Mission Sunday 2024 – Message from the Superior General

I wonder what kind of images are evoked in the minds of people who, like me, come from the so called more developed countries when they are presented with an invitation to reflect on Mission Sunday. I get the impression that most of us would think of people, particularly children, who are in need, suffering from hunger, and lacking financial resources, inviting us, through this day to be generous and share our resources with them. Of course, this remains part of the message of this day, but I hope that many of us who are part of the Paulist family have developed a deeper understanding of Mission Sunday and are now able to see that the invitation extends much further. It is closer to home than we once imagined.
Our brothers and sisters coming from, for lack of a better term, developing countries helped me appreciate that this day invites us to share more than just material support. It invites us to share the gift of faith, the light of Christ, with those struggling in darkness.
This day calls us all to discover ourselves, using the words that Pope Francis often uses, as “missionary disciples.” This means that all of us, while called to follow Christ and become more one with Him, are also invited to embrace our missionary calling – the task of helping others make a personal encounter with the Lord.
This is the greatest gift we can offer to anyone. Mother Teresa is famously quoted as saying, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” This kind of poverty cannot be alleviated with financial aid alone. Only when a person encounters the love of God, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, can this need be truly addressed. Moreover, financial aid makes Christian sense only when it becomes a concrete proclamation of God’s love to those in need.

This day invites us to look around and see to whom we might be sent. We might not need to look far. It could be someone we meet daily at work, a neighbour, or even a social contact online. Let us realize what a great gift faith is and how terrible life can be when someone is deprived of that light.
I might feel that my faith is too little or too weak to be of help to others. I might be tempted to think that I first need to grow stronger in my faith, become more intimate with Christ, and become holier in my behaviour before I can ‘qualify’ to share my faith with others. However, the Gospel follows a different logic. The Gospel follows the logic contained in the story of the feeding of the five thousand, or the passage of the widow’s mite, two images which were very dear to our Founder. The Gospel’s logic goes like this: if you feel you have very little, share that little, and you will have more than enough!
The theme chosen by Pope Francis for this year’s Mission Sunday is “Go and invite everyone to the banquet (cf. Mt 22:9).” (The Pope’s message is found here). Many of us are regularly nourished by the banquets offered by our MSSP communities and the ministry provided by our MSSP brothers and sisters. This theme is certainly an invitation to make our spaces more inclusive, to “enlarge the space of our tents,” to use the title of one of the preparatory documents of the current Synod, so that more brothers and sisters can benefit from the graces being showered upon us.
Furthermore, this is an opportunity to allow two of our identified MSSP characteristics – solidarity and hospitality – to shine. Let us ask God to help us identify those in desperate need of someone to reach out to them, give us the courage to do so, and welcome them into our lives and into our communities.