THE SON REVEALS THE FATHER

SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER, PRIEST

Isa 11:1-10; Ps 72:1-2,7-8,12-13,17; Lk 10:21-24

Nobody knows the Father except the Son

The prophecy of Isaiah takes us to the root of Jesse in the allusion to the promise made to David, as we noted yesterday, that the streaming of all nations and peoples to Judah and Jerusalem has to do with the promise God made to Abraham and David. The promises are essentially the same but took a dynastic turn during David's time, who reigned as king of Judah and Israel in faithfulness to God. What connects David to Abraham is not simply a bloodline but something more spiritual, which is faith in God. Abraham is the father of the faithful. In this sense of trust in God, he became the father of nations. It is also true that his physical descent constituted nations. But what counts before God is faith and not physical descent or bloodline. It is according to faith that God made the promise of an everlasting dynasty to David. The kingdom God promised would be that of the faithful in appreciation of David’s faithfulness to God. Hence, the prophet Isaiah referred to the Root of Jesse.

The root or foundation of Jesse is the faith found in David's family, which was near perfection in David. “A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots: on him the spirit of the Lord rests, a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is his breath.” The prophecy is about God fulfilling his promise to establish an everlasting dynasty for David. We can also understand the root and stock of Jesse to mean Jesse’s bloodline God would share to enter into our human nature. The reference makes us consider David’s ancestry, which would become that of the Messiah, even running to Abraham the faithful. In this physical understanding also, God fulfils his promise to Abraham and David by coming through their bloodline. God revealed his Son through our human nature taken from David’s bloodline. The fullness of the Holy Spirit given to the Messiah reveals his divine origin. The demonstration of his divine origin is the effect of his presence. “His word is a rod that strikes the ruthless, his sentences bring death to the wicked. Integrity is the loincloth round his waist, faithfulness the belt about his hips.” The effect of his presence and his reign among us confirms his divinity for us, for it will re-establish harmony in man and nature. “The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid, calf and lion feed together, with a little boy to lead them.”

The testimony of the Lord in the Gospel confirms what the prophet Isaiah foretold would happen hundreds of years before. “Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said: ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.” The Father graciously revealed these things before they came to be. The Father’s revelation of his Son to us is beyond our expectations. A deep understanding of these mysteries revealed for our salvation set Saint Francis Xavier, the apostle to the Indians, on the move from place to place in the proclamation of the Gospel. Born in Spain in 1506, he met St. Ignatius of Loyola as a student in Paris. He was ordained a priest in 1537 and sent by the Pope as part of a mission to India in 1541, where he spent the rest of his life preaching the Good News in Goa and Malacca. He converted and baptised many natives and founded many Christian communities in India. He also entered Japan, spent two years on a successful mission, and founded many Christian communities. He entered China secretly in 1552 to preach the Gospel but died of fever and exhaustion on the Chinese island of Shangchwan. The missionary zeal of St. Francis Xavier nudges us to re-evaluate our reception of the Good News of salvation, especially this season of Advent, to know whether we truly understand what we have received. “Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.”  

Let us pray: O God, who through the preaching of Saint Francis Xavier won many peoples to yourself, grant that the hearts of the faithful may burn with the same zeal for the faith and that Holy Church may everywhere rejoice in an abundance of offspring. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.