An exhibition created by the editorial staff of “Mondo e Missione” re-proposes the so current and spiritually rich figure of the patroness of the missions 150 years after her birth
“I would like to be a missionary, not just for a few years, I would like to have been since the creation of the world, and to be so until the end of time”. These are the words of Saint Teresa of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who never went on a mission, but who was proclaimed Universal Patroness of the missions together with the Jesuit Francis Xavier. How come?
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her birth, let us try to remember this very young saint who, who died at the age of 24, was recognized as a doctor of the Church and included by UNESCO among the personalities who “have contributed in a universal way to the good of humanity”. And this is also thanks to her missionary vision.
We do this through an exhibition that presents the figure, often a little trivialized or reduced to a devotional icon, of an extremely intelligent and sensitive young woman who had great intuitions from a very young age and explored the most heights of thought and the widest horizons of the world. This, not only because she was the “spiritual sister” of two missionaries – one in China, the other in Africa – who accompanied her with her prayers and her letters. But for that vibrant heart of hers, that desire for mercy, charity and love to be shared with all humanity as a testimony of the greatest love of Jesus.
“Contemplation and mission among non-Christians indicate the two extreme points of the Church’s action – wrote the historic director of World and Mission, Father Piero Gheddo, a PIME missionary -: these are the two tensions that every baptized person must nourish in his life of faith. Each does not exist without the other, on the contrary it receives motivation and strength from it. All of us baptized are called to nurture, in our little lives, these great horizons and desires which broaden our hearts and minds to all humanity”.
Even today, the thought and message of Saint Teresa are very topical for men and women, priests and missionaries, small and far of the 21st century. This is what Pope Francis also underlined in the apostolic letter that he dedicated to her on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her birth (January 2, 1873) and in which he recognizes them, as characteristic traits of his spirituality, “missionary strength and joy of interceding”, recalling also his greatest desire: «I will spend my heaven doing good on earth».
The exhibition, made up of 14 roll up panels, can be rented by contacting the PIME Center in Milan: 02.438201 / [email protected]