Go into the whole world and proclaim the Good News to every creature. In the Gospel according to St. Mark, Jesus’ final instruction to his disciples as he prepared to ascend to the Father is the command to carry on with the mission of the proclamation of the Good News of the Kingdom of God. It was a command that was not only to be obeyed by those who gathered to say farewell to Jesus but rather by all who had come to believe in him as their Lord and Savior. St. Francis Xavier whose memory the Church honors today, though not among the original recipients of Jesus command, heeded the command and became a proclaimer of the Good News of the kingdom. Born in Navarre, Spain, in 1506, Francis Xavier went to study in Paris where he met and became a follower of St. Ignatius of Loyola. He was among the first seven members of the Society of Jesus. As if Jesus had addressed the command personally to him, St. Francis became a missionary and tirelessly proclaimed the Good News in India, China, and Japan. Together with St. Therese of the Child Jesus, he is a co-patron of the Apostleship of Prayer and of the foreign missions. 
Unlike in the Gospel according to Matthew where Jesus’ last instruction to the apostles is to make disciples of all nations (cf. Matthew 28:19ff), in Mark, Jesus instructs them to proclaim the Good News to every creature. The Good News is not to be restricted to human beings or only to those who can literarily become disciples, that is, human beings, but should rather be proclaimed to the entire created universe. For it is the created universe in its entirety that was the beneficiary of Jesus’ saving action (“the whole creation groans in labor pains…cf. Romans 8:18ff). The Good News is that in Jesus Christ, God has re-created the universe and restored it to its original blessedness. In Jesus Christ, God has repaired the relationship that ties one creature to the other thus restoring the original harmony that was intended for creation by the Creator. Demons, death, enmity between creatures result from the discord that sin generates. This is why those who hear the Good News and take it to heart will be able to drive out demons, pick up serpents with their hands, and drink deadly poison without being harmed. This is the Good News whose dissemination we have been charged with. May we, like St. Francis Xavier, remain faithful in this responsibility even as we ensure that the content of our preaching is indeed the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ.