St. Francis Xavier
Posted on December 8, 2018 by admin No comments
Born: 7 April 1506 Javier, Kingdom of Navarre
Died: 3 December 1552 (aged 46) Portuguese Base at São João Island
Venerated: in Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Anglican Communion
Beatified: 25 October 1619 by Pope Paul V
Canonized: 12 March 1622 by Pope Gregory XV
Feast: 3 December
Patronage: African missions; Agartala, India; Ahmedabad, India; Alexandria, Louisiana; Apostleship of Prayer; Australia; Bombay, India; Borneo; Cape Town, South Africa; China; Dinajpur, Bangladesh; East Indies; Fathers of the Precious Blood; foreign missions; Freising, Germany; Goa, India; Green Bay, Wisconsin; India; Indianapolis, Indiana; Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan; University of Saint Francis Xavier; Sucre, Bolivia; Joliet, Illinois; Kabankalan, Philippines; Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines; Alegria, Cebu, Philippines; diocese of Malindi, Kenya; missionaries; Missioners of the Precious Blood; Navarre, Spain; navigators; New Zealand; parish missions; plague epidemics; Propagation of the Faith; Zagreb, Croatia; Indonesia; Malacca; Malaysia; Mongolia; Sri Lanka
Francis Xavier 7 April 1506 – 3 December 1552), was a Navarrese Basque Roman Catholic missionary, who was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus.
Born in Javier (Xavier in Navarro-Aragonese or Xabier in Basque), Kingdom of Navarre (in present day Spain), he was a companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris, in 1534. He led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly in the Portuguese Empire of the time and was influential in evangelization work, most notably in India. The Goa Inquisition was proposed by St. Francis Xavier. He also was the first Christian missionary to venture into Japan, Borneo, the Maluku Islands, and other areas. In those areas, struggling to learn the local languages and in the face of opposition, he had less success than he had enjoyed in India. Xavier was about to extend his missionary preaching to China when he died on Shangchuan Island.
He was beatified by Pope Paul V on 25 October 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624 he was made co-patron of Navarre. Known as the “Apostle of the Indies” and “Apostle of Japan”, he is considered to be one of the greatest missionaries since Saint Paul. In 1927, Pope Pius XI published the decree “Apostolicorum in Missionibus” naming Saint Francis Xavier, along with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions. He is now co-patron saint of Navarre with San Fermin. The Day of Navarre (Día de Navarra) in Spain marks the anniversary of Saint Francis Xavier’s death, on 3 December 1552.
Early life
Francis Xavier was born in the royal castle of Xavier, in the Kingdom of Navarre, on 7 April 1506 according to a family register. He was the youngest son of Juan de Jasso y Atondo, seneschal of Xavier castle, who belonged to a prosperous farming family and had acquired a doctorate in law at the University of Bologna. Juan later became privy counsellor and finance minister to King John III of Navarre (Jean d’Albret). Francis’s mother was Doña María de Azpilcueta y Aznárez, sole heiress of two noble Navarrese families. He was through her related to the great theologian and philosopher Martín de Azpilcueta.
In 1512, Ferdinand, King of Aragon and regent of Castile, invaded Navarre, initiating a war that lasted over 18 years. Three years later, Francis’s father died when Francis was only nine years old. In 1516, Francis’s brothers participated in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders from the kingdom. The Spanish Governor, Cardinal Cisneros, confiscated the family lands, demolished the outer wall, the gates, and two towers of the family castle, and filled in the moat. In addition, the height of the keep was reduced by half. Only the family residence inside the castle was left. In 1522 one of Francis’s brothers participated with 200 Navarrese nobles in dogged but failed resistance against the Castilian Count of Miranda in Amaiur, Baztan, the last Navarrese territorial position south of the Pyrenees.
In 1525, Francis went to study in Paris at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, University of Paris, where he would spend the next eleven years. In the early days he acquired some reputation as an athlete and a high-jumper.
In 1529, Francis shared lodgings with his friend Pierre Favre. A new student, Ignatius of Loyola, came to room with them. At 38, Ignatius was much older than Pierre and Francis, who were both 23 at the time. Ignatius convinced Pierre to become a priest, but was unable to convince Francis, who had aspirations of worldly advancement. At first Francis regarded the new lodger as a joke and was sarcastic about his efforts to convert students. When Pierre left their lodgings to visit his family and Ignatius was alone with Francis, he was able to slowly break down Francis’s resistance. According to most biographies Ignatius is said to have posed the question: “What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” However, according to James Broderick such method is not characteristic of Ignatius and there is no evidence that he employed it at all.
In 1530 Francis received the degree of Master of Arts, and afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy at Beauvais College, University of Paris.
Missionary work
On 15 August 1534, seven students met in a crypt beneath the Church of Saint Denis (now Saint Pierre de Montmartre), on the hill of Montmartre, overlooking Paris. They were Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laínez, Nicolás Bobadilla from Spain, Peter Faber from Savoy, and Simão Rodrigues from Portugal. They made private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Pope, and also vowed to go to the Holy Land to convert infidels. Francis began his study of theology in 1534 and was ordained on 24 June 1537.
In 1539, after long discussions, Ignatius drew up a formula for a new religious order, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Ignatius’s plan for the order was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540.
In 1540 King John of Portugal had Pedro Mascarenhas, Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, request Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new possessions in India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was encouraged by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to recruit the newly graduated students that would establish the Society of Jesus.
Ignatius promptly appointed Nicholas Bobadilla and Simão Rodrigues. At the last moment, however, Bobadilla became seriously ill. With some hesitance and uneasiness, Ignatius asked Francis to go in Bobadilla’s place. Thus, Francis Xavier began his life as the first Jesuit missionary almost accidentally.
Leaving Rome on 15 March 1540, in the Ambassador’s train, Francis took with him a breviary, a catechism, and De Institutione bene vivendi by Croatian humanist Marko Marulić, a Latin book that had become popular in the Counter-Reformation. According to a 1549 letter of F. Balthasar Gago from Goa, it was the only book that Francis read or studied. Francis reached Lisbon in June 1540 and, four days after his arrival, he and Rodrigues were summoned to a private audience with the King and the Queen.
Francis Xavier devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, mainly in four centres: Malacca, Amboina and Ternate, Japan, and China. His growing information about new places indicated to him that he had to go to what he understood were centres of influence for the whole region. China loomed large from his days in India. Japan was particularly attractive because of its culture. For him, these areas were interconnected; they could not be evangelised separately.
Prayer to St. Francis Xavier
Help me become a hero One who executes both spiritual and physical feats; One who gives himself up to be a part of something greater; One who departs on a journey and returns changed. Help me to emphasize the magis One who does his best in every area; One who strives to be great in all aspects of his life. Help me become a person with and for others. One who respects himself as well as others; One who performs deeds not for himself, but for others. Help me become a leader. One who persuades others to do the right thing; One who guides others through action, not talk. We pray to you for help, St. Xavier. Amen.
Novena to St Francis Xavier
O Great St. Francis, beloved and full of charity, with you I reverently adore the divine Majesty; and since I especially rejoice in the singular gifts of grace, bestowed on you in life, and of glory after death, I give thanks to God, and beg of you, with all the affections of my heart, that by your powerful intercession you may obtain for me above all things the grace to live a holy life and die a holy death. Moreover, I beg of you to obtain for me:
(State your request…).
In asking this favour I am fully resigned to the divine will. I pray and desire only to obtain that which is most conducive to the greater glory of God and the greater good of my soul.
V. Pray for us St Francis Xavier: R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray: O God, you promised, by the preaching and miracles of St
Francis Xavier, to join unto Thy Church the nations of the Indies; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who reverence his glorious merits, may also imitate his example, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Say: Our Father, one Hail Mary and a Glory be.
… St Francis Xavier, Pray for Us …
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