Today’s reading from Isaiah is a reading that we often use in our funeral liturgies. Isaiah was speaking to a people in exile who had seen their Temple
destroyed. They had hoped to return to
Jerusalem and to rebuild their lives, their Temple, and their nation. Isaiah gave them a vision of hope – a vision of a great banquet that God would
prepare for them. Isaiah tells them that God will wipe away the tears from their faces, that God
will console us and be there for us. We
are also to hope as we journey during this holy season of Advent – the hope
that the birth of Christ brings to our lives.
Today, during this first week in Advent, we celebrate the feast day of St
Francis Xavier, one of our Church’s great missionaries and one of the founding
members of the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. As
one of my professors in seminary once noted, 16th century Spain was
an amazing source of Catholic spirituality that since influences our faith to
this day, producing such great luminaries such as John of Avila, Teresa of
Avila, John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola. Francis Xavier came from the Spanish kingdom of Navarre. After
his ordination, he traveled to Asia, being a missionary to India and Japan, as
well as current day Malaysia and Indonesia.
Many of the places that he visited had not been exposed to Christianity
before. He died before he was able to
travel to China, a dream that he had. In
1927, along with Therese of Lisieux, Francis Xavier was named one of the
co-patrons of the foreign missions by Pope Pius XI.
As we
are called to journey during this Advent season, as we are to bring hope to our
world as evangelizers just as Francis Xavier brought the Gospel message to the
world, may we feel this sense of hope today as we celebrate this first week of
Advent.
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