Image Credit: Daniel Tibi –

Pope Francis’ message for the 98th World Mission Day recalls the Gospel parable of the wedding banquet in which the king tells his servants to go out into the streets and invite everyone they find to the wedding banquet. This is the mission of the Church: to tirelessly reach out to everyone to invite them to encounter God and to communion with Him. And it is a task that requires the commitment of every baptized person. The mission implies a certain urgency, but it must be done with respect and kindness, with joy, magnanimity and benevolence… all fruits of the Holy Spirit.
The urgency of preaching the Gospel, of directing the human heart towards the life beyond, also gives the mission a strong eschatological dimension: it is the invitation to the banquet of heaven already anticipated in the Eucharistic banquet. Here the active and external orientation of the apostolic mission of the Church is highlighted.

However, the mission is not limited only to visible action on the ground. In other words,  The mission does not depend only on external action. Internal action is just as indispensable. This may seem difficult to grasp, especially in a society that exalts action.
In this action prone society, how can we, for instance, understand, the value of monastic life and its contribution to the mission? Why “lock oneself up” between four walls when the world needs arms that bring concrete help to many disadvantaged people?

An answer comes to us from a surprising person: patron saint of the missions, with the missionary Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Therese of Lisieux, a barefoot Carmelite nun who died at only 24 years old, who as we know, never set foot on mission grounds. However, her “ardor and zeal to spread the faith” were essential to her role. Why did the missionaries ask Pope Pius XI to give her the title of patroness of the missions? This is precisely due to the apostolic impulse of the contemplative life of the young cloistered nun, who “burned with ardor and zeal for the spread of the faith” (Decr. Apostolicorum In missionaribus of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, December 14, 1927).
The writings of Saint Therese of Lisieux are sprinkled with expressions that demonstrate this.
In the letters to the missionaries who had been entrusted to her as spiritual brothers, appears the absolutely “active” role that the saint assigned to prayer.
She emphasized the indispensable nature of prayer, comparing her contemplative support to that of Moses raising his hands in prayer during the battle of Rephidim. This is seen in her letter to Fr. Adolphe Roulland, a missionary in China: “Like Joshua, you fight on the plain. And I am your little Moses and my heart is constantly turned toward Heaven to obtain victory” (Letter 201, November 1, 1896). Here the saint refers to the biblical episode in which the fate of the battle between the Amalekites and the Israelites led by Joshua depended directly on the prayer of Moses (Ex 17:8-13).
Moreover, shortly before her death, she wrote to Fr. Maurice Bellière, a missionary in Malawi: “I promise to stay up there too, your little sister. […] Our roles will remain the same: you with the apostolic weapons, I with prayer and love” (Letter 220, February 24, 1897).

The mission of the Church is as such a “team effort”, which combines the active apostolic work of the missionaries with the contemplative prayer of those who, like Saint Therese, are essential to the effectiveness of the mission, each contributing in a unique but equally important way to the efficiency of missionary action.

It is in this team spirit that we, the SMAs, are supported in our missionary enterprise in a particular way by the prayer of the Carthusian order.

Brother Anselme Marie, then prior of the Carthusian order, wrote on this regard on March 8, 1889:
“Brother Anselme Marie, prior of the Carthusian monastery and general minister of the entire Carthusian order, to the very reverend Fr. A. Planque, director, as well as to all the students of the Society of African Missions, and to the sisters of the same congregation.
Greetings in the Lord,
Wishing to follow up, by a special favour, on the singular affection and pious devotion of your Society towards our Order, by which you desire to be associated with our prayers and our merits, whatever they may be, and desiring in our turn to participate in your prayers and your activities among the nations, we willingly grant you, by these present letters, a permanent and full participation in all the masses, prayers, vigils, fasts, almsgiving and other good works and practices which, with the help of God, are lived in our Order.
Furthermore, when we have been informed of the death of a ‘confere’ of yours, we will offer the usual suffrages for each of them. “

These elements recall that the mission, even if it takes different forms, is above all a collective work of the Church, where every contribution, whether contemplative or active, participates in the accomplishment of the divine plan.

Brice Ulrich AFFERI