Renewal requires conversion, it requires living the mission as a permanent opportunity to proclaim Christ, to make Him encounter us by witnessing and making others participate in our personal encounter with Him. It is my hope that your spiritual and material assistance to the Churches will make them ever more founded on the Gospel and on the baptismal involvement of all the faithful, lay and clerics, in the Church's one mission: to make God's love close to every person, especially those most in need of his mercy. The Extraordinary Month of Prayer and Reflection on the Mission as First Evangelisation will serve this renewal of the Church's faith, so that at its heart always lies and works the Easter of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour, Lord and Bridegroom of His Church.
May the preparation of this extraordinary time dedicated to the first proclamation of the Gospel help us to be more and more the Church in mission, according to the words of Blessed Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, magna carta of the post-conciliar missionary commitment. Pope Montini wrote: "Evangelising, the Church begins by evangelising itself. A community of believers, a community of lived and shared hope, a community of fraternal love, she needs to listen continually to what she must believe, the reasons for her hope, the new commandment of love. As the people of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols, it always needs to hear the great works of God proclaimed (cf. Acts 2:11; 1 Pet 2:9), which have converted it to the Lord, and to be summoned and reunited again by Him. This means, in a word, that it always needs to be evangelised if it is to retain the freshness, the impetus and the strength to proclaim the Gospel" (n. 15).
[Pope Francis, address to the assembly of the Pontifical Missionary Works 3 June 2017]
