“Mission Sunday is not just about the money – of course this is important for the Church structurally – but what is more important for the Church, what we need, is people to discuss their role in the Church. If I am a baptized person, what is my role as a baptized person in my particular Church. Mission is not an optional extra”.
From Vatican Radio:
"“Today too the mission ad gentes must be the constant horizon and paradigm of every ecclesial endeavour, because the identity of the Church herself is constituted by faith in the Mystery of God who revealed himself in Christ to bring us salvation, and by the mission of witnessing and proclaiming him to the world until he comes”.
In his message for this World Missions Sunday Pope Benedict XVI is urging believers worldwide to rediscover the zeal of the early Christian communities, and realise that they too –as part of the Church through baptism- are called to mission, in all places and at all times.
“I’m looking for a missionary people, a missionary spirit and that is what the Holy Father is talking about when he speaks of the mission ad genetes - to the people and of the people -as being our constant horizon”, says Fr. Timothy Lehane Barrett SVD, Secretary General, of Propagation of the Faith.
Continue reading and listening to Fr Tim's reflection on Mission Sunday HERE.
Fr Barrett SVD was born in 1955 in Innishannon, in County Cork (Ireland). After studying Agriculture at Multyfarmham (County Wetmeath), he studied Philosophy at Donamon Castle (Roscommon) and Theology at Maynooth (County Kildare). In 1978, he entered in the Congregation of the Divine Word, where he took his perpetual vows in 1985. He was ordained a priest on March 17, 1986. Within the Congregation, he has had various tasks, firstly as a former in 1990-2000, and later as Provincial Superior, from 2004 until now. Fr. Timothy has been a missionary in Ecuador for 25 years, where he served mainly in prison ministry in the city of Quito. Beginning in 1999, he served as National Director of the Pontifical Missionary Societies in Ecuador and coordinating the Third American Missionary Congress CAM 3-Comla 8, which was celebrated in Quito on August 12-17, 2008. He was appointed Secretary General of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith (aka Propoganda Fide) in 2008.
Continue reading about Fr Tim and his work HERE.
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