In the Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, Spes non confundit, Pope Francis addresses all the faithful, “pilgrims of hope who will travel to Rome in order to experience the Holy Year and to all those others who, though unable to visit the City of the Apostles Peter and Paul, will celebrate it in their local Churches. For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ’door’ (cf. Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as ’our hope’ (1 Tim 1:1).”

In this sense, the missionaries of the Congregation of the Mission and all men and women of good will are called to be “Pilgrims of Hope” who deeply experience the mercy of the Father and go out to meet the poor so that, in this embrace, they too may experience the love, welcome, consolation and encouragement of our God.

We are all called to lead an intense life of prayer. As Pope Francis told us in his catechesis on prayer: “the life of prayer is not an alternative to the work and commitments to which we are called during the day, but rather that which accompanies every action of life.” In other words, Christians aspire to live in continuous dialogue with God, placing themselves in his hands with full trust in his Providence and learning from him to reveal to their brothers and sisters God’s love for the world and, in particular, for the poor.

In this invitation, we contemplate the rebirth of a practice that is as old as it is new for our time. Lately, we have the feeling that time passes at a speed that distorts the very concept of time; we are bombarded daily with many messages and news on different topics; we spend most of our time connected to our cell phones and social networks; we are busy with so many activities and chores and sometimes, or most of the time, we dedicate little time to prayer.

We know that prayer is the fuel of our faith. It is the Christian’s “breath of life” that cannot be interrupted “even when we sleep”. This leads us to live one of St. Vincent’s maxims when he points out that we must be active in contemplation and contemplative in action. Prayer leads us to an encounter with God and with ourselves. It is necessary to climb the mountain every day to meet the Lord and, on this path, to enter into intimacy with Him through silence, solitude, abandonment, listening to the inaudible and the obedience of listening.

From this daily and necessary encounter, we meet, we walk together, we share dreams, we recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters. Pope Francis reminds us that prayer is the place where we recognize ourselves as part of the “one family of God” because prayer “strengthens the bonds of fraternity that unite us to the same Father”. It is prayer that gives meaning to our common life, because in it we find the bond that unites us in the same purpose of life, which wants to be given to God and to our neighbor. Community prayer leads us to celebrate fraternity and to strengthen our mission, it leads us to the encounter with the other and to celebrate forgiveness, it leads us to the mercy of the Father and to cultivate hope.

To travel this road as pilgrims of hope, rediscovering the strength and power of prayer, the Church proposes to us in the document “Teach us to pray” of the Dicastery for Evangelization an itinerary that leads us to live and foster a life of personal and community prayer.

• Prayer in the parish community leads us, in the first place, to value the Eucharist as the place par excellence of encounter with the Lord, where we are nourished by his living presence. We are also called to celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours for the good of the Church, the People of God and all humanity. In the 24 Hours for the Lord (the Friday and Saturday preceding the Fourth Sunday of Lent), the whole Church unites for a powerful moment of prayer and celebration of God’s mercy. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is also a propitious moment to be in the presence of the Lord in meditative silence, ready to receive from Him every blessing.
• Family prayer invites us to celebrate concrete moments of prayer in the local community, and to make these moments meaningful and fruitful. The family – the local community – is a school of prayer. And we try to pray together in the Liturgy of the Hours, before and after meetings and meals, at the beginning and end of each day.
• The prayer of young people who, even in the whirlwind of images, messages and likes, are attentive to the voice of the Lord who speaks in their hearts. In Him they find a path that gives meaning to their existence… how many young people find themselves in this search and turn to prayer.
• Prayer as a proposal for retreats and retreats for intense moments of prayer. In this way, the annual and monthly retreats strengthen us in the mission and make us respond to our needs, which are identified with the needs of Jesus who “withdrew to pray”.
• Prayer as a component of catechesis, in which we commit ourselves as educators of the faith to guide our brothers and sisters to live prayer as a daily practice of Christian life and to provide strong moments of prayer during the liturgical seasons of the Church.
• Prayer in cloistered monasteries reminds us that in the consecrated life, dedicated to prayer and work, the lamps of faith illuminate the world through the prayers of so many men and women who choose a life of recollection with the Lord. In the apostolic life too, so many consecrated men and women illuminate the world with their witness of life.
• Finally, prayer in the shrines as privileged places of welcome, prayer, praise, gratitude and pilgrimage to meet God, who is merciful because he is Father. This is why Jesus teaches us to call God “Abba”, Dad, Father. The Our Father is the condensation of our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters. The invitation to practice our faith as testimony. The desire to weave human and fraternal relationships. The insistence to walk from “hope to hope”.

It was in an atmosphere of deep prayer, during the celebration of the Eucharist on January 25, 1617, feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in Folleville (France), that St. Vincent de Paul delivered what for him was his first missionary experience, his first Mission sermon! “It was Mass time. People were pouring into the church. Vincent called the children to the altar, while the adults crowded into the empty spaces… After the reading of the Gospel, Vincent went up to the pulpit. All eyes were fixed on this serious priest who, contrary to the customs of the time, wore his hair short. There was a great silence. It seemed as if everyone, even the children, were holding their breath. Vincent looked at everyone with a gaze full of tenderness and began to speak… And he spoke of St. Paul, of his conversion, and then he dwelt on the conversion of the Christian, which is concretized in the sacrament of mercy, of reconciliation… He spoke of the results of a good confession: peace, joy, tranquility, well-being…” (GOCH, Aloisio. O meu herói Vicente de Paulo. Gráfica Vicentina, Curitiba, 2000). In this experience of faith, Vincent felt that this was his mission, that this was God’s work for him: to bring the Gospel to the poor peasants. The Vincentian charism was born, but the Congregation of the Mission was founded eight years later, on April 17, 1625, which, coinciding with the Jubilee of the Church, celebrates the 400th anniversary of its foundation in 2025.

As children of the Church, we members of the Congregation of the Mission are pilgrims of hope among the poor and excluded, in the struggle for the dignity of life and the rights of all. We are a sign of fraternity, sensitive to the vulnerable. We point the way to Christ in our encounters with suffering brothers and sisters. We bring the light of hope where hopelessness begins to prevail.

In the circular letter of convocation for the Jubilee celebration, dated April 4, 2023, the Superior General, Fr. Tomaž Mavrič, CM prays God “to lead us in these first two years of preparation to a strong revitalization of our spiritual and apostolic identity that will lead to a celebration worthy of the IV Centenary of this “little Society”.”And he wishes that “each day be, for each one of us, a time of conversion, of renewal, of returning with enthusiasm to Jesus Christ, our “First Love”, so that, following the inspirations of St. Vincent de Paul, we may obtain the grace to become “Mystics of Charity” in the 21st century and beyond”.

To renew ourselves on this path, together with Mary, the Apostles and St. Vincent de Paul, let us be men of prayer (personal and communitarian), of intimacy with God, of interior silence, of adoration and contemplation, to live with joy and prophetic witness the Jubilee Year 2025: Pilgrims of Hope.

Fr. Weliton Martins Costa, CM
Source: Informativo São Vicente, Vol. LXI, nº 329, 2024,
Brazilian Province of the Congregation of the Mission.