3rd December - St Francis Xavier SJ

Readings: Is 30:19-21, 23-6; Ps 147:1-6; Mt 9:35-10:1, 10:5-8.

During the season of Advent the Church’s liturgy recollects the ‘first advent’ of the chosen people - their long waiting for the coming of the messiah - as we reflect on our own ‘second advent’, in which we await the return of Jesus to consummate His Kingdom, when every tear will be wiped away and the wounds of sin and division healed (Rev 21:4).

The Church’s waiting, however, is not one of ‘killing time’: the desire for the coming of the Kingdom does not distract us from our mission in the world, but rather commits us to it more fully (cf CCC §2818), as we are sent out by Christ to build up the Kingdom of God, extending His own ministry, described in today’s gospel as teaching, proclaiming and healing (Mt 9:35). To those who expected the Kingdom of God to appear immediately, Jesus explained that His followers are to have an active role in the consummation of the Kingdom (cf Lk 19:11-27), serving, as St Paul says, as “fellow workers for the Kingdom of God” (Col 4:11). Indeed, the message Christ commissions his followers to bring to the world cuts to the very heart of the Gospel of hope, “the Kingdom of God is at hand”: God has made his entry into human history, and is to overcome fear, despair and evil with patient love.

The world into which we are sent – like the world into which the disciples of today’s gospel ventured – is often hostile and even terrifying, as competing voices and ideologies distract and confuse. The voice of Christ does not yet boom out to silence the noise of evil, and it is often difficult to discern which path to take – whether to “turn to the right or to the left” (Is 30:21) - in order to best serve God’s kingdom. Yet it is precisely into this world – the dappled reality in which we find both good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly – that we are sent, with Christ’s assurance that he will be with us “until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20), speaking to us in the “still small voice” (1 Kgs 19:12).

Indeed, as today’s gospel reminds us, nobody is sent out as an apostle without first being called to Jesus as a disciple. By drawing close to Jesus and learning from Him who is meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29), we are reconciled to God and sent out to bring that message of reconciliation to others. During the season of Advent, then, we renew our closeness to Christ the healer, listen more carefully to His voice speaking to us in the stillness of our heart and through the ministry of the Church, and set out once more on our mission to the world.

St Francis Xavier, whose memorial is kept today, is remembered as a fearless missionary to Asia and, as a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, a pioneer of a new form of apostolic and evangelistic Religious life. Yet in all his endeavours (both the successful and the unsuccessful) it was by drawing close to Christ that St Francis found the strength and grace necessary to sustain his missionary zeal. As he reflected in a letter to St Ignatius Loyola, the successful missionary must necessarily “listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God's will and his choice.”