Wednesday – 1st Week of Advent A – Saint Francis Xavier, Priest

Saint Francis Xavier was born in 1506 to a noble family in Navarra, Spain. He was ambitious, educated at the University of Paris, and initially more interested in status, academia, and career than in sainthood. He resisted Ignatius of Loyola for years. Ignatius would patiently repeat one line of Scripture to him: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

This reluctance is captured well in Saint Paul’s words in today’s first reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians, when he says, “An obligation has been imposed on me.” In other words, it is not our initiative; it is God’s initiative. Like so many of the prophets—who felt unworthy, hesitant, or even resistant to God’s call—Francis Xavier also struggled. Think of Jonah, sent to Nineveh, who fled in the opposite direction toward Tarshish because he refused to accept the mission.

Saint Paul captures this inner struggle clearly. His preaching did not flow from ambition, but from an interior compulsion. Saint Francis Xavier did not set out to be a missionary hero; rather, he was conquered by grace. He did not preach because he wanted to. He preached because the Gospel eventually left him no other option.

I can say even in my own priesthood that at first I dreaded preaching—standing in front of people, trying to deliver a message, not knowing if I could even speak for five minutes on a given subject. It was daunting. But through patient endurance, trust in God, and perseverance, the struggle eventually became not what to say, but how to limit what I had to say. Had I given in to fear, I would never have become a priest or accepted my calling to religious life.

Saint Francis Xavier, too, took that initial leap of faith. And so, in 1541, he left Europe as papal nuncio to the Indies, travelling under the Portuguese crown. A nuncio is the pope’s representative to a local Church, overseeing that everything is moving according to the mind of the Church.

Saint Paul says, “I made myself a slave to all.” Saint Francis Xavier endured sea voyages lasting over a year, shipwrecks, tropical diseases, hunger, and exhaustion. He slept where the poor slept and travelled with almost nothing. He often rang a small bell in villages to gather children and teach them the faith. Paul’s words take on flesh and blood here. Francis relinquished privilege, comfort, language, food, security—everything. He did not merely minister to the poor; he entered into their condition.

Saint Paul also says, “To the weak, I became weak.” Evangelization does not happen by imposition, but by immersion—by living among the people and proclaiming the Gospel from within their reality. Saint Francis Xavier preached in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Japan. He struggled terribly with languages, yet he persevered—a struggle not unfamiliar to our students here in Rome who study Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Italian.

In Japan, Francis realized that European methods failed, so he adopted local dress, etiquette, and cultural sensitivity. He admitted mistakes openly and learned from the people he evangelized. Here evangelization becomes incarnational: the Gospel does not erase cultures; it inhabits them.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives the command to “Go into the whole world.” Saint Francis Xavier travelled farther than any missionary before modern transportation, baptizing tens of thousands. He longed to enter China, the heart of Asian civilization, but died alone on Shangchuan Island, within sight of the mainland, never reaching it.

The Gospel commission is not merely geographical; it is interior. Francis went as far as obedience carried him, even when the mission remained unfinished. The Gospel does not demand success; it demands faithfulness. Jesus asks us to remain close, loyal, and trusting. Signs follow belief—not the other way around.

Saint Francis Xavier never emphasized miracles. He believed the greatest sign was faith taking root where Christ was unknown. What a joy it is to bring Christ to others. “The Lord worked with them,” the Gospel says. Francis relied entirely on Christ already at work.

My brothers and sisters, let us ask Saint Francis Xavier to obtain for us a missionary heart. Let us pray for all religious and for the whole Church entrusted with the mission of evangelization. Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us, that we too may have zeal to spread the love of God, becoming all things to all people, so as to win all to the heart of Christ.

Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for us. Amen.