These were the gospel words with which Saint Ignatius won the heart of the student, Francis Xavier. Yesterday was the feast of Saint Francis Xavier, who is Brother Francis’ patron. After Saint Paul, he is considered to be the greatest missionary in the history of the Church. “Go, and set fire to the world,” Saint Ignatius told him as the Castilian and the Basque parted company in Rome four hundred and sixty-five years ago. Xavier was off to Portugal, from where, at the behest of King John III, he would sail to India and evangelize the East Indies. Three million souls would receive baptism from the hands of this son of Loyola during his ten years of missionary life.

The Indian Mission

The year was 1542 when he landed in Goa. On the way there he had preached to pagans and Nestorian Christians on the east coast of Africa and on the island of Madagascar. Most of Saint Francis Xavier’s converts in India were Hindu and there were hundreds of thousands of them. The miracles that accompanied his missions were so astounding (and his gift of tongues) that few could resist the truth of the Catholic religion, which they verified. There were numerous occasions of raisings from the dead, one of which he actually performed with the stipulation that the deceased relatives must first promise to convert before he would restore the dead person to life.

From Goa he traveled south along the coastal regions where the greatest populations were, winning a huge harvest along the Fishery Coast, and Cape Comorin (Portuguese for Cape India). The missioner also evangelized Malabar (Kerala) where he had equal success. After planting the Faith on the island of Ceylon (Sri-Lanka) he spent some time on a retreat at the church of Saint Thomas the Apostle in Mylapure. Three years were spent establishing the Cross throughout the western and southern coasts of India.

His retreat at the tomb of Saint Thomas was for the purpose of gathering spiritual strength in order that he might bring the gospel to the Far East. In this the grace of God was most generous with him, but not without his enduring assaults from demons who once beat his body to a pulp as he prayed in a graveyard.

The Far East

In 1545, he boarded a merchant vessel bound for Malacca, Malaysia, where the Portuguese had a trading colony. Sometime prior to this he had penned an open letter to the University of Paris calling upon faculty and students to forget about degrees and come to the East: win souls not titles. As he wrote in his own prayer for the conversion of pagans and infidels, which he said after his Mass: “Behold, O Lord, how to Thy dishonor, hell is being filled with these souls.” In Xavier’s Catholic mind, there was no room for idle speculation; no salvation outside the Church was a reality.

Here, in Malacca, he converted many thousands, but he was not able to root out all the vices, especially those of the Portuguese traders. After a little less than a year here he was off to the islands of the Indonesian archipelago. He preached in the Maluccans to the inhabitants of Amboyna, Ternate, and Baranura, to the most uncivilized of aborigines, for whom he worked stupendous miracles. When he returned to Malacca he met a Japanese convert named Anger who was still a catechumen. So great was the picture this man drew of a noble culture further east, which was ripe for the true religion, that he aroused an insatiable desire in Xavier to go the Japan. Urgent problems, however, required his return to India; so he took Anger with him and had him solemnly baptized, Paul of the Holy Faith, in Goa. It had been six years since Xavier had left Goa. As Vicar Apostolic of the Pope for all the Orient he had much to do in settling ecclesiastical imbroglios between the newly arriving Jesuits and other orders that had been in India long before them.

After settling these affairs and establishing a seminary for native clergy, the saint, like another Paul, re-visited all of his Catholic colonies to the south, leaving zealous priests to serve in each location. In June of 1549, taking Father Cosme de Torres, a Spanish priest whom he had met in the Maluccas, and Jesuit Brother Juan Fernández, he left India for Japan. Pablo de Santa Fe accompanied them.

Japan

Japan’s first missionary arrived at Kagoshima on August 15, 1549. Xavier would spend two years in Japan working under the most difficult conditions imaginable. Paul’s roseate predictions did not come to pass, nor did God give Father Xavier the gift of miracles on this mission. In fact, when it came to tongues, Brother Juan learned the language much easier than Saint Francis and, consequently, he did most of the preaching. The few hundred (some writers estimate three thousand) converts our saint did make among the Japanese would prove to be an unshakeable flock. These converts passed on the Faith to their children, and down through the generations, enduring horrible persecutions, for two hundred years, without priests.

In 1551, Xavier left Father Cosme and Brother Juan behind to nourish the Japanese Church while he returned again to India, having been summoned back to Goa again to resolve more domestic problems among superiors, rectors, and seminarians. He arrived in Goa early in the year 1552. It would be the last year of his life.

A Brief Respite

When his ship pulled into harbor the missionary was received as a living saint. Canons fired, banners flew, choirs sang, church bells rang, and children and the infirm lined the docks to receive a blessing and touch his garment. Francis Xavier was mortified, but kept his modesty and dignity. While in the city he reconciled many divisive feuds and lawsuits, in fact all the issues that were presented to him for judgment, and he gave counsel to a devout viceroy on how to rule as a just Catholic. It took two attempts to make it to his scheduled meeting with Governor Vaz. The first appointment found him rushing through the streets a half hour late because he had to be shaken out of an ecstasy, which had him suspended one foot off the ground in the church belfry. Suddenly, as he ran to the governor’s house, he was caught up again, and could only walk around in circles fanning his chest because his heart felt as it were on fire. When he came to it was too late for the meeting. “I guess the Good Lord wanted this day all for himself,” he said as he laughed over the whole episode.

It was said even by a few contemporary critics that Father Francis was too restless. And surely he was. But that was not his own doing, but the Holy Ghost’s. This final excursion, however, proved to be rather precarious. While in Japan he had heard much about the Celestial Empire of China. It was related to him that if he wanted to convert Japan he would have to first convert China because Japan’s bonzes looked to China for religious instruction.

Two Shores in Sight

Father Xavier decided that he must go to China and the Portuguese Viceroy seconded the idea, making the Jesuit an ambassador of Portugal to the royal emperor. With high hopes and loaded with gifts he left Goa in April, 1552. Overcoming a host of obstacles he managed to find transport on a Portuguese merchant vessel that was headed for the Chinese island of Sancian, the only place where trade could take place between the Chinese and westerners. They arrived there in the autumn of the year. None of the Chinese, however, would risk transporting the Jesuit to the mainland. It looked like the expedition was a waste. As the weather grew colder and the trading ceased Father Xavier grew sick with fever, which the rocking of the anchored vessel exacerbated. The sailors decided to carry him to shore where there was a flimsy hut with only a thatched roof to shelter him. With only one companion by his side (I believe it was one of his converts from Madagascar) the Apostle of the Indies died on December 3, 1552. The loneliness of that desolate island was a far cry from the pageantry which greeted him a year before when his ship sailed into the bay of Goa — all alone, with one servant (whom the saint foresaw abandoning the Faith), and two guardian angels. From where he lay he could see the Chinese coast. And, as the sun set and his eyes closed and his breathing ceased with one final gulp of salty air . . . he could see heaven.

Postscript

I came across a blog called Chronicle of a Meandering Traveler that gives a history of our saint’s “body” after his death. Yes, an authentic history of the exhumations and the miracles that accompanied his incorrupt remains! It is positively astonishing.

After reading this summary I can see why the saint was so bold as to say to Father Marcello Mastrilli, when he appeared to him in 1633 with the Novena of Grace, that he had “great power in heaven.” A brief history of this powerful novena, and the occasion that precipitated it, can be read here. The Novena ends, not on the saint’s feastday, but on his canonization day, March 12. Pope Gregory XV canonized him and Saint Ignatius on the same day in 1622.

Tags: King John III, missionary, Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Ignatius