ONE SUNDAY FOR THE WHOLE WORLD

Every year, something special happens on the next-to-last Sunday of October – the Church reflects on its deepest identity – that of being missionary.

On World Mission Sunday, October 21st, Catholics of the world will unite at Mass to recommit ourselves to our vocation, through baptism, to be missionaries.  As this year’s celebration takes place at the beginning of the Year of Faith, we are called in a special way to be “missionaries of faith,” above all through prayer and participation in the Eucharist.  We invite you to join us at the Archdiocesan Eucharistic celebration at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross that day at 11:30 AM as missionaries, ethnic choirs, school and parish representatives and Society benefactors gather to celebrate the precious faith being planted in even the most remote parts of the globe. Through prayers and sacrifices for The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, we are all witnesses to the miracle of the birth of the Church all around the world. 

“How privileged we are to be witnesses to the Lord’s grace giving forth great fruits in the young mission churches:  schools opening fresh, a new diocese coming to be, a wing added to the seminary,” said Father Andrew Small, OMI, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies.  “In our world of often not-so-good news, we can forget the great works being done in our midst every day.  As the Body of Christ, we are connected to those works through a spiritual union, the real union that is the Church.”

In a very practical way, our support reaches the mission Church where there is great zeal and enthusiasm for the faith – places such as Bangladesh, where schools can’t pay the teachers’ salaries to educate the children of poor tea workers, or Ghana, where catechists struggle to prepare the faithful for Sacraments without electricity in the parish hall, or Kenya, where the priests and Sisters can’t put fuel in their vehicle to journey to a rural village, to bring hope and help to victims of drought and famine.  

World Mission Sunday gives us the opportunity to remind the faithful here at home of the great growth of the Church in the Missions, and of the great needs of some 1,150 mission dioceses – to open our hearts, and reach out with a helping hand to our mission family.

Yes, something special happens on the next-to-last Sunday of October.  We ask that through your prayers and sacrifices, you join us in the worldwide mission of Jesus Christ – spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth!