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October 8, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
IN THE CHURCH
Pope Opens Missionary Month With Call to Share Joy, Hope, Talents
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- God wants
everyone to take a risk to share with
others the gifts he has given to them
-- their life, talents and his love, Pope
Francis said.
Opening the Extraordinary Mis-
sionary Month at a prayer vigil in St.
Peter’s Basilica Oct. 1, the pope said
God “is asking you not simply to go
through life, but to give life; not to
complain about life, but to share in the
tears of all who suffer.”
Offering his encouragement, the
pope said: “The Lord expects great
things from you. He is also expecting
some of you to have the courage to set
out and to go wherever dignity and
hope are most lacking,” as there are
still many people living without the
joy of the Gospel.
Pope Francis called for the special
month to remind people of their re-
sponsibility to share the Gospel and
to proclaim the Gospel with renewed
enthusiasm.
Similar to his commissioning mis-
sionaries of mercy for the Jubilee of
Mercy, the pope commissioned 10 special
missionaries at the end of the ceremony,
presenting the five religious women, four
religious men and a family with a small
simple wooden cross to wear around
their neck as they go on missions in vari-
ous parts of Africa and Asia.
God “loves the church on the go,”
the pope said in his homily. “If it is not
on the go, it is not church.”
A missionary church, he said, “does
not waste time lamenting things that go
wrong, the loss of faithful, the values of
a time now in the past,” he said.
The church “does not seek safe oases
to dwell in peace, but longs to be salt
of the earth and a leaven in the world”
because she knows her strength is Je-
sus himself, “not social or institutional
relevance, but humble and gratuitous
love.”
The pope used the parable of the
talents to explain how God entrusts
people with his greatest treasures: “our
own lives, the lives of others” and a
number of different gifts and talents.
God does not want those gifts to be
“stored in a safe,” but to be dedicated
“with boldness and creativity” to a
true vocation that will bear fruit, the
pope said.
On the day of judgment, “God will
not ask us if we jealously preserved our
life and faith, but instead whether we
stepped forward and took risks, even
losing face,” he said.
The Extraordinary Missionary
Month is meant to “jolt us and motivate
us to be active in doing good. Not no-
taries of faith and guardians of grace,
but missionaries,” he said.
Pope Francis venerates an image of St.
Francesco Saverio during a prayer vigil
opening a month dedicated to missionaries,
in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 1,
2019. The pope also venerated the image
of St. Therese of Lisieux seen in the back-
ground. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Like martyrs, missionaries live a
life spreading peace and joy, loving
everyone, even their enemies, out of
love for Jesus, he said.
In the parable, the master is pleased
with his enterprising servants as
“good and trustworthy” and harshly
criticized his fearful servant as “wicked
and lazy.”
God severely reproaches the fearful
servant because his evil “was not hav-
ing done good; he sinned by omission,”
the pope said.
“Omission is the opposite of mis-
sion,” he said. People sin by omission
“whenever, rather than spreading joy,
we think of ourselves as victims, or
think that no one loves us or under-
stands us. We sin against mission when
we yield to resignation, ‘I can’t do this:
I’m not up to it.’”
“We sin against mission when we
complain and keep saying that ev-
erything is going from bad to worse,
in the world and in the church,” he
said, “when we become slaves to the
fears that immobilize us, when we let
ourselves be paralyzed by thinking
that ‘things will never change’” and
when life is lived as a burden, not as
a gift, “when we put ourselves and
our concerns at the center, and not our
brothers and sisters who are waiting
to be loved.”
The pope highlighted the lives St.
Therese of the Child Jesus, whose
feast day is Oct. 1, St. Francis Xavier
and Venerable Pauline-Marie Jaricot,
who helped lay the foundations of the
Pontifical Mission Societies.
By highlighting a religious woman,
a priest and a laywoman, the pope said
he wanted to show no one is excluded
from the church’s mission.
“Yes, in this month the Lord is also
calling you” -- fathers, mothers, young
people, bankers, restaurant workers,
the unemployed, the infirm. “The Lord
is asking you to be a gift wherever you
are, and just as you are, with everyone
around you.”
Pope Declares Special Sunday Each Year Dedicated to Word of God
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – To help the church
grow in love and faithful witness to
God, Pope Francis has declared the
third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be
dedicated to the word of God.
Salvation, faith, unity and mercy all
depend on knowing Christ and sacred
Scripture, he said in a new document.
Devoting a special day “to the cel-
ebration, study and dissemination of the
word of God” will help the church “ex-
perience anew how the risen Lord opens
up for us the treasury of his word and
enables us to proclaim its unfathomable
riches before the world,” the pope said.
The declaration to have a “Sunday of
the Word of God” was made in a new
document, given “motu proprio,” on the
pope’s own initiative. Its title, “Aperuit
Illis,” is based on a verse from the Gos-
pel of St. Luke, “Then he opened their
minds to understand the Scriptures.”
“The relationship between the risen
Lord, the community of believers and
sacred Scripture is essential to our iden-
tity as Christians,” the pope said in the
apostolic letter, released by the Vatican
Sept. 30, the feast of St. Jerome, patron
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saint of biblical scholars.
“The Bible cannot be just the heritage
of some, much less a collection of books
for the benefit of a privileged few. It
belongs above all to those called to hear
its message and to recognize themselves
in its words,” the pope wrote.
“The Bible is the book of the Lord’s
people, who, in listening to it, move
from dispersion and division toward
unity” as well as come to understand
God’s love and become inspired to share
it with others, he added.
Without the Lord who opens people’s
minds to his word, it is impossible to
understand the Scriptures in depth, yet
“without the Scriptures, the events of
the mission of Jesus and of his church
in this world would remain incompre-
hensible,” he wrote.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president
of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
New Evangelization, told Vatican News
September 30 that added emphasis on
the importance of the word of God is
needed because “the overwhelming
majority” of Catholics are not familiar
with sacred Scripture. For many, the
only time they hear the word of God is
when they attend Mass, he added.
“The Bible is the most widely distrib-
uted book, but it also perhaps the one
most covered in dust because it is not
held in our hands,” the archbishop said.
With this apostolic letter, the pope
“invites us to hold the word of God in
our hands every day as much as pos-
sible so that it becomes our prayer” and
a greater part of one’s lived experience,
he said.
Pope Francis said in the letter, “A day
devoted to the Bible should not be seen
as a yearly event but rather a yearlong
event, for we urgently need to grow in
our knowledge and love of the Scrip-
tures and of the risen Lord, who con-
tinues to speak his word and to break
bread in the community of believers.”
“We need to develop a closer rela-
tionship with sacred Scripture; other-
wise, our hearts will remain cold and
our eyes shut, struck as we are by so
many forms of blindness,” he wrote.
Sacred Scripture and the sacraments
are inseparable, he wrote. Jesus speaks
to everyone with his word in sacred
Scripture, and if people “hear his voice
and open the doors of our minds and
hearts, then he will enter our lives and
remain ever with us,” he said.