Opening Message & Prayer

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Mission,

GRATITUDE

Let us take a moment to look back over the SEDOS Year with gratitude in our hearts. Each event we experienced together in 2025 has shaped our common horizon and strengthened our capacity to be missionary disciples witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways that are attentive to history, prophetic in critique, and humble in service.

In March, we did not organize a separate Spring Seminar but collaborated with the SVD fathers in promoting their excellent conference which was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University centred on the theme Missio Dei in Today’s World: Healing Wounds, Challenged by Postmodernity, Learning from Cultures, Inspired by Religions. Theologically the conference reinforced a shift from an overly programmatic mission to a Missio Dei posture that foregrounds healing, listening, and learning. Keynote reflections framed mission as participation in God’s reconciling work—an invitation to further deepen the move toward relational, contextual witness in a world shaped by pluralism and uncertainty.

Residential Seminar

In June the Residential Seminar on Synodality, Charism, Prophecy and Witness (June) June’s residential seminar gave us space for deeper reflection and formation. Grounded in questions of synodality, the seminar explored how missionary institutes live their founding charisms in a synodal Church: how communal decision-making, shared responsibility, and the prophetic memory of a charism can renew forms of leadership, discernment, formation and mission. It was a time for contemplative listening and rigorous exchange, helping us to discern the path we need to take to witness with integrity amid complexity.

We deepened our grasp of how charism and synodality cohere: charisms are gifts for the mission God entrusts to the Church; synodality is the practice that discerns how those gifts are received and exercised in community. This clarity helps us form missionaries whose identity is both rooted and outward-looking.

For our Pastoral praxis we are challenged to move from ideas to practices: accompaniment that listens before advising; formation that is contextual and reciprocal; projects that share power and resources rather than simply transferring them.

We were reminded that witness requires prophetic courage: to name injustice, to stand with the excluded, and to propose alternative social imaginaries shaped by Gospel justice and care for creation.

The Autumn Webinar: From Ad Gentes to Inter Gentes (October) traced the arc from the missionary vision of Ad Gentes to a living practice of inter-gentes mission today. Speakers and participants reflected on how mission increasingly entails encounter, reciprocal relationships, collaborative initiatives across cultures and continents, new models of solidarity that resist paternalism and foster co-responsibility. Mission inter-gentes is rooted in a deep spirituality, it embodies mutuality, is rooted in mysticism and must engage synodally for a reciprocal expression of mission among all collaborators… Pope Francis was hailed as the most important missiologist in recent times. We also had a brief encounter with Pope Leo when we attended the General audience on June 11th and had a photo with him... another special moment for those in attendance for which we are grateful.

We have much to be grateful for as a SEDOS Organisation and we give thanks for the fruitfulness of these sessions and encounters. No doubt seeds have been planted; something is growing somewhere as a result of these different initiatives… it is not ours to know how or to control how but to trust it will grow to maturity in God’s time.

On a personal note, I am extremely grateful to all the members of the SEDOS Executive Committee who have made our collaboration both enjoyable and effective. Each has given their best to continue to guide the various activities of SEDOS to help us all deepen our understanding of the call to mission in our time. Gratitude also to the Staff, to Fr. John Paul Herman, Srs. Celine Kokkat and Christy and to Ms Philippa Woodridge who we rarely see but who continues to work quietly in the background. And gratitude to all members whose participation ensures SEDOS events are always joy filled moments of encounter.

Let us take a moment to remember the year and to give thanks for what has been.

And so, to sum up this gratitude to the Lord, let us take a moment to reflect on this short passage from scripture…

1 Thessalonians 5:18 — “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Hymn: Tu Modo Cristobal Fones…

HOPE

Jubilee Year where we are all invited to be Pilgrims of Hope… Last month, October, was an intense month for missionaries as so many of the Jubilees came together in October… the Jubilee of World Missions, the Jubilee of Migrants, the Jubilee for Consecrated Life, the Jubilee for Synodal Teams, for the world of Education…. This call to Hope still echoes within us… how do we as missionaries witness to the hope that does not disappoint …

I was fortunate to be in a village in the peripheries of Milan Archdiocese for their Missionary Prayer Vigil a couple of weeks ago… where the testimony was given by Fr. Gigi Macalli, SMA Fr Gigi shared his testimony with us during our residential seminar last year 2024. As always, his testimony was extremely touching and challenging. What touched me deeply was experience of going back to Niger from where he had been kidnapped in September 2018. He went there in September 2024. He was not able to go to the parish where he worked… it is simply too dangerous now. But he went to Niamey and his people came to celebrate with him. He spoke of the great joy they shared but also the great hope his liberation offered them. They shared with him that his liberation from captivity shows them that they can continue to hope, that God will also answer their prayer, that they too can be liberated from their captivity, from their experience of persecution. This was a powerful witness and again it challenges me, it challenges us to live our lives as missionaries in a way that witnesses to hope….

Let us take moment to pray for all missionaries that we may be true witnesses to hope, keeping hope alive for many whose situations seem hopeless…

Scripture text… “And hope does not disappoint us for the love of God has been poured out into our hearts.” (Rom. 5:5)

Silence:

Hymn: Fiamma Viva

PEACE

Although in choosing November 11th as the date for our Assembly, we did so out of convenience, I believe it is no coincidence that we convene today, November 11th, a date etched in global memory as a threshold of peace. On this day in 1918, after four years of the first World War, the guns of war fell silent, and the world dared to imagine reconciliation. Peace is another key word for our gathering. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month…

November 11 as summons to Peace-making

Meeting on November 11 adds a crucial symbolic dimension to our deliberations. The day’s memory of ceasefire and fragile hope summons us to be architects of peace in every place we serve—working for reconciliation between peoples, restoring dignity to those harmed by violence and structural injustice, and cultivating interior dispositions of humility and courage that enable truthful, compassionate dialogue.

Pope Francis spoke of a third world war being fought piece meal… Today the third world war is taking place in a globalized world where conflicts involve only certain areas of the planet directly, but in fact involve them all. …. Nor can we forget that war particularly affects those who are most fragile – children, the elderly, the disabled – and leaves an indelible mark on families.

Peace-making for missionaries means attending both to systems that must change and to the interior conversion that sustains long-term reconciliation.

Today, as missionaries, we are called not only to remember but to embody that hope — to be artisans of peace in fractured landscapes, bridge-builders across cultures, and witnesses to the Gospel’s reconciling power.

Let us take a moment to reflect in silence, to call to mind all those who are suffering from these various wars, conflicts and tensions; to call to mind those who work for transformation of the tensions to peaceful co-existence … for all our missionaries working in these areas…

Scripture Text: Jeremiah: 29 11

“I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.”

HYMN: Keith Duke My Peace:

A Pastoral Invitation

May this Assembly be a sacramental space where memory and hope meet

• where we honour what we have learned together this year through our encounters and our sharing;

• where we notice and name the wounds that persist among and around us and discern how we might address some of these concerns in our reflections in the years ahead.

Let us commit to continuing our journey together, seeking to form communities that are both faithful to their charisms and open to the mutual transformations required by inter-gentes solidarity. May our plans flow from prayer, be informed by the experiences we have shared, and be strengthened by the cross-bearing love of Christ that sends us. May this Assembly be a space of listening, discernment, and renewal. May our reflections echo the Spirit’s invitation to walk humbly, love boldly, and labour tirelessly for the peace that Christ alone can give. Amen.