Along a rather busy street in Rome dotted with the various-colored scooters, there stands a rather impressive façade. Churches in Rome are not rare. Edifices of worship, shrines, and even bits of images of the Virgin Mary dot the city’s corners and crevices throughout. Here, though, with buildings rising tightly upward, is a piazza with a church that stands resolute. The church is named after Jesus and is referred to by the Italian: Gesù.
Inside the Gesù, the Baroque interior transports you to a different world covered in filigree and angels made of marble. It is in this church that you can find a glass display case gilt with gold and silver. And inside the case? Well, in that only-too-Catholic fashion, inside that case is… a forearm and hand.
The forearm belongs to St. Francis Xavier (pronounced ZAH-vyer in English), one of the most successful missionaries in the history of Christianity. That hand baptized more souls than perhaps any since the early baptisms of thousands that one reads about in the Scriptures. This is his story in brief.
St. Francis Xavier was born in 1506 in the Basque region of present-day Spain which is also where his friend St. Ignatius was from. When Francis and several other theology students met St. Ignatius at the University of Paris, they were immediately drawn to him. Ignatius was a former soldier who discovered a desire to serve the real king of the world and so wanted to create a group of men to act as evangelical warriors for the faith. In 1534 these students would form the core group that started the Jesuit order. Ignatius sent Francis almost right away to go and preach to the nations, as Jesus had commanded. Francis and his companions, Fr. Paul of Camarino and Francis Mansilhas, sailed from Portugal for India in 1541.
The story of his work in India is dazzling. Christianity had already been in parts of India for over a thousand years thanks in part to St. Thomas the Apostle (so tradition tells us). However, large parts were still not evangelized or had fallen away. The Christians who were there needed catechetical and spiritual support. Francis and his companions traveled throughout India regardless of the dangers due to geography or time of year, even reaching present-day Sri Lanka. Their success in converting souls was astonishing. But this success didn’t quench Francis’ fiery heart.
In his travels, he had heard of a land in which Christianity was practically unheard of. That land was Japan. In 1549, he and some companions set out for that mysterious island nation and landed in Kagoshima. In a year they had 100 converts. At Hirado Francis was well-received and converts came in the droves. By the time he left Japan in 1551, a mere two years later, at least 2,000 Japanese had been baptized. But there were more lands to be given the Gospel.
In August of 1552, Francis Xavier was off again, this time to China. Unfortunately, he fell ill a short time after his arrival. He passed away on December 3, that same year at the young age of 46. Modern estimates of his work put him at about 30,000 baptisms during his eleven years of service in Asia. To put that in perspective a bit, that's the equivalent of baptizing between 7 and 8 people every day for eleven straight years.
What made him so successful? Apart from his personal zeal, because he was not gifted with learning languages very well, he was forced to get creative. He used art to communicate the fundamentals of the faith and to remember creeds. He also met the people “where they were at.” To the Indians he lived as they did in extreme poverty, eating only rice and water, sleeping on the ground in a hut. In Japan, this would not do. So he dressed richly and presented the local magistrate with fine gifts. This was well received, and he gained instant respect and thus an audience with attentive ears.
What’s more, he knew not just to reach out to the unbaptized, he ministered to the already baptized and under catechized. When he arrived in India he found Christians and indeed priests who behaved very badly. By reforming the lives of Christians in those areas, he made the faith much more attractive to new converts.
What does today's saint have to tell us today, then? First, we should all want to bring many more souls to Christ Jesus just as St. Francis Xavier did. We may not be called to travel the seven seas to do it, but we should ask ourselves where in our communities and spheres of influence can we reach out?
Second, we should reform our lives and make sure that we are not living in such a way so as to scandalize our neighbors. If we Catholics are behaving badly, why would anyone else want to become Catholic?
Third, and finally, St. Francis Xavier was a Jesuit and so the very evangelical warrior that his friend St. Ignatius wanted. But Francis was a happy warrior for the faith. He was driven by a zeal for the kingdom of God. And from this he drew his joy at being in the service of kind a king. His relationship with the Lord and his deep spiritual life fed that joy. Let us too live joyfully out of our own prayer so as to attract more souls to Christ.
St. Francis Xavier, pray for us!
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