"IRREPRESSIBLE DESIRE"

Those who are drawn by God's voice and determined to follow Jesus soon discover within themselves an irrepressible desire to bring the Good News to their brothers and sisters through proclamation and the service of charity. All Christians are called to be missionaries of the Gospel!

TRANSFORMED BY JOY

As disciples , we do not receive the gift of God's love for our personal consolation, nor are we called to promote ourselves, or a business concern. We are simply men and women touched and transformed by the joy of God's love, who cannot keep this experience just to ourselves.

NO ROOM FOR FEAR

There is no room for fear! God Himself comes to cleanse our "unclean lips" and equip us for the mission... By virtue of baptism, every Christian is a "Christopher", a bearer of Christ, to his brothers and sisters.

"SHARE ACTIVELY"

To be a missionary disciple means to share actively in the mission of Christ... This is ... our mission to be anointed by the Spirit, and to go out to our brothers and sisters in order to proclaim the word and be for them a means of salvation.

KEEP PRAYING

There can be no promotion of vocations or Christian mission apart from constant contemplative prayer. The Christian life needs to be nourished by attentive listening to God's word and, above all, by the cultivation of a personal relationship with the Lord in Eucharistic adoration, the privileged "place" for our encounter with God. I wish heartily to encourage this kind of profound friendship with the Lord, above all for the sake of imploring from on high new vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life.

DON'T YIELD

I ask parish communities, associations and the many prayer groups present in the Church not to yield to discouragement but to continue praying that the Lord will send workers to His harvest. May He give us priests enamored of the Gospel, close to all their brothers and sisters, living signs of God's merciful love.

WE CAN DO IT

... Today ... we can regain fervor in preaching the Gospel and we can encourage young people in particular to take up the path of Christian discipleship... Our young people desire to discover the perennial attraction of Jesus, to be challenged by His words and actions, and to cherish the ideal that He holds out of a life that is fully human, happy to spend itself in love.

IMITATE MARY

Mary Most Holy ... had the courage to embrace this ideal, placing her youth and enthusiasm in God's hands. Through her intercession, may we be granted that same openness of heart, that same readiness to respond ... and that same joy in setting out ... to proclaim Him to the whole world.

(Source: Message for 54th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, issued 11/27/2016)