Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today is the feast of St. Francis Xavier, patron of the missions, one of the patrons of the archdiocese.
In all of the readings which are proper for this feast—so the first reading, the psalm, and the reading from St. Mark’s Gospel—we hear the importance of preaching the Gospel.
“Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,” says St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:16, echoing what’s called the Great Commission of our Lord.
He says, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Jesus tells the apostles in Mark 16:15.
In St. Paul, in his letter, when he says “preach the Gospel,” it’s actually all one word in Greek. It’s one verb; it’s the word *evangelizomai*. The noun for Gospel in Greek is *evangelion*, which means “good news”; it’s where we get the word “evangelize” from, from the Greek.
The Gospel is the good news of God’s love for us, the good news of the forgiveness of our sins when we repent of them. The good news that our life has meaning and purpose and that God’s plan for us is not just eternal salvation—as if that weren’t amazing enough—but His plan for us is actually to make us like His Son, to make us like Jesus as much as possible, as He says in Romans 8:29.
There’s so much bad news in the world; this is actually good news. It’s good news that we are meant to internalize and then share.
The Lord wants us to embrace the Gospel with our mind and with our heart and allow it to transform us, and God’s grace transforms us if we cooperate with it.
So the good news is not just information like we hear about in the mass media or learn about at school—a lot of interesting information. No, the good news isn’t just information; it’s transformation.
So if we embrace the Gospel and it isn’t changing me in any way, if it isn’t making me more Christ-like in how I think or act or respond or in the choices that I make, if the good news isn’t progressively transforming me, something’s just not right.
Could be the question of me not cooperating with God’s grace, of me maybe needing deeper healing in my life, or even perhaps something else.
Very simply, the good news that has been given to us should translate into goodness; it should make us good, should make us better persons: more charitable, more generous, more humble, more merciful, more grateful, more prayerful, more Christ-like, essentially.
One thing that the readings today echo is that our faith is not just a private affair; it’s not just me and God, and I keep it all to myself, and I don’t tell anyone about it.
If that’s the message that I’ve internalized about religion or my faith, I need to actually get rid of that message; I need to change it.
Faith is actually a gift that’s meant to be shared, as a theological saying or understanding that God has willed that men should be saved through other men, that we are the instruments, we are the vehicles by which God brings salvation in Christ to others.
We help mediate Christ’s salvation, all of us.
Vatican II document *Apostolicam Actuositatem* says that: “On all Christians accordingly rests the noble obligation of working to bring all men throughout the whole world to hear and accept the divine message of salvation.”  So we all have a part to play, not just the clergy.
Our Lord presents the three-step process to us in the Gospel when He speaks of preaching or proclaiming the Gospel, believing, and being baptized.
“Go into the world,” Christ says, “and proclaim the good news to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned,” Mark 16:15-16.
As St. Paul says in Romans 10:14 and 17, he says, “How are men to call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?”  So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.
Remember, Christ ties preaching and belief to baptism, to the sacraments. Pure intellectual belief is not complete.
And the sacraments are not just symbols; they are actions of Christ Himself. They have power in themselves because they are the primary means by which Christ incorporates people into His Church and sanctifies and saves His people.
We can say that the sacraments are the primary or ordinary means of salvation that God has provided for us. It doesn’t mean that He’s limited to using the sacraments for salvation; it just means that they’re His preferred instruments.
The Catechism at number 1257 says this, and we’ll quote the paragraph here; it’s a little long. It says, “The Lord Himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands His disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for the sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude. This is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord, to see that all who can be baptized are reborn of water and the Spirit.” And then it adds this: “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but He Himself is not bound by His sacraments.”  That last part actually comes from St. Thomas Aquinas and from the scholastic theologians. It just means that God has the freedom to work outside of what’s called the sacramental economy when He chooses to do so. Why? Because He’s God, one. Two, because as He says—and St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:4—God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
So all men have the possibility of receiving salvation, even if they don’t have the possibility of receiving the sacraments.
And that’s kind of as far as we’ll delve into soteriology today, which is the study of salvation. We won’t go too far afield on it.
But lastly, in regards to preaching the Gospel, we need to keep in mind that our first and primary means of preaching is with our lives, not just with our words. Words are very important, but life and witness are essential.
The way we live, the choices we make, the things we say, the way we treat others—that’s our primary mode of preaching.
Pope St. John Paul II in his encyclical *Redemptoris Missio* said that people today put more trust in witnesses than in a teacher, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories. “The witness of a Christian life is the first and irreproachable form of mission,” he says.
And Pope Francis in *Evangelii Gaudium* says every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus. We no longer say that we are disciples and missionaries, but rather that we are always missionary disciples.
So the truth is that everyone is a preacher. We all preach something to those around us, those in our lives.
The question is, are we preaching the good news, or are we preaching something else?
As Christ’s disciples, wherever we are, we are in mission territory, and we are called to preach the Gospel with our words and with our lives.
So let’s ask Our Lady today, Queen of the Missions, for the grace to be a true missionary, to be true missionary disciples to all those who need to hear and see Jesus in us, as they did in St. Francis Xavier.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.