Encourage the laity to become missionary disciples, Pope asks clergy, religious

September 28, 2015

Recalling that Pope Leo XIII once challenged St. Katharine Drexel to think about her role in the Church’s mission, Pope Francis encouraged the bishops, clergy, and religious of Pennsylvania to help the Church’s lay faithful to become missionary disciples.

“How many young people in our parishes and schools have the same high ideals, generosity of spirit, and love for Christ and the Church [as St. Katharine Drexel]!” the Pope said at a Mass in Philadelphia’s cathedral on September 26. “I ask you: Do we challenge them? Do we make space for them and help them to do their part? To find ways of sharing their enthusiasm and gifts with our communities, above all in works of mercy and concern for others? Do we share our own joy and enthusiasm in serving the Lord?”

The Pope added:

One of the great challenges facing the Church in this generation is to foster in all the faithful a sense of personal responsibility for the Church’s mission, and to enable them to fulfill that responsibility as missionary disciples, as a leaven of the Gospel in our world. This will require creativity in adapting to changed situations, carrying forward the legacy of the past not primarily by maintaining our structures and institutions, which have served us well, but above all by being open to the possibilities which the Spirit opens up to us and communicating the joy of the Gospel, daily and in every season of our life …

We know that the future of the Church in a rapidly changing society will call, and even now calls, for a much more active engagement on the part of the laity … This does not mean relinquishing the spiritual authority with which we have been entrusted; rather, it means discerning and employing wisely the manifold gifts which the Spirit pours out upon the Church. In a particular way, it means valuing the immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make, in the life of our communities. 

 

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Further information:

• Apostolic Journey of the Holy Father to Cuba, to the United States of America and Visit to the United Nations Headquarters (19-28 September 2015) (Holy See Press Office)
• Vatican YouTube coverage