3 December 2018
Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, Priest
The first reading at Catholic mass today is fitting for the Memorial of St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary. The reading comes from the Old Testament, from the second chapter of Isaiah, long before the coming of Christ. It is a prophecy that “in days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it.” This prophecy was fulfilled hundreds of years later by Jesus Christ, who, by dying upon “the mountain of the Lord’s house,” namely Jerusalem, elevated it in dignity above all the hills of all the world. Thanks to the labors of countless missionaries, the gospel of Jesus Christ has spread not only among Jews, but also among the gentiles, so that “all nations shall stream toward” Jerusalem. What St. Francis Xavier did, then, as a missionary, was to point people towards Jerusalem, that is, towards the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In more concrete terms, St. Francis Xavier modeled Christian virtue while teaching large audiences the essential elements of the Christian life, such as the ten commandments, the Credo, the Pater noster, and other simple prayers. It is not fitting for any practitioner of Ignatian Spirituality to spurn these essentials. On the contrary, the Spiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius Loyola include methods for getting an ever deeper grasp of Christian fundamentals. The Three Methods of Prayer (SpEx 238-260) are there for no other purpose. The first method of prayer is on the ten commandments, the seven capital sins, the three powers of the soul, and the five senses. The second method consists in contemplating the meaning of each word of a simple prayer, like the Pater Nosteror the Credoor the Ave Maria. The third method is a measured rhythmical recitation of the same prayers. If we would honor great missionaries like St. Francis Xavier, we must never take the fundamentals of our faith for granted.