October 2019 to be ‘extraordinary month of prayer’ for the missions
June 05, 2017
Pope Francis has announced that October 2019 will be an “extraordinary time for prayer and reflection” devoted to the missions, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Maximum Illud, Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic letter on the propagation of the faith.
In a June 3 audience in the Apostolic Palace, the Pope told the Pontifical Mission Societies, which suggested the idea, that “renewing oneself requires conversion, and it requires living mission as an ongoing opportunity to proclaim Christ, to let Him be encountered by bearing witness and making others participants in our personal encounter with Him.”
The Pope continued:
I hope that your spiritual and material assistance to the Church makes it increasingly based upon the Gospel and the baptismal involvement of all the faithful, lay and clerical, in the single mission of the Church: bringing God’s love to every man, especially those most in need of His mercy. The extraordinary month of prayer and reflection on the mission as first evangelization will serve for this renewal of ecclesial faith, so that the Easter of Jesus Christ, the only Savior, Lord and bridegroom of His Church, always be and remain in her heart.
Pope Francis expressed the hope that the prayer and reflection that take place in October 2019 will “contribute to evangelizing, first and foremost, the Church, so that having rediscovered the freshness and zeal of the first love for the crucified and risen Lord, she may evangelize the world with credibility and evangelical efficacy.”
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