“Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” (1 Cor 9:16)

When the Philippines celebrated its fourth centennial of Christianity in 1965, one of the highlights of the celebration was the founding of a missionary society by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference (then known as the Catholic Welfare Organization). And so they went on and  established  the Foreign Mission Society of the Philippines.

This was the collective “living memorial” of the deep gratitude of the Catholic Church in the Philippines for the gift of Faith received and  brought to our shores through the Mission work of various missionary congregations and religious orders for the past 400 years. It marked the beginning of fully assuming the commitment to share also  the gift of Faith to others specially here in Asia.

In order to mark this momentous event and sustain the spirit of this missionary undertaking, a Sunday devoted to celebrating our collective missionary vocation as a Church, the Bishops’ Conference established the Fil-Mission Sunday on the last Sunday of July.

Today, therefore, we continue to give thanks. We also renew our commitment to support the formation and animation of all our faithful in all their various institutions and associations, in order to imbibe the missionary spirit. We thank the Mission Society of the Philippines, now a Pontifical Missionary Society, for their great work they do in four continents and 12 countries.

To be a Catholic, is to be a Catholic Missionary, a Catholic Filipino Missionary. With St. Paul we, once again, affirm, “ Woe to me, if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).