At Launch of Mission Month in Malawi, Catholic Bishop Urges Praying the Holy Rosary, Acts of Generosity

This year, WMS is to be celebrated on October 20 under a theme rooted in the Gospel of Matthew 22:9, “Go and invite everyone to the banquet”. The theme reflects the inclusive and urgent call to bring the love and compassion of God to everyone.

In his Message for 2024 WMS, Pope Francis celebrates missionaries and their service, reflecting on the two verbs on the theme, “to go out” and “to invite”. 

Mission, the Holy Father says, “is a tireless going out to all men and women, in order to invite them to encounter God and enter into communion with him. Tireless! God, great in love and rich in mercy, constantly sets out to encounter all men and women, and to call them to the happiness of his kingdom, even in the face of their indifference or refusal.”

“Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd and messenger of the Father, went out in search of the lost sheep of the people of Israel and desired to go even further, in order to reach even the most distant sheep,” he adds. 

Pope Francis goes on “to thank all those missionaries who, in response to Christ’s call, have left everything behind to go far from their homeland and bring the Good News to places where people have not yet received it, or received it only recently.”

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“Dear friends, your generous dedication is a tangible expression of your commitment to the mission ad gentes that Jesus entrusted to his disciples: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19). We continue to pray and we thank God for the new and numerous missionary vocations for the task of evangelization to the ends of the earth,” he adds.

On the call “to invite everyone to the banquet”, Pope Francis urges “missionary disciples” to reach out to others “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.”

“May all of us, the baptized, be ready to set out anew, each according to our state in life, to inaugurate a new missionary movement, as at the dawn of Christianity!” Pope Francis implores in his 2024 WMS message he issued on January 25, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.

In the October 2 ECM Facebook post, the National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) in Malawi, Fr. Peter Ephraim Madeya, is quoted as calling upon parishioners in the Southern African nation to contribute financially towards the ministry of the Church.

“As the Church in Malawi we have also benefited a lot though such collections from the mission month. All the dioceses, institutions of the Church; even all the convents and fathers’ houses are the fruits of the mission month and the World Mission Sunday,” the member of the Clergy of Dedza Diocese whose appointment as Malawi’s PMS National Director by the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization was confirmed in January has been quoted as saying.