Apostleship of Prayer - - Saints
December 3rd --- Francis Xavier, SJ
St. Francis Xavier, S.J. (Basque: 1506-1552) was a missionary working in India, the East Indies, and Japan. Since the time of the Apostles there has not been a greater missionary than Francis Xavier and has often been call the Paul of the East. His ambitions to become a university professor were put aside when he met another Basque, Ignatius Loyola, who convinced him that the best way to use his talents was to spread the Gospel. Xavier became one of Ignatius' first companions in a fellowship that later became the Society of Jesus . He was the first Jesuit missionary. The story of his journeys is an epic of adventure that found him dining with head hunters, washing sores of lepers in Venice, teaching catechism to Indian children, baptizing 10,000 in a single month. He could put up with the most appalling conditions on his long sea voyages and endure the most agonizing extremes of heat and cold. Wherever he went he would seek out and help the poor and forgotten. Because of the slave trade he scolded his patron, King John of Portugal, by saying "You have no right to spread the Catholic faith while you take away all the country's riches. It upsets me to know that at the hour of your death you may be ordered out of paradise."
In a ten-year span he travelled thousands of miles - most of it on his own bare feet. He saw the greater part of the Far East. He died in 1552 on a lonely island of Sancian, near the China coast, while trying to reach mainland China. It was an astonishing feat but what is especially remarkable is the fact that he left behind him a flourishing church wherever he went. Many miracles were attributed to him, but the real miracle of his life was the miracle of his personality, by which he was able to win over thousands to the Faith wherever he went and to win their passionate devotion. The faith planted by him lasts to today. In 1638, Japan closed its gates to foreigners and tried to uproot the Church and eradicate nearly a century of Jesuit progress. In the purge, 40,000 Christians were martyred by beheading or crucifixion rather than deny their faith, probably the largest group of martyrs in the history of the Church. Of the 100 Jesuit martyrs listed, 44 were Japanese. Xavier was declared the Patron of Navigators as well as, along with St. Theresa of Lisieux, the Patron Saint of all Missions.
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