By Deborah Castellano Lubov
Pope Francis says that prayer is not only the “primary missionary activity,” but also the key to “keeping alive the spark of hope lit by God within us…”
The Holy Father gave this comforting reminder in his World Mission Day Message for 2025, which was published by the Holy See Press Office in several languages on Thursday. The Church will observe the 99th edition of the World Day on Oct 19.
The Pope began his message recalling that this year’s World Mission Day has at its core “hope,” explaining that for this very reason, he chose as its motto: “Missionaries of Hope Among all Peoples,” noting it reminds individual Christians and the entire Church “of our fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope.”
In this context, the Pope expressed his wish that the Day be a time of grace, before going on to reflect on three aspects of our Christian missionary identity.
Inspired to follow His footsteps
Reflecting first on following the Lord’s footsteps, he encouraged, “May we too feel inspired to set out in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus to become, with Him and in Him, signs and messengers of hope for all, in every place and circumstance that God has granted us to live.”
Next, the Pope examined “Christians, bearers and builders of hope among all peoples.”
“In following Christ the Lord,” he urged, “Christians are called to hand on the Good News by sharing the concrete life situations of those whom they meet, and thus to be bearers and builders of hope.”
“Following the Lord’s call,” he highlighted, “you have gone forth to other nations to make known the love of God in Christ.
“For this,” he continued, “I thank you most heartily! Your lives are a clear response to the command of the risen Christ, who sent His disciples to evangelize all peoples.”
Harbingers of a new humanity
In this way, the Pope told them they are signs of the “universal vocation” of the baptized to become, by the power of the Spirit and daily effort, “missionaries among all peoples and witnesses to the great hope given us by the Lord Jesus.”
Impelled by this great hope, he said, Christian communities can be “harbingers of a new humanity in a world that, in the most ‘developed’ areas, shows serious symptoms of human crisis,” witnessed through “a widespread sense of bewilderment, loneliness and indifference to the needs of the elderly, and a reluctance to make an effort to assist our neighbours in need.”
In the most technologically advanced nations, the Holy Father went on to observe, that “proximity” is disappearing. “We are all interconnected, but not related. Obsession with efficiency and an attachment to material things and ambitions are making us self-centred and incapable of altruism.”
The Gospel, experienced in the life of a community, the Holy Father reassured, can restore us to “a whole, healthy, redeemed humanity.”
For this reason, the Pope renewed his appeal for all faithful to pay particular attention to the poor, weak, elderly and excluded, and to do so “with God’s ‘style’ of closeness, compassion and tenderness.
Renewed in Easter spirituality
Finally, the Pope turned to the third aspect of “Renewing the mission of hope.”
“Faced with the urgency of the mission of hope today,” Pope Francis said, “Christ’s disciples are called first to discover how to become “artisans” of hope and restorers of an often distracted and unhappy humanity.
Missionaries of hope, the Holy Father reiterated, are “men and women of prayer,” “for ‘the person who hopes is a person who prays.’”
“Let us not forget,” he insisted, “that prayer is the primary missionary activity and at the same time ‘the first strength of hope.'”
Keeping this in mind, the Pope urged missionaries to “renew the mission of hope, starting from prayer, especially prayer based on the word of God and particularly the Psalms, that great symphony of prayer whose composer is the Holy Spirit.”
Keeping spark of hope alive through prayer
“By praying,” Pope Francis marvelled, “we keep alive the spark of hope lit by God within us, so that it can become a great fire, which enlightens and warms everyone around us, also by those concrete actions and gestures that prayer itself inspires.”
Evangelization, he stressed, is always a communitarian process, like Christian hope itself. “That process does not end with the initial preaching of the Gospel and with Baptism, but continues,” he clarified, “with the building up of Christian communities through the accompaniment of each of the baptized along the path of the Gospel.”
Prayer and action
Missionary work, he underscored, requires praying and acting as a community.
Therefore, the Pope invited, “I urge all of you, children, young people, adults and the elderly, to participate actively in the common evangelizing mission of the Church by your witness of life and prayer, by your sacrifices and by your generosity.”
Finally, Pope Francis concludes urging all faithful to turn to Mary, Mother of Christ our hope, reminding us to entrust to her this Jubilee, along with all the years yet to come.
