St. Francis Xavier is recognized as the patron saint of foreign missions. He was born into a noble family, and they were the richest in the kingdom. During his higher education in Paris, he met two important people who greatly influenced his life, his roommates Pierre Fab and Ignatius. This relationship gradually revolutionized his life. In 1534, Francis knelt on the floor next to St. Ignatius Loyola and five others in a church on Montmartre and took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They were the first Jesuits, and Francis was ordained a priest three years later.
In 1540, he sailed from Portugal to India, never to return. When Francis arrived in Goa, India, he found a Portuguese settlement about thirty years old. His primary aim was to evangelize the settlers. He encouraged the Portuguese to live their Christian faith if they had any hope of winning India for Jesus. After working on his own for some years establishing the basic structures of an organized church, including a seminary, Francis went on the first of his incessant voyages, the sub-missions inside of his greater mission to Asia.
He put the Our Father and Hail Mary to music and made these prayers easier to memorize. He became a father to poor people and baptized thousands that helpers had to hold up his arm to continue his sacramental work. Today, that arm is found in a reliquary in the Jesuit’s mother church in Rome, the Gesù, near the tomb of Saint Ignatius Loyola. On a journey, he heard of Japan, where no European had yet entered. Francis was the first missionary to step his foot into the Land of the Rising Sun in 1549. After little visible success in Japan, he embarked on a plan to enter the forbidden territory of China. But on December 2, 1552, Francis Xavier died of fever at the age of forty-six, on a small island a few miles away from the shores of mainland China.
This Apostle to the Indians and Japanese was canonized in 1622 and is considered the Church’s greatest missionary after Saint Paul. His body is largely incorrupt and rests in a glass coffin in a church in Goa, India.
Prayer
God of all nations, raise up in this and every land, evangelists, and heralds of Your kingdom, that like Your servant Francis Xavier, we may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Prepared and updated by:
Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Penampang, Sabah Malaysia.
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