#missionary

I need a man to stretch me out.

HOMILY for St Francis Xavier

Isa 29:17-24; Ps 26; Matt 9:27-31

Throughout my teenage years, growing up in Malaysia, this sentence from the Gospel of St Mark captivated me: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?” (Mark 8:36). This same sentence of Scripture, I learnt today, was the one that at last caught the attention of St Francis Xavier. He was eighteen when he first met St Ignatius Loyola at the University of Paris, and they stayed lifelong friends. But it was this sentence from St Mark’s Gospel that St Ignatius had used again and again to persuade St Francis Xavier, and turn them into fellow missionaries for the Gospel. In 1534 St Francis Xavier would join St Ignatius and five others as the first members of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, who would endure all kinds of deadly dangers and perils to go to the ends of the world to preach and teach the Gospel. Today’s Saint, therefore, who travelled to India, Malaysia, and Japan is known as the Apostle of the Far East, and the Patron of the Missions.

In today’s Gospel, Christ heals the blind men who call on him to have pity on them. So, too, St Francis heard the call of the peoples of the Far East. Full of love and mercy for them, he felt deeply their longing for faith and salvation through Jesus Christ, and so he baptised and catechised thousands, thus bringing sight to the blind. As he said in one of his letters to his friend Ignatius Loyola, “I noticed among them persons of great intelligence. If only someone could educate them in the Christian way of life, I have no doubt that they would make excellent Christians. Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians.”

For me, St Francis Xavier’s words resonates to this day: the world cries out, as one who is blind, for the light of faith and longs for the vision of Christ, for God’s justice and mercy and love. But for this, we need generous souls, moved by divine mercy and compassion and charity, who will risk themselves as priests, catechists, religious, lay missionaries, and even as volunteers in this parish for the various missionary journeys that need to be made – not necessarily to the ends of the earth, but even just to the margins and the boundaries of our local communities and families and homes – and sometimes, these are the hardest places in which to preach! But making Christians must begin with ourselves being made Christians by God’s grace.

So perhaps we feel too weak, too small, daunted by the immensity of the task of being a Christian. But St Francis Xavier would say, just “be great in little things.” This is the frequent refrain of many of the saints. You may have heard people say that they want to change the world, or they want to make a difference, and sometimes we can feel overwhelmed in the face of the turbulence and uncertainties of our times. So, a feeling of helplessness, of despair, or even of anger can be the response of many in these days.

And yet, the wisdom of the Saints such as Francis Xavier is to remind us to be great in little things, to do what we can by cooperating with God’s grace which is given to us each day. Sometimes we can become deaf and blind to the grace of God, to the opportunities presented to us to grow in holiness and in friendship with Christ. Oftentimes, the place that needs to hear the Gospel most is not some distant country but the hinterland of our own hearts. Hence St Francis Xavier wrote a letter from Malacca, Malaysia in which he said: “God our Lord gives to all sufficient grace to serve him and to preserve themselves from sin … all our good and evil consists in making good or evil use of his grace.” So before we can change the world, let us be mindful of the one thing we can change: our hearts. This Advent, then, let us call out to Christ in faith, and seek his healing touch; may he open our eyes to turn from sin, to make good use of God’s grace, and so to find new ways to serve him.

Therefore in 1549 St Francis wrote these wise words from Japan to his fellow Jesuits in Goa: “I ask you to base all that you do entirely upon God and not to trust your own abilities, knowledge or reputation; and, in this way, I shall know that you are ready for all the great trials, spiritual as well as worldly, which can afflict you. For God raises up and supports the humble, especially those who in small and lowly matters have seen, as in a polished mirror, their own weaknesses and have conquered them.”

Yes, by God’s grace, we can change our lives. We may not become great missionaries and preachers like St Francis Xavier, but if we live in Christian love for ourselves and for others, if we depend entirely on God and his grace, then we shall surely see a difference in the world around us. For as Isaiah promises: “the lowly will rejoice in the Lord even more, and the poorest exult in the Holy One of Israel.”