Novena of Grace Day 3

All right. Okay, I really think this is an honest question. So, raise your hand if this is true. Raise your hand if you enjoyed being a teenager. Okay, about five people raised their hands. Gentlemen, there's hope. There's hope. You could pay me a million euros. I would not go back to being a teenager. You could pay me a billion euros. I would not. Yes, you just wait, young person. You've got it waiting for you. I think it's a tough time of life. It's a time of life. You're trying to figure things out. You're trying to figure out who you are.

And you've got this whole future in front of you. and you're not sure what to do with any of it, and you're trying to figure out what you want, and you're trying to manage all the expectations of everybody else; it's a tough time of life. And so, I want to reflect for a few minutes this morning on St. Francis Xavier as a teenager and what that might have been like for him. You know, when you look at his life, Francis, he had it all planned out for him. And he was set. He had a pretty sweet life in front of him. So, as I mentioned yesterday, his family went through some difficult times when he was a child. And they lost a lot of their wealth; they lost a lot of their prestige. And so, Francis' parents had some ideas for Francis' life. Now, Francis was also the youngest in the family. And so, it was typical in those days that the youngest in the family would become a priest. And so, they thought, okay, we're going to send Francis off, and he's going to become a priest, and he's going to get great training, and then he's going to come back here, and if we're lucky, crossing our fingers, he's going to get to be a bishop. And then after a bishop, maybe a cardinal, a prince of the church. And once again, the family would have its prestige all restored.

It's a lot -- that's a lot of expectations and hopes to place on this young man. So, at the age of 18, he goes off to the University of Paris, which at the time was like, it was like Cambridge and Oxford and Harvard, like all rolled into one. And so, it was the prestigious institution. Now, being an 18-year-old, I figure 18-year-olds in the 16th century probably were not too different than 18-year-olds today. You get this young man who's going off for the first time, experiencing his freedom for the first time, with a great big pot of money. And you see where this is going. Francis excelled in school. He was a very bright young man. He was an athlete. He was a track star. People say that he was very good at the high jump. But he was also quite partial to the wine, the women, and the song. And one might say that that was his major in college. It was wine, women, and song.

Now, I'm going to psychologize the poor guy for a moment here. And this is terribly unfair for me in the 21st century to make these judgments about what might have been going on in his heart. But let me go ahead and do that anyway. I have to wonder, as an 18-year-old, if all that running around and gallivanting and carousing. I got to wonder if underneath all of that, there wasn't some rebellion going on. I mean, think about it. His parents put this huge burden on him that somehow, he was going to rescue the family's prestige by being a priest. And what's the first thing he does when he's got freedom? He's going to go off and do whatever he wants. And I'll tell you what, He was partying pretty hard. In American English, we would say he was living the frat boy life. I don't know if there's an equivalent in Ireland, I don't know. Anyway, but he was living that life, and he went through his money, burned through all of his money. He wrote to his brother a very formal letter, Dear Sir, he referred to his brother as, he was asking his brother for more money, so he was very deferential. He even asked his sister for money, and she was in the convent. She was a poor Claire. I mean, so he was desperate for money, and he was burning through it. Again, the wine, the women, and the song.

But I have to wonder if underneath all of that, there wasn't this sense of rebellion, this sense of, gosh, this life that these other people have placed on me, these expectations that other people have given to me, this dream of my parents, it doesn't quite fit me. And I got to wonder if Francis wasn't chafing against all those expectations. Those are important moments for us. He was feeling a restlessness in his heart. We might call it a holy restlessness.

1700 years ago, the famous St. Augustine the Hippo wrote, Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord. There's a restlessness in our lives, and it's that restlessness that keeps us always searching. It keeps us from getting too comfortable. It keeps us moving forward. And I think that that's what Francis was experiencing. As much as his parents had dreams for his life, God also had dreams for his life. Dreams that Francis had not yet become aware of. Eventually, Francis' lifestyle of partying and carousing came to a crashing end. One of his friends got into a fight and murdered somebody. It was the third time that had happened. And so, his friend was arrested and was hung. That'll make you think twice about your life choices. And then one of his professors, who liked to go out partying with him, caught syphilis, again, all the carousing. So, Francis was, he was dancing right on that edge of danger. And I think that there was a moment where he had to wake up and he had to say, you know what? If I keep going down this path, I know where it's going. It's going to crash. He was driving the car right off the cliff. And that was the moment of reckoning for him. But I guess I want to ask us today, there was this dream that God had for Francis's life. It was a dream that Francis, it took a long time for Francis to finally wake up to what this dream was.

But I wonder for you and me, what's the dream that God has for your life? And I got to say, I don't think it has anything to do with how old you are. So, if you feel like, Nah, I'm too old for that, nonsense, don't sell God short. Gods got a dream for your life. What is that dream? And I guarantee that whatever God dreams for your life is going to be far bigger than anything you or I could ever dream for ourselves. So, what is that dream? And it's not a dream out there waiting to be discovered. It's a dream right here in our hearts. God plants those seeds right here in our hearts. It's a dream that's waiting to be uncovered. And it's a dream that we discover when we finally stop running from everything, when we stop running from the restlessness and instead learn to pay attention to the restlessness. We start to listen to the restlessness and what it's telling us about what our hearts are truly hungry for.

And again, maybe Francis could not yet articulate it, but he knew that there was something inside of him that wanted something more, that was longing for something more than what his parents had in mind for him. So, what is that for us? What is that longing deep down inside of us? That hunger for something more for our lives. Maybe it's a call to deeper service. Maybe it's a call to humbler service. Maybe it's a call to embrace the life that God has given us and the commitments that we already have. Maybe it's a call to deeper prayer. Whatever it is, I can't determine that for you because the way that God put places his dream in your life God's dream for your life is always going to look differently than mine right and it's going to be unique to each and every one of us but all of the dreams that God has for our lives they're all going to be variations on one theme and the theme is this the one thing that

God wants for all of us is to be truly alive And again, it's going to look differently for you than for me. It's going to look differently for you than for her. It's going to look different for each of us. But what is that dream? How does God envision us being fully alive? Maybe that's something to sit with and pray with today. Where are those moments of restlessness in our lives? Where are those places where maybe we're hungry for something more? Do we take those longings seriously enough? Are we willing to listen to what it is that God might be saying? Or have we given up? And let's pray it's the former. Amen!

NOW LET US PRAY THE NOVENA PRAYER.

O most kind and loving saint, in union with you I adore the Divine Majesty. The remembrance of the favours with which God blessed you during life, and of your glory after death, fills me with joy; and I unite with you in offering to Him my humble tribute of thanksgiving and of praise, I implore of you to secure for me through your powerful intercession the all-important blessing of living and dying in the state of grace. I also beseech you to obtain the favour I ask in this Novena …...here ask for the favour you wish to obtain…. but if what I ask is not for the glory of God or for the good of my soul, obtain for me what is most conducive to both. Amen.

Let us pray…

O God, who was pleased to gather into your Church the peoples of the East by the preaching and miracles of blessed Francis, mercifully grant that we, who honour his glorious merits, may also imitate the example of his virtues, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.