Mt 10, 16-20 Like sheep in the midst of wolves

(Mt 10, 16-20) Like sheep in the midst of wolves

[16] "Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. [17] But beware of people, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, [18] and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. [19] When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. [20] For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

(CCC 852) Missionary paths. The Holy Spirit is the protagonist, "the principal agent of the whole of the Church's mission" (John Paul II, RMiss 21). It is he who leads the Church on her missionary paths. "This mission continues and, in the course of history, unfolds the mission of Christ, who was sent to evangelize the poor; so the Church, urged on by the Spirit of Christ, must walk the road Christ himself walked, a way of poverty and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice even to death, a death from which he emerged victorious by his resurrection" (AG 5). So it is that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians" (Tertullian, Apol. 50, 13: PL 1, 603).