This coming weekend in your parish envelope boxes you will see an envelope for the Evangelization of Nations, or World Mission Sunday. This coming Sunday, October 24th, is World Mission Sunday.

On World Mission Sunday, every Catholic community and parish throughout the world is involved in this special event. It is a day that we show that all Catholics are missionaries who have a role to play in spreading the message of the Gospel. We are being sent to be witnesses to what we have seen and heard, through prayer and personal sacrifice, for our brothers and sisters around the world.

• $40 helps support a catechist for a month in remote areas of the missions
• $80 provides for the work of Religious Sisters caring for orphaned children in Africa, Asia, Latin America
• $100 assists poor children in boarding school in the Amazon, Africa and Asia

The financial assistance that you offer on World Mission Sunday will support mission priests, religious sisters and brothers, and catechists who are Christ’s witnesses to a world so in need of His love, healing and peace.

As always our prayers are the most treasured gift to the missions. Thank you for participating with your prayers and donations on World Mission Sunday. Please visit www.missionsocieties.ca for more information.

A Reflection for World Mission Sunday

“Go your way; your faith has saved you.” (Mark 10:52)

We celebrate World Mission Sunday 2021 with the following theme: “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20) This Sunday’s Good News talks about God’s compassion, His divine love which, on the one hand, saves His people and guides them to salvation in the Old Covenant; on the other hand God saves the world through the only Mediator, Jesus Christ, in the New Covenant. Today’s present condition makes us aware of the human poverty that cries out to the Lord in search of help and mercy.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus heals the blind man in Jericho. The paradox comes from the fact that this blind man sees exactly who Jesus of Nazareth is. He calls Him “Son of David”. In the biblical tradition, it is the name of the Messiah awaited by the chosen people. We must allow ourselves to be led by the Master towards the enlightening of Faith. Today, Jesus invites us to open the eyes of our hearts to welcome in faith the vision of a suffering and triumphant Messiah.

In his message to the Pontifical Mission Societies on May 21, 2020, Pope Francis wrote “Nor can missionary fervour ever be obtained as the result of reasoning or calculation. To be ‘in a state of mission’ reflects gratitude. It is the response of one who by gratitude is made docile to the Spirit and is therefore free. Only in the freedom of gratitude can one truly know the Lord, whereas it is useless and above all improper to insist on presenting missionary activity and the proclamation of the Gospel as if they were a binding duty, a kind of ‘contractual obligation’ on the part of the baptized.”

Today, we are invited to listen carefully and meditate on Pope Francis’ Message for World Mission Sunday 2021. With kindness we welcome these words from the Acts of the Apostles: “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20)