This weekend is Mission Sunday and the annual collection for the work of missions is taken up at all masses.  The theme of the years is

For World Mission Day in the Jubilee Year 2025, the central message of which is hope, I have chosen the motto: “Missionaries of Hope Among all Peoples”. It reminds individual Christians and the entire Church, the community of the baptized, of our fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope. I trust that it will be for everyone a time of grace with the faithful God who has given us new birth in the risen Christ “to a living hope”. Here, I would like to mention some relevant aspects of our Christian missionary identity, so that we can let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of God and burn with holy zeal for a new evangelizing season in the Church, which is sent to revive hope in a world over which dark shadows loom

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between people.
He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in worry, my worry may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”

(John Henry Newman)