All the Pope's Saints. Sean Salai, S.J.
he passed away in deep tranquility.
St. Francis Xavier (1506–1552), a hedonistic young nobleman from the opposite political fence of Spain from St. Ignatius, was a harder sell than Faber because he was so stubbornly self-seeking. In many ways, Xavier was a throwback to Ignatius’s younger days, and it was precisely this strong will that gave Loyola such high hopes for him.
Ignatius liked Xavier so much that he wouldn’t leave him alone, hassling him daily with the singsong refrain: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Finally, during a nocturnal outing, Xavier was scared straight by catching sight of a syphilitic acquaintance dying in the streets. He came to his senses and began to follow the spiritual guidance of Ignatius with enthusiasm, making the Exercises and pledging to do great things.
True to his word, Xavier became the order’s first great missionary when Ignatius chose him to replace a Jesuit who couldn’t travel to the missions in India. When St. Ignatius asked him to go, Xavier famously responded without hesitation: “Here I am, send me.” And St. Francis Xavier left for India knowing he would never again see home, St. Ignatius, or any of his loved ones.
More a man of action than of words, Xavier traveled all over Asia, exploring peoples and places largely unknown to Europeans at the time. He soon ended up in Japan, where Portuguese traders had only recently made contact, pushed farther inland than any European had done up to that point, and established the first Christian missions in a number of fishing villages.
Hearing in Japan of the great Chinese people, Xavier spent the rest of his short life trying to get into that country. But while awaiting a boat to the mainland in 1552, he took ill and died off the southern coast of China on the island of Sancian.
As Xavier’s body retraced his missionary steps backward, being carried in public funeral processions at each stop, the crowds hailed him as a saint, and in India one devout Catholic woman bit off his toe to keep as a relic. The Jesuits, of course, made her give it back.
Like St. Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew, summoned by the angel to flee into Egypt with the Holy Family, St. Francis Xavier placed himself entirely in God’s hands, walking the fields of Asia with a profound sense of trust in God’s protection. There was nobody to translate for him, feed him, or help him understand the cultures he met. He had only his faith in God to drive him.
Recognized later as the greatest missionary since St. Paul, and honored by Christians of all backgrounds, Xavier achieved incredible results because he surrendered to God with a deep intensity known only to the saints. In Asia, he spent every ounce of his energy teaching Catholicism to children and simple persons, reporting so many baptisms at one point that he didn’t even have time to recite his breviary. Isolated by cultural differences and by an unreliable mail system from Jesuit headquarters in Rome, he sewed the few letters he received from St. Ignatius into his cassock, keeping them over his heart to feel their friendship more deeply.
St. Francis Xavier’s radical trust in God appears especially striking in the Act of Contrition he wrote for himself:
My God, I love you above all things,
and I hate and detest with my whole soul the sins
by which I have offended you,
because they are displeasing in your sight,
who are supremely good and worthy to be loved.
I acknowledge that I should love you
with a love beyond all others,
and that I should try to prove this love to you.
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