Novena of Grace Day 4

The story of the prodigal son is a good story to read as we consider the life of Saint Francis Xavier. He was very much a prodigal son. As I mentioned yesterday, when we were talking a little bit about Xavier's years as a teenager, He certainly spent his time and his money and his effort, as the gospel today says, on debauchery, majoring in wine, women, and song. He was at the University of Paris. He was busy sowing his wild oats. But then everything came to a screeching halt. There was a moment of crisis for him. He ran out of money. One of his very close friends was arrested and then executed for getting into a fight. And one of his professors, whom he loved and respected and admired, and who liked to go gallivanting with the boys, seemed to come down with the syphilis. So that didn't end well for him. And it was a moment of, for Xavier, I think, of waking up, waking up to the choices that he was making and the direction those choices were taking him. And unfortunately, it took this big crisis to wake him up. There's nothing like the prospect of death to get us to reconsider our choices, sisters and brothers. There's nothing like the prospect of death to keep us focused on what's most important. How's that for a message for you Saturday morning? Let's talk about death today. How about death? Do me a favour for a moment and just think to yourself. Imagine something. Imagine that you are on your deathbed. Looking back at your life, God forbid, looking back at your life, and as you look back on your life, what are the memories that are dearest to you? What are the things that jump out, those moments that jump out at you as being the most significant and the most meaningful moments? And as you do that, maybe ask yourself, are you surprised by any of it? And as you think about that, I'll tell you a brief story from my own life. And this happened in 2012 and I was in Belize and we have the parish where I was living. We're on the boundary of four major street gangs in the city. And so there was a lot of violence. There was a lot of petty crime as well. And for some reason in 2012, people kept breaking into our rectory that they thought we had all this money laying around. They were sorely disappointed. But one night, I kid you not, 3:30 in the morning, my eyes just popped open and it was terrifying that I saw this shadow over my bed. And I just started punching and screaming and kicking. I wasn't even thinking. The adrenaline kicked in. I was just going, going. And I don't know, we fought. It could have been three minutes, it could have been three seconds, but whoever the guy was, he took off running. So I'm trying to catch my breath, and I get up out of bed, and I turn on the lights, and there's rope and duct tape on the ground. The guy was going to try to tie me up and clear out the house. Now what made one guy think that he was going to somehow restrain a 200-pound man full of adrenaline? I have no idea, not very smart, but there it is. So, and then later that night, or I should say earlier that morning, when the police came, one of the police officers looks around, he looks at me and he says, Wow, that could have been a lot, that could have turned out a lot worse. I said, Thanks, officer, thank you for that. But that morning, I was sitting there, because I still had to do the morning mass, I'm sitting there on the veranda and I'm just kind of, You know, I have blood on my arms, and I'm just, I'm thinking about everything, waiting for my heart rate to slow down. And all of a sudden, I had these two insights, these two incredible consolations. One was, I just, it became crystal clear to me that I have this tendency of taking all the small, meaningless things in my life and blowing them out of proportion. making mountains out of molehills. Whereas the things that are most important to me, in those moments it was crystal clear, family, friends, the love and life. Those are the things that seem small. I really wasn't spending much time on those. All my time and energy, all my mental bandwidth was going to the things that had zero importance. the stressors in my life, the jealousies that I carry around, the resentments, and it was just crystal clear in that moment that that's where I spend my time and energy. That I live up here in a world that is terribly suffocating because I spend everything I have on the things that are meaningless. Whereas the things that are most important, the relationships in my life, the love in my life, Those were the things that I consistently took for granted. And it was a great moment of consolation, and my heart filled with gratitude, and I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget that day. There's nothing like the close calls in life, those moments of crisis that point to us, that point us towards what's most important. And what's most important to us, sisters and brothers, is love. That's it. That's it? I would imagine as you look back on your lives, all those challenges that you face, yeah, they're there, but were they really all that important? That thing that that neighbour said to you that one day, was it really worth getting so worked up over? Was it? Or on the other hand, maybe you think about your children, or your parents, or your brothers, your sisters, your friends, the good times, the smiles. maybe even the difficult times and the grief, because all of it is about love. Love is what our lives are about. The Gospels tell us, Jesus in the Gospels tells us that when we die and we stand before the Lord, He's only going to ask us one thing. Did you love the people that I put in your path? Did you love the people that I put in your life? And how will we answer that? And he's not going to ask you; Did you go to church on Sunday? And he's not going to ask you how many rosaries you said. And he's not going to ask you if you went out and drank too much at the pub. He's not going to ask you any of that. He's going to ask you one question on the final exam: Did you love the people that I put in your path? And how will we answer? And it's amazing how easy it is to lose sight in our lives of what's most important. And so those crisis moments come, and they're crucially important for us. That word crisis, the Greek root of that word, means choice. It means turning point. It's a moment of decision, a moment of deciding what is going to be most important to us. How will we make our choices? And so it was with Francis Xavier. In that moment of crisis, he came to some clarity in his life with the help of Ignatius Loyola. Now, Francis had been resisting Ignatius for some time. Francis lived with Ignatius and Peter Favre. Those were his two roommates. He lived with them for five years before he gave Ignatius the time of day. Ignatius was working on him, working on him, working on him, working on him, even loaning him some money. And Francis Xavier wanted nothing to do with him. In his mind, Ignatius was this kind of crazy older guy. What's this guy going to teach me? Ignatius would go out begging for money. And Xavier didn't think too much of that. And Xavier really had no time for this guy. But it was when the crisis hit that Xavier's ears were finally open. And one day Ignatius asks him, and you've got a beautiful portrait of it right here on the wall. Ignatius asks him, What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? At the end of the day, Francis, what are you going to do with your life? All the parties, all the wine, all the women, everything, all of that, all the honours, what's it going to amount to? Because Francis, the day is coming when you're going to die. It's coming for all of us, and you're going to stand before the Lord, and where will all those other things be when you stand before the Lord? And it woke him up. And Francis finally understood that this life is about love, a love that expresses itself in service to our God. And in that moment, Francis said, Yes, he surrendered. And in that moment, he discovered what true freedom is about. True freedom, sisters and brothers, is not about being able to do whatever we want to do. True freedom is about knowing to do what is most important. choosing to do what is most important. True freedom is about having that clarity of purpose. Let's pray for all of that. Let's pray for that, for ourselves. That through the course of this novena, we can gain a deepening of our sense of purpose and meaning. That we can learn to take most seriously the things that are of greatest importance in our lives, the love, the relationships. and that we can learn to perhaps hold a little bit more, a little bit more lightly to the things that are not so important. 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.