Joy of Evangelizing!

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Feast of St. Francis Xavier

Is 25:6-10a; Mt 15:29-37

The feast of St. Francis Xavier, ‘The Apostle of the Indies’ and ‘Patron of Catholic Missions,’ invites us to reflect on the joy of evangelizing. 

In my view, we come to know the sort of missionary St. Francis Xavier was largely through the letters he wrote. As such, my reflection is based on the contents of his ‘Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome, 1543.’ 

Indeed, I came across some wonderful insights for our reflection. 

1. ‘Sometimes I have lost my voice and strength altogether with repeating again and again the Credo and the other forms.’ 

• When we read these lines, we must remember that St. Francis Xavier was a man who wanted to be a world-renowned and celebrated professor par excellence. However, these words highlight the radical change in his whole identity, so that the one who had aimed at academic fame redirected his energy to God’s mission. Is it not an irony that the one who wanted to excel in abstract philosophical treatises and formulations was ‘reduced’ to keep repeating tirelessly just the Credo of the Catholic faith? Yet, what one can sense in his tone is neither exhaustion nor despair but a sense of fulfilment and contentment.

• Metaphorically, St. Xavier ‘lost his voice’ so that he can now become the very voice of God, announcing the Good News all his life. Against his desire for intellectual conquest, God had other plans so that he would not be forgotten as a professor in some distant foreign land, but remembered as a proclaimer of God’s Word across the globe.

• Unlike what St. Xavier would have imagined, he is now world-renowned as the patron of Catholic missions in a far deeper sense. When he surrendered himself completely to God’s will, he rediscovered himself as a great missionary who would work, not for his glory but for God’s. What a noble vocation!

2. ‘For my part I desired to satisfy all, both the sick who came to me themselves, and those who came to beg on the part of others, lest if I did not, their confidence in, and zeal for, our holy religion should relax, and I thought it wrong not to do what I could in answer to their prayers.’

• St. Xavier’s words manifest the pastoral vigilance that he had regarding the mission field. He was quite aware that his behaviour could either strengthen or weaken the people’s faith in Christ. This also reveals that, as a missionary, he was never divided on the idea that personal conduct cannot be separated from the credibility of the message he was proclaiming. Never once did he forget that he was a living witness of the Gospel he preached to people. To this end, he was careful to radiate the compassion found in Christ.

• Because he was aware that his every action shaped the way others understood the faith that he was proclaiming in their midst, he constantly carried in him the fear of failing the people he served and the faith he represented. He put himself under pressure to be the model and example of the faith that he announced. He was painstakingly aware that any failure to help those in need would not be interpreted as the frailty of the missionary but as a flaw in the faith itself. Thus, his missionary mindset is breathtaking. 

3. ‘I replied, that I would not tell him a word about them unless he promised beforehand to publish abroad what I should tell him of the religion of Jesus Christ. He made the promise, and then I carefully explained to him those words of Jesus Christ.’ 

• It is interesting to read that once, when a Brahmin paid him a secret visit to learn about the Christian faith, St. Francis Xavier not only taught him the essentials of the faith but also bound him with a promise that he would proclaim it to people he knew. 

• St. Francis Xavier’s action explains his missionary strategy. He did not view people as mere listeners but as potential missionaries who could be employed to proclaim God’s Word. His missionary attitude that refused no one, was ready to turn every listener of God’s Word or enthusiast into a partner in evangelization. 

• His act also shows that St. Xavier had a very practical approach towards mission. He knew the ground realities of the mission field to be vast, while the evangelizers themselves were very few. So, he was determined to turn every listener into a potential proclaimer of God’s Word. For this reason, he intentionally shaped even brief conversations into moments of apostolic multiplication. 

• This further reveals that St. Francis Xavier never deceived himself into being the sole missionary of God. He did not believe that he was enough to carry out the immense work of evangelization. Instead, he understood his mission more like creating ripples so that what starts from him as a small circle will ever widen with the help of others, with no one to stop the momentum. He also approached evangelization as a ‘relay race’ in which the baton will be passed on to others to complete the race. Thus, by creating a chain of transmission of God’s Word, he ensured that the noble task of evangelization would not just stop with him. In this way, St. Francis Xavier, the one missionary, made several missionaries to do the work of disseminating the Gospel. 

The fruit of his missionary work is a testament to his tireless hard work and self-sacrifice. In about ten years of relentless missionary work, St. Francis Xavier is thought to have travelled around 38,000 miles by land and sea. He was the first to bring the Christian message to many places in Asia and baptized about 30,000 people. Although he wrote many letters to people back in Europe, he never returned there. After leaving home at nineteen, he never saw his family again. His whole life was a real act of self-sacrifice.

Let us pray that we may imitate St. Francis Xavier’s zeal to inherit his joy of evangelizing.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar