October 20.  29th Sunday B. World Mission Day. One Sunday for the whole world with the theme, “Go and Invite Everyone to the Banquet,” Matthew 22:9.  

Extracts and summary of the 2024 World Mission message of Pope Francis. The Holy Father presents an unusual image. “Today’s drama in the Church is that Jesus keeps knocking on the door, but from within, so that we will let him out! Often we end up being an ‘imprisoning’ Church which does not let the Lord out, which keeps him as ‘its own’, whereas the Lord came for mission and wants us to be missionaries”   

The message calls us not only to “go”, but also to “invite. Missionary disciples should do so with joy, magnanimity and benevolence that are the fruits of the Holy Spirit within them (cf. Gal 5:22). Not by pressuring, coercing or proselytizing, but with closeness, compassion and tenderness, and in this way reflecting God’s own way of being and acting.  The banquet is the marriage feast”. The eschatological and Eucharistic dimension of the mission of Christ and the Church. It is an image of ultimate salvation in the Kingdom of God, fulfilled even now by the coming of Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, who has given us life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10), symbolized by the table set with succulent food and with fine wines, when God will destroy death forever (cf. Is 25:6-8).

Christ’s mission has to do with the fullness of time as Pope Francis declared. “In this year devoted to prayer in preparation for the Jubilee of 2025, I wish to encourage all to deepen their commitment above all to take part in the celebration of Mass and to pray for the Church’s mission of evangelization. Daily prayer and the Eucharist in particular make us pilgrims and missionaries of hope, journeying towards everlasting life in God, towards the nuptial banquet that God has prepared for all his children.”

In our missionary activities we are asked to preach the Gospel to all: “Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, [we] should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet” (Evangelii Gaudium, 14). The mission for all requires the commitment of all. We need to continue our journey towards a fully synodal and missionary Church in the service of the Gospel. Synodality is essentially missionary and, vice versa, mission is always synodal. Close missionary cooperation is today all the more urgent and necessary, both in the universal and in the particular Churches.

With the joy and loving concern of Mary, our Mother, with the strength born of tenderness and affection (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 288), let us go forth to bring to everyone the invitation of the King, our Saviour. Holy Mary, Star of Evangelization, pray for us! Taken from www.vatican.va     Action and Prayer.  Do I put my money where my mouth is this Mission Sunday? Pray: Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love, so that walking together we may renew the face of the earth.