Saint Francis Xavier

Francis was born in the castle of Xavier near Sangüesa, in Navarre, on 7 April 1506, and went to Paris in 1525 to the Collège de Sainte-Barbe. There he made a close friend of Pierre Favre, and in 1529 Ignatius of Loyola - already planning the Society of Jesus - came to live in the same college as a guest. ¹

Franciscan Media frames the years that followed around a question from Matthew: "What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" Xavier was twenty-four, teaching and living well in Paris, and "did not heed these words at once. They came from a good friend, Ignatius of Loyola, whose tireless persuasion finally won the young man to Christ." ² Favre gave in first; Xavier took longer.

He made the Spiritual Exercises under Ignatius, and on 15 August 1534 seven of them made the vow of Montmartre - poverty, chastity, obedience, and apostolic service at the direction of the pope. ¹² He was ordained at Venice on 24 June 1537, alongside Ignatius, having spent time there nursing patients in the hospitals. ¹²

The Society was approved verbally on 3 September 1539, and before the written approbation came through a year later Xavier had already been assigned, at the urgent request of John III of Portugal, to evangelize the East Indies. He left Rome on 16 March 1540 and spent nine months at Lisbon. ¹

He embarked on 7 April 1541 - his thirty-fifth birthday - and after what the encyclopedia calls "a tedious and dangerous voyage" landed at Goa on 6 May 1542. ¹ His first five months there were spent preaching and working in the hospitals, and the encyclopedia keeps the detail that fixes him in the mind: he would walk the streets ringing a little bell, inviting the children to come and hear the word of God, then take whoever came to a church and teach them the catechism. ¹

From about October 1542 he went south to the pearl fisheries, where Christianity had nearly died out for want of priests, and gave close to three years to the people of western India, traveling as far as Ceylon. ¹ Franciscan Media describes the manner of it: "Wherever he went, Xavier lived with the poorest people, sharing their food and rough accommodations. He spent countless hours ministering to the sick and the poor, particularly to lepers. Very often he had no time to sleep or even to say his breviary but, as we know from his letters, he was filled always with joy." ²

Before he could go anywhere else there was an organization to leave behind. Other Jesuits had been arriving at Goa from Europe, sent by Ignatius, and some men born in the country had been received into the Society; in 1548 Xavier distributed them to the principal centers of India where he had established missions, so that the work would carry on without him, and set up a novitiate and a house of studies. ¹ Franciscan Media notes that he served as provincial of the newly established Jesuit province of India. ²

Then he met a Japanese man named Anger, was fired by the idea of taking Christianity to Japan, and set out at the end of June 1549 with Father Cosme de Torres and Brother Juan Fernández. Anger, baptized at Goa as Pablo de Santa Fe, went with them. They landed at Kagoshima on 15 August 1549. ¹

The whole of the first year went on the language - learning Japanese and, with Pablo's help, translating the principal articles of the faith and short treatises to preach and catechize from. ¹ Franciscan Media puts the result plainly: "He learned enough Japanese to preach to simple folk, to instruct, and to baptize, and to establish missions for those who were to follow him." ²

When he could make himself understood he began preaching, made converts, and was banished from Kagoshima for it. He went inland, preached in cities of southern Japan, reached Meaco - then the principal city - late in 1550 and got nowhere there because the country was tearing itself apart. He doubled back and spent 1551 in other important cities, forming small Christian communities which, the encyclopedia notes, afterward grew "with extraordinary rapidity." Two and a half years in, he handed the mission to Torres and Fernández and returned to Goa. ¹

What was waiting for him at Goa was not a further expedition but an argument. The encyclopedia records, without elaborating, that "domestic troubles awaited him": the superior left in charge of the missions and the rector of the college had fallen out, and it had to be adjusted before anything else could happen. ¹ He had crossed the world twice and come home to settle a dispute between two of his own men.

In Japan he had heard a great deal about China, and though the encyclopedia doubts he had any accurate idea of its size, he understood what it would mean. He arranged an embassy to its sovereign, got himself appointed ambassador by the Viceroy of India, and left Goa in April 1552. ¹

At Malacca the influential Portuguese disapproved and obstructed him, and he talked his way past them. That autumn he reached the small island of Sancian off the Chinese coast, and while he was working out how to get to the mainland he fell ill. The motion of the ship made him worse, so he was taken ashore, where "a rude hut had been built to shelter him. In these wretched surroundings he breathed his last." ¹ Franciscan Media's version is four words shorter: "Before reaching the mainland, he died." ²

The encyclopedia allows itself one burst of feeling about the whole span: "It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years (6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries, traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and converted so many infidels." It calls him the greatest missionary since the Apostles. ¹

He was canonized with Ignatius in 1622, though the bull was not published until the following year because Gregory XV died. ¹ His body is enshrined at Goa; in 1614 the right arm was severed at the elbow on the orders of the Jesuit General and taken to Rome, where it is kept at the Gesù. ¹

Saint Francis Xavier is the patron saint of Japan, jewelers, missions, and sailors. ² In 1925 he and Thérèse of Lisieux were declared co-patrons of the missions - a Jesuit who crossed most of the known world and a Carmelite who never left her convent, given the same job. ²

Japan is the one that carries most of his story. He was there for about two and a half years, spent the first of them unable to say anything, and left behind communities that the encyclopedia says afterward grew "with extraordinary rapidity" once other men had come to keep them going. ¹ The portrait on this page was painted in Japan, with his name lettered in Latin above a line of Japanese, which is its own kind of record. The sailors and the jewelers are stated by the source without explanation and none is offered here. ²

The feast of Saint Francis Xavier is December 3. ² The two sources here put his death a day apart: the 1909 encyclopedia gives 2 December 1552 and Franciscan Media gives December 3, 1552. ¹² Both are recorded; there is no way now to close the gap, and it is a small one for a man who died on an island with almost nobody to write anything down.

The part of his life most people skip is the part before he agreed. He was twenty-four, well placed, and he did not heed Ignatius at once; it took years of what Franciscan Media calls tireless persuasion. ² The most productive missionary since the Apostles spent his early twenties politely declining. If you are being worked on by a friend about something you can feel is true and do not want, you are exactly where he was.

A great deal of the work was small and unglamorous. Ringing a handbell down a street to see whether any children would follow him to church is not the picture the word "missionary" produces. ¹ Neither is a year spent almost entirely on grammar before he was allowed to say anything that mattered. ¹

His letters say he was happy, and they were written by a man who was often too busy to sleep or to say his own office, living on the food of the poorest people wherever he was. ² That is worth holding next to the ending: a fever, a hut on an island, the mainland in sight and not reached. ¹ He did not get China.

Franciscan Media draws the obvious application and then narrows it usefully. All of us are sent to preach, "not necessarily on distant shores but to our families, our children, our husband or wife, our coworkers," and not with words but by our lives - and what made Xavier free to go was sacrifice, "the giving up of all selfish gain." Their summary is the shortest true thing about him: "The greatest gift we have is our time. Francis Xavier gave his to others." ²

He and Thérèse of Lisieux share the patronage of the missions. ² One died on an island at the far end of a decade of travel and the other never went anywhere, and the Church declined to rank them.