The Augustinian Recollect Missionary Year 2026 opens at a singular moment in the life of the Church. We have just concluded the Jubilee, a time of grace that has reminded us that the Church is renewed only when she returns to the living source of the Gospel.
And we do so under the guidance of Pope Leo XIV, the first Augustinian Pope, whose spiritual and missionary sensitivity resonates deeply with our charism. He, together with the College of Cardinals, wished the recent extraordinary consistory to focus on two great pillars: Evangelii Gaudium, which remains the programmatic text for mission in today’s world, and the synodal path the entire Church is undertaking.
With the Jubilee concluded, Pope Leo has invited us to turn our gaze back to the Second Vatican Council, a living source of the theological, pastoral and missionary renewal of the post conciliar Church, and the driving force behind the Church’s awareness of herself as the People of God, journeying together under the guidance of the Spirit, in the midst of the world as a sign and instrument of the saving presence of the Risen Lord. Returning to that source is essential, for its riches have not yet borne in us all the fruits of renewal and revitalisation the Church needs today.
In our own Augustinian Recollect context, this Missionary Year also stands in continuity with the centenary commemoration of our missions in China and Labrea, which have allowed us to rediscover the strength of our missionary charism embodied in diverse ecclesial realities, both in the past and in recent times, and which serve as a prelude to this missionary year of our Order.
What does this Missionary Year mean?
In such a fertile ecclesial and Augustinian Recollect context, the Missionary Year becomes an opportunity to allow ourselves to be propelled in the present moment, returning to the initial flame of our Charism—the way in which Augustinian Recollects live and enrich the ecclesial reality to which we belong—so that the Christian mission, lived from our charism, may be the soul of our personal, community, and apostolic missionary life.
In the words of the Prior General, who convoked this year as proposed by the General Chapter, “This year is not merely a period, with a thematic inspiration, but a call to missionary conversion—to rekindle the fire of love that drives us to go forth, to move beyond our geographical, cultural, and spiritual frontiers.” (Prot. CG 134/2025)
It is therefore not a thematic year nor a calendar full of activities, but a profound call to missionary conversion: to allow Christ to rekindle in us the fire of our first love and to let the Holy Spirit lead us along paths of interior, communal and apostolic renewal.
It is thus a path of personal and communal holiness, which also renews the holy evangelising mission of the Church exercised by the Order in its various ministries. As the Prior General emphasised:
Holiness and mission are not parallel paths, but one and the same road that leads to the heart of God. Holiness without mission risks becoming self-enclosed; mission without holiness is a body without a soul. The saint is the missionary who loves to the utmost, and the missionary is the saint who cannot keep silent about the love that dwells within (…) Holiness is not an escape from the world, but the highest form of presence: the soul in mission is the Church that goes forth. (Prot. CG 134/2025)
The synodal path of missionary revival is a path of personal sanctification in community and of communal sanctification. It becomes an instrument of sanctification for its members and for the world it serves through the Gospel.
We might turn our gaze to the mystery of the “communion of saints” as the model of the Evangelising Church that Jesus deeply desires. Before his Passion, Christ asks the Father, as the fruit of his mission, for the deep and real, mystical and incarnate communion of all believers in Christ, who constitute the Church as the “communion of saints”. It is the communion of those sanctified in Truth and Love by the Holy Spirit through their faith in Christ and thus kept from the Evil One and from the World. The Church, constituted as “communion of saints” in the image of the Most Holy Trinity, is sent into the world so that the world may believe in Christ through the witness of her Holiness and her Catholic Unity.
Communion, holiness and mission form an inseparable triad in the mind and desire of the Lord. There is no true communion of souls and hearts without Holiness, nor any true holiness that does not arise from communion and produce communion. The fruit of mission is to open and expand that communion, drawing all people into the holy communion of the Church, and the success of this mission for the salvation of the world depends on the degree to which we are and live in the midst of the world as “communion of saints”, reflecting the intimate life of God in the mystery of his Most Holy Trinity.
How can we live this Missionary Year?
To live this Missionary Year according to the proposed itinerary means embracing a spiritual and communal path that does not arise from organisational need or passing trends, but from a deeply evangelical conviction: mission remains alive only when it is discerned, shared and nourished by the Spirit. This process is in full communion with the synodal path of the Church and with the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality, which invites us to be a more participatory, co responsible and missionary Church. To live this year, therefore, is to attune ourselves to what the Spirit is saying to the whole Church today.
The synodal missionary itinerary for this year offers us a concrete way of living it. Taken as a whole, it invites us to rediscover who we are, how we walk, and where the Lord is sending us. It calls us to return to the heart of our charism, recognising that mission is born from the encounter with Christ and is verified when we hand on what we have received. It urges us to care for communion and listening, because mission is credible only when it springs from fraternal communities that walk together and exercise authority as service. It encourages us to discern our presences and priorities, reminding us that mission does not consist in maintaining structures but in responding to Christ’s sending in dialogue with reality and with the People of God. Finally, it invites us to care for personal, community and institutional life, because mission requires maturity, sobriety, interior freedom and a conversion that touches persons and structures.
Thus, the celebratory dynamic of this year centres on the synodal process of returning to the charism, walking in fraternity, discerning the mission and caring for life, so that all we are and do may make Christ transparent and proclaim him wherever life places us. The way to approach these aspects is through three fundamental attitudes repeatedly emphasised in the synodal itinerary documents: listening, discerning and converting. As the Prior General reminded us:
We are not seeking to produce theoretical documents or to multiply activities. We want to live a real path of listening, discernment, and missionary conversion, beginning with the concrete life of our communities, apostolic presences, and works. Mission is not determined solely by plans and structures; it is determined in the heart and verified in service. (Prot. CG 20/2026)
Listening means opening the heart to the Word, to reality, to the community, to the poor, and to the inner voice where the Spirit speaks with gentleness and firmness. Listening means living from Faith and fidelity—being faithful to the style of the One who sends us as his messengers, faithful to his message and faithful to the concrete reality of the people and cultures to whom we are sent, so that the Gospel message may be meaningful and arrive as Good News in the concrete reality of their lives.
In this way we live the incarnational dynamic of mission, which invites us to enter the concrete reality of people, to listen to and understand their languages, their wounds, their searches, their cultures, knowing that the Gospel can only be proclaimed from within. As the Prior General reminds us: That human cry is also a divine sending forth. Mission is born from the world’s pain and from God’s compassion. To be missionaries today means to remain at the peripheries—not only geographical but existential: where people lose meaning, where faith grows dim, where hope seems impossible. (Prot. CG 134/2025)
Discerning means asking what God wants of us today, which paths we must walk, which presences we must sustain, which structures we must transform, and which invitations of the Spirit we are called to embrace with courage. Discerning means living from hope, with our gaze fixed on the goal of evangelisation and on the grace of the Holy Spirit who sustains us and enables us to discern and judge with confidence—without paralysis or fear—the steps and means to live the evangelical dynamic of mission more fruitfully, with deeper meaning, and with a renewed and explicit proclamation of Christ that touches hearts and transforms consciences.
Converting means allowing the Gospel to touch our resistances, heal our routines, purify our fears and restore to us the freedom of the children of God to love, serve and proclaim. Converting means living from Charity, escaping the trap of self absorption, placing our centre and weight in the Love of God received and given to others in mission. It means living the paschal dynamic of mission, where the Spirit renews the Church by freeing her from all that obscures her identity, so that the fruit of mission may be the radical transformation of those evangelised in a Paschal passage from spiritual death to Life in Grace.
From Blindness to Light: The Path of Faith in the Gospel of the Man Born Blind