St. Francis Xavier: The Glory of His Age
Francis Xavier was described by an early biographer as “the Glory of his Age and the Society of which he was a member”. Like his great Jesuit confrere, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis was born in Navarre of a noble family, and, also like Ignatius, was born in the family castle. Whereas most of his brothers had chosen the military life, embroiled in the same battles, no doubt, as Ignatius, though fighting on the opposing side, Francis, the youngest of many children, chose a life of study. Having learned Latin at home, he was sent to Paris in 1525, leaving war-torn Navarre behind. He studied philosophy and earned something of a reputation as an athlete, particularly as a high-jumper.
In 1529 a new student arrived to share rooms with Francis and his roommate Peter Faber. This was Ignatius Loyola who, at thirty-eight, was fifteen years their senior. Faber soon fell under Ignatius’ influence whereas Francis was not particularly impressed with the new arrival, treating him with contempt and seeking to make him an object of ridicule. It is said that this was due to the fact that Francis was somewhat worldly at the time and therefore resistant to Ignatius’ zealous approach to the Faith, and this may indeed be the case. It is, however, possible that his initial opposition to Ignatius had been caused by the fact that Ignatius had fought on the side of the enemy in the war in which his brothers had fought. In 1516, when Francis was only ten years old, his brothers had fought in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish army from Navarre. In retribution, the Spanish Governor confiscated the family lands, demolished the outer wall, the gates, and two towers of the family castle, reduced the height of the keep by half, and filled in the moat. Only the family residence inside the castle was left. The young Francis, resident in the castle at the time, witnessed this destruction of his family’s ancestral home. It is, therefore, scarcely any wonder that he might have borne more than an element of resentment against a man who had fought in the army which had brought his family to near ruin. It says much, therefore, for Francis’ humility and Ignatius’ charisma that the young man learned slowly to respect and ultimately admire the older man who had been his family’s enemy.
Having received the degree of Master of Arts in 1530, Francis began teaching Aristotelian Philosophy at the University of Paris. Four years later, having been one of the founding fathers of the Jesuits, he began studying theology and was ordained to the priesthood in 1537.
In 1540, Pope Paul III formally approved the Jesuits and in the same year King John III of Portugal requested that Jesuit missionaries be sent to evangelize the new Portuguese colonies in the Indian subcontinent. Answering the call, Francis sailed to Goa in the following year. It was not an easy voyage. Ordinarily a good sailing ship could sail down the west coast of Africa, round the Cape of Good Hope, stop in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique for supplies, and then reach India in six months. It would take the ship on which Francis was sailing over a year to complete the journey. Headwinds and violent storms, punctuated with dead calms, slowed their passage. Nor was life on board ship without its drama. There were epidemics and those who were not sick were often fighting among themselves. In the midst of the malady, malice and melodrama, Francis ministered to the sick and admonished the sinner. He preached on board ship and at every port of call along the way. Finally, on May 6, 1542, he arrived at the long-awaited destination.
His first impressions could not have been very favorable. “At Goa, as at other trading posts,” wrote Henri Daniel-Rops, “the colonials lived only for luxury, for gold and precious stones, for soft living made softer by dozens of slaves. Even the Portuguese clergy had grown somewhat flabby in the free-and-easy atmosphere of colonial indolence.” Such a path of least resistance was not for the new arrival. He made straight for the local hospital, tending the sick and the dying with his own hands, hearing their confessions and administering the sacraments. He visited the prisons, “swarming with vermin and jammed with a malodorous mixture of convicts and slaves, thugs and thieves”.
Amidst a colonial culture that had become comfortably numb to the needs of the poor, Francis Xavier sprung forth like a colossus of charity. He gathered around him the sick, the weak, the elderly, the penurious, the street children and the homeless. Everywhere he went, he touched the untouchables with the love of one who loves Christ. He baptized more people in a single month than the entire clergy of Goa had baptized in the previous year.
Having rekindled the dwindling flames of faith in Goa he started to be troubled by the itchy feet of one called to be a missionary, heading south to the Pearl Fishery Coast, which extends from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the island of Manaar, near Sri Lanka. Although some people in this region had been baptized ten years earlier, they remained uncatechized and in dire need of instruction. Accompanied by several native clerics from the seminary at Goa, he set sail for Cape Comorin in October 1542, intent on learning the native language so that he could teach and preach more effectively. “Notable about Xavier was his commitment to learning languages,” notes Robert Schreiter of the Catholic Theological Union. “He realized that without being able to communicate with people in their own medium, the effectiveness of his preaching would be much diminished. As imperfectly as he managed to achieve proficiency, he recognized the necessity of striving to speak in the language of the people whom he was addressing.”
Francis devoted almost three years among the people of southern India and Sri Lanka, converting many to the Faith and building nearly forty churches along the coast, in spite of being hampered in his labors by the vicious habits and scandalous example of many of the Portuguese soldiers. Once again, the hardship of the life that he endured was encapsulated by Henri Daniel-Rops: “The frightful heat, followed by the monsoon rains, which in an hour transformed rivers into oceans and roads into lakes of mud, did not make for easy travel.” In Travancore, in southwestern India, he made more converts, tramping on foot from village to village, than the Portuguese clergy, traveling in the relative luxury of horse and carriage, had made in thirty years. Although his preaching to the lower caste people met with great success, his efforts to evangelize the high-caste Brahmins were to no avail. The poor were eager to hear the word of God. The rich turned away.
The limited confines of our present discussion prevent a fully-fledged flight with Francis Xavier to all the places he preached in his mission to the far-flung corners of the world. He reached Japan in July 1549 and an island off the coast of China, truly virgin territory for the Church, in August 1552. It was here, a little over three months later, that he died. A few short years afterwards, on July 31 1556, Ignatius Loyola died in Rome. At the time of his death, the Society of Jesus, which he’d founded with Francis Xavier and five others a little over twenty years earlier, had more than a thousand members spread throughout Europe and in missions around the world. And yet this auspicious start was itself only the beginning of a much bigger story. The seeds planted by the heroic figures of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier would be cast worldwide so that by 1956, four hundred years after its founder’s death, the Society of Jesus had more than 30,000 members, its influence bearing fruit in ways so manifold and multifarious that it is almost impossible to fathom.
