St. Boniface Church

The Episcopal Conference of Aparecida introduces us to mission with these words: "Here is the fundamental challenge we face: to show the Church's capacity to promote and form disciples and missionaries who respond to the vocation received and who communicate everywhere, overflowing with gratitude and joy, the gift of the encounter with Jesus Christ. "We must start with this fundamental criterion: No one gives what he does not have! We have no other treasure than this. We have no other happiness or other priority than to be instruments of the Spirit of God, in the Church, so that Jesus Christ may be found, followed, loved, adored, announced and communicated to all, despite all difficulties and resistance. 

Our community is and must be a “community of love”, it is called to reflect the glory of God's love, which is communion, and thus attract people and peoples to Christ. "May they also live united to us, so that the world may believe" (Jn 17:21). The Church grows not by proselytism but "by 'attraction': as Christ 'attracts everything to himself' with the force of his love" 72. The Church "attracts" when she lives in communion, because the disciples of Jesus will be recognized if they love one another as He loved us (cf. Rm 12, 4-13; Jn 13, 34). (hug and hug)The Holy Father Benedict XVI says in Aparecida: “One does not begin to be a Christian through an ethical decision or a great idea, but rather through an encounter with an event, with a Person, who gives a new horizon to life and with it, a decisive orientation.