What does it mean to be a missionary? What does it mean to follow Jesus where we do not know? Can we really become witnesses of the Gospel?  It was with these challenging and profound questions that the second day of missionary preparation for summer 2025 began, led by the sisters involved in the Thouret Foundation, with a view to the missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The group is mixed, some are young university students, others are professionals on their umpteenth experience, and others are adults approaching international service for the first time. There is great excitement in everyone, anticipation and a desire to get involved. Above all, there is a desire to hear a new, different word, a message for one’s own life, at whatever point it may be, a word that moves us mysteriously away from our habits, from the certainties and securities of our daily lives.

Sister Melania reads from Luke’s gospel and immediately entrusts us with a life-changing truth: ‘The mission is mine but it does not belong to me. We do not send ourselves. I choose to go, but the mission belongs to Another. Suddenly it is liberating to perceive ourselves as instruments, vehicles, tools, with the unique yet enormous responsibility of listening to the One who sends us to bring peace. Will we be able to listen? Will we be able to recognise ourselves as useless servants but work as best as we can to answer the call? Will we be able to be light, as Jesus himself asks us, without worrying about bag, sack, sandals? ‘Look at the birds of the air’ Matthew tells us, look at the lilies of the field.… We say goodbye over a pizza, different destinies meeting around a promise. That we know ourselves to be a land that allows itself to be moulded, entrusting its shape to the skillful hands of Another, who knows what to do, even if his ways, times and directions are and always will be a mystery to us. What remains in the group is trepidation and perhaps even fear, the endless questions of what we will find where we are going, what we will do, even what we will eat and what we must bring, how, how much. However, at the end of this day, we also remain in the joy of meeting, with the missionaries, the sisters, our distant friends, discovering that we are all the more curious and full of hope for all the encounters in a future and time of peace. Perhaps it is in this astonishment around the Word that lies the deepest secret we are about to explore, the power of the gift we receive. Perhaps all we have to do is prepare our hearts to be amazed, by all we see, by the people we meet, by what we are learning in the belief that we are teaching, by what we are receiving in the belief that we are giving. And then there is joy, that of Barnabas who arrives in Antioch and ‘saw the grace of God and rejoiced’ because so many had converted to the Lord. Some will come and some will go before us. In a remote place, where we imagine we find pain and misery and need, we surprisingly are called to rejoice, because we recognise the work of God. This is perhaps the greatest challenge that we, as a group we talk about, we share our reactions, we marvel together. How difficult it is to accept that what we will do will perhaps bear fruit later, or perhaps never, and in any case it is likely that we will not even know. We go where God will reach, we go where He sends us to precede Him. Is it not also a matter of the freedom of going out of ourselves to make room for something greater than ourselves, which means trusting?

Anna Maria Di Brina