Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 3, 2007

Memo­r­i­al of St. Fran­cis Xavier, S.J.
Lectionary: 175
Mem­ber of Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty Community

Fran­cis Xavier was an up-and-com­ing pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris when Ignatius Loy­ola met the twen­ty-four year old. He had the whole world in front of him when Ignatius posed Jesus’ rad­i­cal ques­tion to him one day, “What prof­it would there be for one to gain the whole world and for­feit his life?” (Matthew 16:26) Ignatius had seen the grand tal­ent of the man and the ques­tion proved deci­sive for him. He was grad­u­al­ly turned from fine schol­ar to ded­i­cat­ed saint and spent his life in bring­ing Christ to the Far East.
The way that I have always heard this account of Ignatius chal­leng­ing Xavier with the gospel quo­ta­tion is that the ques­tion lit­er­al­ly stopped Fran­cis in his tracks and refo­cused his life. It was tru­ly an encounter with Christ and it made all the dif­fer­ence in the world for his lat­er apos­tolic life.

We can dis­cov­er sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences of encoun­ter­ing Christ or God call­ing us into life and action in our own expe­ri­ences as well. They may not be as dra­mat­ic or as deci­sive as Ignatius’ ques­tion to Xavier, but they are nonethe­less grace-filled. I need to be atten­tive to these encoun­ters so that I can be led to respond effec­tive­ly to the call con­tained in the encounter with Christ.

The response to Ignatius’ ques­tion trans­formed Fran­cis in his ulti­mate voca­tion as Apos­tle to the Indies. I can only imag­ine that there were numer­ous encoun­ters like this with Christ; His call, and His word for Fran­cis as he car­ried out his life day to day. And, like­wise it is for us: rich, qui­et, deci­sive, life-affirm­ing nudges in the direc­tion of bring­ing Christ into our world.

My prayer for us today is that we can be aware and eager to respond to these invi­ta­tions from Christ as we grow into His life in our voca­tion to what­ev­er or to wher­ev­er they lead us. The encounter may be con­tained in a ques­tion from a dear friend, in an even chance encounter with anoth­er, in a sit­u­a­tion in my life that stops me in my tracks, or in the day to day expe­ri­ences that beck­on me on towards the life that God desires give me.
Lord, give me ears to hear your voice and courage to respond with joy.

Mem­ber of Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty Community

Since its incep­tion in 1997, Online Min­istries has been blessed to have myr­i­ad mem­bers of the Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty offer their per­son­al reflec­tions on the dai­ly scrip­ture readings.