Memorial of Francis Xavier and Our Missionary Mandate

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you! - Francis Xavier

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CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - On December 3 the Western Catholic Church remembers the great disciple of Jesus Christ and follower of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier.

His missionary voyages to Japan and India continue to bear fruit centuries later in the courageous living faith of the Christians of our day in both lands.

St. Francis Xavier arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, in 1549.

Sixty years after he began his missionary work, the Shogun began their violent persecution against the Christians. The evil inflicted in that persecution did not stop those who had heard the Gospel from the mouth of this Saint.

As has been the case throughout the ages, their blood became the "seed of the Church" - in Japan and beyond.

Nothing - and no-one- can ever stop the advance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing - and no-ne- can hold back the spread of His Kingdom. The Church is a seed of that kingdom.

On this Feast, I present below an excerpt from one of St. Francis Xavier's Letters to Ignatius Loyola. It displays the kind of missionary zeal which is needed in this hour.

It is alive in the New Ecclesial movements. It is alive in the religious communities which are springing up as new shoots in the One Vine - and the renewed ones which are rediscovering their charism.

It is alive on the authentically Catholic Colleges and Universities which are forming the new saints, missionaries and martyrs for the Third Millennium. Some of them are new, others are being renewed.

The question which we should ask on this Memorial of this great missionary - Is this missionary spirit alive in us?

Do we view our vocation, no matter what our state in life - as missionary? All of us can, and should, burn with the same missionary fire which animated this great saint. It is the fire of the Holy Spirit.

That same Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts. We should ask the Lord to set us on fire so that we can cry out those words of the great Apostle Paul "Woe unto me if I do not preach the Gospel." (1 Cor. 9:16)

It is only the Gospel of Jesus Christ - preached in such power and lived in its fullness - which can liberate the age in which we live. It is the message which the whole world needs to hear, and see, in the lives of contemporary Christian believers.

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In Jesus Christ, we can all be made new! (2 Cor. 5:17)

The West staggers under the lies and deception of an advancing new paganism which offers the same old slavery which has accompanied every culture of death and use from the time the old foe lied to our first parents.

It is the Church of Jesus Christ which offers Life and Freedom - through the Gospel!

In Francis of Rome, we have a missionary Pope. In his apostolic exhortation, the Joy of the Gospel he reminded us that the call to evangelize extends to every baptized Christian. He also laid out a wonderful framework for reflecting on our missionary mandate in this hour.

He has evangelized from the moment he stepped out onto that balcony at St Peters. His words and his actions have set the tone for all of us.  They also show us the way to livve as a missionary, no matter where we are located.

Pope Francis is calling us to live our lives in a living, personal relationship with Jesus, in the heart of the Church, for the sake of the world. He is sending us all out as missionaries in response to the command of Jesus to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. (Mk 16:15, Lk. 14:23, Mt. 28:19)

This commission is a part of what he has in mind with his continual challenge to all of us to go to the peripheries. We need to break out of our comfort zones - and go out into the real world with the Gospel. It is also a part of his image - and his constant reminders - that the Church is a field hospital, called to receive the wounded of this world.

Jesus Christ is Lord. His salvation is to be extended to all men and women. The Church is God's plan for the entire world. The early Fathers called her the world reconciled. Through Baptism, we were born into a new relational reality. We do not ever leave the Church, because the Church is not a building. We live in the Church for the sake of the world.

The Church exists to evangelize. The essential nature of the Church is missionary.

The Catholic Church has always taught that every single human being on the face of the earth has a right to hear the liberating Gospel message of Jesus Christ. That mission continues, in this hour, through you and me.

This is true, no matter what our state in life, or our specific vocation.We are baptized into Christ to participate in the ongoing, saving mission of His Church.

In order to be able to engage in such a missionary task in this hour, many Catholic Christians need to be renewed in their Baptismal faith. They also need a personal and transformational encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ.

That encounter with the Risen Jesus Christ needs to be strengthened and secured by solid instruction in what it means to live as a Catholic Christian in the real world - with moral coherence and unity of life. This is all a part of what is meant by the phrase New Evangelization.

This New Evangelization is meant to help bring about an authentic renewal of the Church so that she can undertake a new missionary outreach to the whole world. Only a Church which is fully alive in the Lord, and filled with His Holy Spirit, can carry out such an evangelical mission in this hour.

The Church is the Ark, the boat, presided over by the Lord. He is at the helm, steering His redemptive course through time.

The Lord of the harvest is calling workers. He is sending us out into a into the vineyard. He is leading us into a new missionary age. He is sending us out on mission, fishing for men, women and Nations. He will work His saving and redemptive mission in and through us, because we are members of His Mystical Body, the Church.What He asks is our willing Yes in response to His call.

I believe that we are living at the beginning of a great resurgence in the Catholic Church. Oh, I know, many people think that making such a statement is naive. However, our history as a Church demonstrates that it is often when the darkness seems so overwhelming that the light breaks forth in power! 

We can see that light, if we look with the eyes of living faith.

The evangelical message of this Pope is precisely what is needed to foment and inspire a new missionary age. Just when her opponents are ready to count the Catholic Church out, the sleeping giant is rising.

The Lord who birthed the Church from His wounded side on Golgotha's Hill is purifying her and renewing her by His Spirit. He is doing this precisely so that she can continue his redemptive work until he returns to bring it to completion.

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Jesus has been  raised from the dead. He now walks with our feet, builds with our hands and speaks through our words and witness. This is the dawn of a New  Missionary Age and we are the missionaries.

What the world needs is conversion. The real kind - the kind which comes through encountering the Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. He is alive!

Our mission field is most often found in our own back yard. The West is pre-Christian - not Post-Christian! Rather than waste time bemoaning this reality, rather than join the naysayers of the hour, it is time to say yes to this new missionary age. 

We are all able to have an intimate, ongoing, personal communion with the Risen Lord Jesus. This intimate communion is what motivated and empowered St. Francis Xavier. The fruits of the Holy Spirit were borne and manifested in him, as he cooperated with grace. We are invited into the same way of life.

His evangelical courage is one of many evidences of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He had living faith. He had a heart for mission. Do we?  

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Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel

Francis Xavier

We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. No Portuguese live here the country is so utterly barren and poor. The native Christians have no priests. They know only that they are Christians. There is nobody to say Mass for them; nobody to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Commandments of God's Law.

I have not stopped since the day I arrived. I conscientiously made the rounds of the villages. I bathed in the sacred waters all the children who had not yet been baptized. This means that I have purified a very large number of children so young that, as the saying goes, they could not tell their right hand from their left.

The older children would not let me say my Office or eat or sleep until I taught them one prayer or another. Then I began to understand: "The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

I could not refuse so devout a request without failing in devotion myself. I taught them, first the confession of faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the Apostles' Creed, the Our Father and Hail Mary. 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.

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Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: "What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!"

I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them.

This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to 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.

They would cry out with all their heart: Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like - even to India.

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. A married Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and six grandchildren, He serves as the Director of Adult Faith Formation at St. Stephen, Martyr Parish in Chesapeake, VA. He is also a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. He has long been active at the intersection of faith, values and culture and was recently appointed Special Counsel to Liberty Counsel. He is also the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online.

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