today we celebrate the Jubilee of the Missionary World and of Migrants. It is a beautiful occasion to rekindle in ourselves the awareness of the missionary vocation, which arises from the desire to bring to all the joy and consolation of the Gospel, especially to those who live a difficult and wounded history. I think in particular of our migrant brothers and sisters, who have had to leave their land, often leaving their loved ones behind, crossing nights of fear and loneliness, experiencing discrimination and violence in their own flesh.

We are here because, at the tomb of the Apostle Peter, each of us must be able to say with joy: the entire Church is missionary, and it is urgent—as Pope Francis affirmed—that it «go forth to proclaim the Gospel to everyone, in every place, on every occasion, without delay, without evasions and without fear» (Exhort. ap. Evangelii gaudium, 23).

The Spirit sends us to continue the work of Christ in the peripheries of the world, sometimes marked by war, injustice, and suffering. Before these dark scenarios, the cry that so many times in history has been raised to God reappears: why, Lord, do you not intervene? Why do you seem absent? This cry of pain is a form of prayer that runs throughout Scripture and, this morning, we have heard it from the prophet Habakkuk: «How long, O Lord, shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? […] Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?» (Hab 1:2-3).

Pope Benedict XVI, who had gathered these questions during his historic visit to Auschwitz, returned to the theme in a catechesis, stating: «God is silent, and this silence tears at the heart of the one praying, who calls out ceaselessly but finds no response. […] God seems so distant, so forgotten, so absent» (Catechesis, September 14, 2011).

The Lord’s response, however, opens us to hope. If the prophet denounces the inexorable force of evil that seems to prevail, the Lord in turn announces to him that all this will have an end, a deadline, because salvation will come and will not delay: «Behold, the one whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith» (Hab 2:4).

There is a life, then, a new possibility of life and salvation that comes from faith, because it not only helps us to resist evil by persevering in the good, but transforms our existence until it becomes an instrument of the salvation that God wants to accomplish even today in the world. And, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, it is a gentle force: faith is not imposed with the means of power or in extraordinary ways; it is enough for it to be like a mustard seed to do unthinkable things (cf. Lk 17:6), because it carries within it the power of God’s love that opens paths of salvation.

It is a salvation that is realized when we involve ourselves in the first person and take charge, with the compassion of the Gospel, of the suffering of our neighbor; it is a salvation that makes its way, silent and apparently ineffective, in everyday gestures and words, which become like the small seed that Jesus speaks to us about; it is a salvation that grows slowly when we become “unprofitable servants,” that is, when we place ourselves at the service of the Gospel and of our brothers and sisters without seeking our own interests, but solely to bring the Lord’s love to the world.

With this confidence, we are called to renew in ourselves the fire of the missionary vocation. As Saint Paul VI stated, «it is up to us to proclaim the Gospel in this extraordinary period of human history, a time truly without precedent, in which, at peaks of progress never before reached, there are associated abysses of perplexity and despair also without precedent» (Message for the World Mission Day, June 25, 1971).

Brothers and sisters, today a new missionary era opens in the history of the Church. Very

If for a long time we have associated mission with “departing,” with going to distant lands that had not known the Gospel or were in situations of poverty, today the borders of mission are no longer geographical, because poverty, suffering, and the desire for a greater hope are what come to us. The history of so many of our migrant brothers and sisters testifies to this, the drama of their flight from violence, the suffering that accompanies them, the fear of not making it, the risk of dangerous crossings along the sea coasts, their cry of pain and despair: brothers and sisters, those boats that await sighting a safe harbor in which to stop and those eyes laden with anguish and hope that seek solid ground on which to land, cannot and must not find the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination!

It is not so much a matter of “departing,” but rather of “staying” to proclaim Christ through welcome, compassion, and solidarity: staying without taking refuge in the comfort of our individualism, staying to look in the face those who arrive from distant and martyred lands, staying to open our arms and hearts to them, welcoming them as brothers and sisters, being for them a presence of consolation and hope.

There are many missionaries, but also believers and people of good will, who work at the service of migrants, and to promote a new culture of fraternity on the theme of migrations, beyond stereotypes and prejudices. But this precious service challenges each of us, in the smallness of our own possibilities: this is the time—as Pope Francis stated—to constitute ourselves all in a «permanent state of mission» (Evangelii gaudium, 25).

All this demands at least two great missionary commitments: missionary cooperation and the missionary vocation.

First of all, I ask you to promote renewed missionary cooperation among the Churches. In communities of ancient Christian tradition like the Western ones, the presence of so many brothers and sisters from the South of the world must be perceived as an opportunity, for an exchange that renews the face of the Church and arouses a more open, more alive, and more dynamic Christianity. At the same time, every missionary who departs for other lands is called to inhabit the cultures he or she encounters with sacred respect, directing to the good everything good and noble that is found, and bringing them the prophecy of the Gospel.

I would like to recall then the beauty and importance of missionary vocations. I address in particular the European Church: today a new missionary impulse is needed, of laypeople, religious, and presbyters who offer their service in mission lands, of new proposals and vocational experiences capable of arousing this desire, especially in young people.

Dearest ones, I send with affection my blessing to the local clergy of the particular Churches, to the missionaries and women missionaries, and to those who are in vocational discernment. To the migrants, on the other hand, I say: be always welcome! The seas and deserts you have crossed, in Scripture, are “places of salvation,” in which God has made himself present to save his people. I wish you to find this face of God in the missionaries and women missionaries you will meet!

I entrust everyone to the intercession of Mary, the first missionary of her Son, who hurries to the hills of Judea, carrying Jesus in her womb and placing herself at the service of Elizabeth. May she sustain us, so that each of us may become collaborators in the Kingdom of Christ, Kingdom of love, of justice, and of peace.