Each October, which is World Mission Month, the Church invites us to reflect upon our missionary vocation. This year’s theme, One in Christ, United in Mission, chosen by Pope Leo XIV, invites us to rediscover the profound unity we share in Christ; through baptism and how our baptismal missionary identity overflows into the mission of the Church to bring all creatures into communion with God and us.  The highlight of World Mission Month is the annual celebration of World Mission Sunday, which this year will take place on Oct. 18.  More than a collection, World Mission Sunday is a visible sign of the unity of the Church.  It is the best way by which we can share in the universal mission of the Church to spread the faith through prayer and sacrifice.  We may not be able to GO to the missions, but we can SEND to the missions both our prayers as well as the material means they need so much.  Let us pray this week for those missionaries who bring Christ’s love to far-off places, often at great personal cost and risk.  Let us ask the Holy Spirit to rekindle a zeal in our own hearts, that we may also be missionaries, wherever we are.  One week before World Mission Sunday: Perhaps that is why the Church celebrates World Mission Sunday each year on the second-to-last Sunday in October.  The Church’s mission is not simply humanitarian work or the spread of ideas.  The mission of the Church is to bring people to a living encounter with Jesus Christ.  It is to proclaim that every human life has dignity because every human person is made in God’s image and likeness, and it is also God’s will that all come to know Christ, his son, and find redemption and new life in his Body and Blood.  In many parts of the world, people live with poverty, violence, persecution, loneliness, or despair.  There is also another kind of poverty: never having heard that they are loved by God, never having encountered the hope of the Gospel, never having experienced the grace of the sacraments as celebrated by the Church.  Through our prayers, sacrifices, and financial support on World Mission Sunday, we help missionaries bring that message to the world.  We help build churches, support schools and hospitals, form seminarians and catechists, and most importantly, help others come to know Jesus Christ.