3 December 2022
Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, Priest
Who is the Jesus who invites us to entrust our prayers and needs to Him? Is He apathetic or cruel, like so many of the pagan gods? Is He weak and limited in His ability to respond favorably to our prayers? Is He like our popular conception of Santa Claus, bringing gifts for the good and coal for the naughty?
Hardly. Jesus once said that God, “…makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust,” (Matthew 5:45). He is the kind of God that has a heart for His fallen creatures, such that He sends His Son to become one of us, that through Him we all might become sons and daughters of God. Our God, in Jesus, has a human heart, and if at the sight of the crowds in our Gospel today can move His Heart with pity, why would that same Heart remain unmoved at the sight of His people today, or even a single one of us?
Thus He sends His disciples out, empowering them to continue the merciful and mighty works that He Himself did. Through His Church and His Holy Spirit working in the world through her, His disciples continue to be a sign of His compassion for humanity, and there are few greater signs than St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary who brought knowledge of God’s love for the world to parts of the world who had not only never heard of it, but had never seen it: St. Francis offered both. Thousands upon thousands were adopted as children of God by his hand in baptism; there was nothing he would not suffer for the sake of souls, eventually dying alone on a small island between China and Japan, waiting for a ship that would carry him to the former, that Jesus may look with compassion on the ancient and isolated people there. Though like Moses he would not live to see his heart’s desire fulfilled in the way he hoped, his zeal elsewhere and the prayer that died on his lips was yet heard by God and fulfilled by later missionaries. To this day, in spite of centuries of persecution and difficulty, the Body of Christ continues to live and suffer in China, and everywhere else St. Francis Xavier left his footprints.