other people's lives, a prisoner, a sick person, a stranger, naked, etc.

From “The Atheistic Environment as a Situation Favourable to Our Own Conversion” in Madeleine Delbrel We, the Ordinary People of the Streets pp.265-267.

The Disappearance of God and Solitude

What can be the sorest trial for us in a Communist city is the disappear­ance of a God who had been until then for us visible and grasp able. The sign of this disappearance is a total "uselessness" of God that is vividly ex­pressed in the life of the Communists as well as in the life of the city as a whole. 

The corollary of this disappearance is the blinding epiphany of man, of his value, his power, and his collective destiny. For if the exceptional Communist milieu of Ivry - made up of national, regional, and local leaders who have all been doctrinally formed according to the level of their responsibility, as well as the basic militants entrusted with the most diverse of tasks, from the hanging of posters to administrative positions, and in­cluding the responsibilities of para-Communist movements, of educa­tional or cultural groups, or of international meetings - if this milieu is at once a demonstration of indisputable personal virtues and effective hu­man activity in full force, it seems as if we could do just as well without God. Nothing and no one seems to be any worse off for his absence. 

The moment we cease to see such a milieu as a trial, it turns into a temptation - a temptation that is all the stronger to the extent that we are gradually able to look at things that used to be for us signs of God, with the eyes of our comrades and our friends. 

And we see that these signs are necessarily opaque if you do not al­ready know in advance what they mean. 

At the same time, in spite of the deepest affections, we begin to feel that the faith, which makes us love others more and more, is making us strangers to them. It can happen, at this point, that we begin to accuse faith, either under our breath or out loud, of being foreign to this world. This is a profound suffering. If we do not see the necessary test that is here concealed under temptation, we would very easily fall to it. But if, on the other hand, we believe in the one who called us and who remains faithful to those he calls, if we ask him to teach us, then he will explain to us what we need to know in order to be living converts, what we may have forgot­ten or perhaps never really knew: that faith is a gift from God. 

As a gift from God, faith, which is foreign to the world, is given to the world. To believe is to consummate between faith and the world an eternal covenant within time. 

If faith creates people who are faithful, it is not a fidelity of blood, country, or honor, but a personal fidelity to the living God who calls and to whom the one who is called must respond freely and always with the whole heart of a free human being. 

In order to hear this call and answer it, we need solitude. Solitude ceases to be painful and becomes instead the indispensable place wherein God makes contact with us. Prayer reinforces the roots of solitude - it transforms the way we see all community in the Church - the trees that together are meant to make up the forest are individually given life by their solitary roots. We learn that in order to offer us faith God calls each of us by name, and that faith is not a privilege due to heredity or good behavior ... and that it is the grace of knowing that God gives grace, the grace of be­ing in the world committed with Christ to his mission of Redemption. 

Once we have returned to the state of conversion, we learn that faith in the Son of God and the Son of Man binds us indissolubly both to the God who grants it and to man, the man of creation, humanity as a whole. For we too are able to say "all for one and one for all." Each of us has re­ceived faith on behalf of all of us. 

The solitude into which we are driven by God brings us into con­scious solidarity with every living human being that comes into the world, with all of the nations that Christ will gather together on the last day.

"Eucharistic Moments" - Mirroring the broken Christ

Thinking Faith have published an article with this title. The article can be accessed here. I am reminded of one of the catecheses at last years International Eucharistic Congress, on the theme of the Eucharist and Mission. That catechesis can be accessed here.

As I read Fr Barnes article from Thinking Faith, there was something that made me feel instinctively uncomfortable with it. One aspect to this is a background that might be described as Rahnerian. There is a complex philosophy of religion behind this background, which leads to a recognising in ordinary things of life instances of specific Christian revelation. If you are used to thinking in a different philosophical/theological framework it is quite difficult to read an article written in this Rahnerian context.

A couple of phrases in the article bring in to focus the disagreements that I would have with it. The first is in the introductory paragraph, which refers to "our experience of the eucharist, during the liturgy and in our everyday lives". This is a phrase which has a clearly Rahnerian dimension to it - in not distinguishing between "eucharist in everyday life" and "eucharist in the liturgy". However, I do not think you should speak univocally of Eucharistic experience in these two areas of Christian life; there is a Eucharistic experience in these two different areas of Christian life, and those experiences should be in complete conformity with each other and not contradictory; but the nature of those two different experiences is not the same, is not identical. I think this is a point that could be made within a Rahnerian perspective, as well as through addressing the question from a different philosophical/theological perspective.

The second phrase refers to the "same ordinary objects and the same everyday gestures recorded in the Gospel story". The Rahnerian perspective is again apparent here. In one sense, the phrase is correct - bread and wine are ordinary objects. But, on the other hand, does it do justice to the Gospel accounts to reduce the choice of those objects (rooted in the historic tradition of the Jewish liturgy) to the "ordinary"? In the context of the Jewish liturgy from which they have come, are these objects and gestures really "ordinary"? Isn't it truer and more faithful to the intent of the Gospel texts to see them as being actually quite "extraordinary"?

In passing, Fr Barnes' account of Jesus' appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, where he relates their recognition of Jesus in the breaking of bread as a "eucharistic moment", seems to shy away from the suggestion that it is a "Eucharistic Moment" - Jesus disappears from their physical sight because he is present in the Bread of the Eucharist.

I think Cardinal Toppo's catechesis on "Eucharist and Mission" at the International Eucharistic Congress is interesting to read in conjunction with Fr Barnes' article. I think you should read it as a whole, but here are two extracts, one referring to the nature of the bread and wine brought in the offertory procession and the second to the nature of the mission received from participating in the Eucharist.

The bread and wine that they bring to the altar is the symbol of their daily life of interaction with one another. They are not mere ritual elements. They represent the community with its life of relationships. In the early Church these were taken from the table of sharing and thus expressed their relationship among themselves. Today, I believe it is again necessary to emphasize the social and communitarian dimension of the bread and wine that is brought to the altar. This can be done in the following manner. In the first place it is ideal that the faithful bring these gifts to the altar as a symbol of their own lives. Moreover, together with the bread and wine, it would be good if they bring other gifts which express the concern for the community. The offertory collection could be given a greater community building significance. The community gathered together as the body of Christ should realize that there are members among them who do not experience God’s love because there are not enough people who translate this love into human love and sharing.

I think one can add to Cardinal Toppo's presentation, without in any way undermining it, an idea that the bread and wine brought to the altar represent the renewed creation that is the specific work of the lay person in the life and mission of the Church. This idea gives an eschatological expression to the Cardinal's pastoral/missionary presentation.

We are sent out into the world to make the symbols of the Eucharistic worship become realities of a Eucharistic life. We go out into the world after the Eucharist challenged by the word of God, prophetically charged by the Spirit of the risen Lord and committed to work for the transformation of the world.

What I find interesting in this second extract is its direction - from our celebration of the Eucharist towards the world - where Fr Barnes' suggests a primacy of a movement in the opposite direction. Our own brokeness finds a meaning in the brokeness of Christ, and so there is a correct sense in which we experience a movement from the world towards the Eucharist. But, when viewed as a mission in the world, the primacy of movement is, I believe, in the opposite direction. We are sent to live Christ's brokeness for others - the Eucharist is a "gift of God for the life of the world".

International Eucharistic Congress: "mission activities"

Zero writes:

"You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24).

The Eucharistic Congress also included "mission activities" in and around Quebec City. Following the morning catechesis, people interested in doing these activities attended a separate Mass in another "chapel" - mission work usually started from 1 pm and this Mass was shorter as there was no music.

On the first day, only about 60 people attended Mass and of these only a few were to be involved in the mission activities. The priest likened the few in number to how it must have been when St Paul started out. Over the week Mass attendance increased to over 200 although, again, most just stayed for Mass.

Activities included visiting a home for deaf people, a home for the elderly, the handicapped at a L'Arche community, preparing meals for the homeless and at a home for recovering alcoholics, and street evangelisation.

With several others I twice visited a unit that provides meals for immigrant families and teaches them skills to enable them to find jobs. Our "mission" was to peel vast amounts of vegetables - it's surprising how many you can get through while getting to know your fellow workers! I didn't give up on the onion peeling despite the fact I cried throughout!

Another day we cleaned at the home for recovering alcoholics and were shown round La Maison Mere Mallet where three elderly nuns (oldest age 85 years), with the help of volunteers, provide daily meals for the homeless.

The street evangelisation seemed to have been pre-organised by the youth group.

Unfortunately, only one of the volunteers leading us spoke English well and two others a little, and my French is pathetic. As most of Quebec is mainly French speaking I felt what I could volunteer for was limited. Also on some days there were more people willing to do the mission than places for them to go - only so many could go to each place. These activities must be difficult to arrange as there are health and safety and hygiene issues to be considered and, for example, people providing meals for the homeless need to know in advance they ahve enough workers to actually make the meal! They couldn't just rely on mission workers.

I was told the Congress had found it difficult to get enough volunteers which is a pity as possibly more could have then been done. However, all the volunteers I came into contact with couldn't have been more friendly and helpful and I'm glad to have taken part.