ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

By virtue of your Baptism all of you are called to be involved in the missionary work of the Church. You are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ by what you say and do and by how you live your lives.

On the occasion of World Mission Sunday Pope Benedict XVI invites you and the entire People of GodÿBishops, priests, deacons, men and women religious and laityÿto reflect on the urgent need and importance of the Church's missionary activity in our own time.

Our Holy Father reminds us that our Lord Jesus Christ gave a mandate to His Apostles, before ascending into Heaven, in words that still ring out a universal call and an urgent appeal: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And Jesus added, "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20).

These words of challenge and comfort help us to reflect on the theme chosen for World Mission Sunday, 2007: "All the Churches for all the World."

This theme encourages us to go beyond our own individual call to holiness and service. It invites the dioceses or local Churches of every continent to re-launch missionary activity in the face of the many serious challenges of our time, the changes of a secularized culture, the crisis of family life, fewer religious vocations and the progressive aging of the clergy.

In our Archdiocese of Philadelphia, as we celebrate our Bicentennial, we also celebrate the missionary spirit that has helped us address the challenges to evangelization that have come our way.

Saint Katharine Drexel personally asked Pope Leo XIII to establish a religious congregation so that African American and Native American people would come to know Jesus and receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The Pope indicated that she should do this.

Saint John Neumann brought the message of Jesus to immigrant people in the new world. And he established the Forty Hours Devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament to draw people closer to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

So many members of our Religious Congregations, filled with love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, have been sent to establish missions in other countries of America and in Africa, India, China and other mission areas of the world.

For one year beginning today in our own Archdiocese, we intend to acknowledge in a special way the "fruits of holiness" that the Servant of God Pope John Paul II cites in his Apostolic Exhortation “the Church in America.” Saint Rose of Lima is recognized as America's "first flower of holiness."

We recall with affection some of these holy missionaries with whom we are most familiar: the holy martyrs Saints Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf and companions, who brought the Gospel message to the native American peoples of the United States and Canada; Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, whose Sisters educated our young people in the United States and cared for our sick, and Saint Juan Diego, who helped introduce Our Lady of Guadalupe to Mexico, to all America and to the world.

These and so many other missionaries have accepted the Lord's mandate to go into the whole world and serve in village missions, small schools, medical outposts, orphanages and in countless poor cities throughout Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands and remote regions of Latin America. They believed the words in Paul's letter to the Romans: For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, (Romans 10:13) and accepted his challenge. But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:14-15).

Paul's words are a challenge to each one of us because the Church is essentially missionary and hence we are called to be missionaries.

What we need to do is take what we have learned about God, what we experience in prayer and devotion and what we draw from our encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist at Sunday Mass and go and communicate it to others.

God is at work in the world and wants us to join him. He wants all of us to go out to the world and be witnesses to His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember, people will judge you by the way you act and by the way you live. They may decide by your actions whether God and His word are real. You may be the only Catholic a person will ever know. Go out then today and be the face of Christ to others. Present the person of Jesus to them, for by virtue of your Baptism He has called you to be His missionaries.

World Mission Sunday reminds us that the missionary mandate Christ gave to His Apostles involves us all. So ask the master of the harvest, He said to His disciples, to send out laborers for his harvest (Matthew 9:38).

Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus never left her cloister. Yet because of her prayers to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament for the Missions, she has been declared Co-Patron of the Missions.

How fortunate and blessed we are in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to have the contemplative Carmelite Nuns, the Poor Clare Nuns, the Sisters, Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, and the Visitation Nuns praying for us and for the missionary activity of the Church throughout the world.

As the first reading of today's Mass indicates, prayer is one of the first steps on our missionary journey to proclaim the word of God. Come, let us climb the Lords mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths (Isaiah 2:3). We go up to the mountain of the Lord so that He may teach us His ways. We go up to the mountain of the Lord through prayer. We place ourselves in His presence and listen to Him and His teachings as He prepares us for our missionary work. We learn that prayer is the first contribution we are called to offer to the missionary activity of the Church.

On this special World Mission Sunday we also realize that our financial support given to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith helps our missionaries carry out their task to make disciples of all nations.

May the Lord bless you for your prayers and your generous financial support of the Mission work of the Church.

And may our Blessed Mother Mary draw all of us closer to her divine Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.