“We are on a mission from God,” declare the Blues Brothers. It’s a line played for laughs – but it lands because it hints at something serious. A life with purpose. A task that isn’t self-invented.

That same idea runs like a thread through Christian tradition. Pope Francis put it bluntly: “I am a mission on this earth and that is the reason why I am here in this world.” Not just having a mission, but being one. And long before him, St John Henry Newman wrote with characteristic precision: “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission… He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.”