Saint Francis Xavier

Francisco de Jasso was born in the castle of Javier, in Navarre, on April 7, 1506. His family had lost everything after the Spanish conquest of Navarre: their property confiscated, the castle partly torn down, two brothers at war against the king of Spain. He went to study in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and at twenty-two he was already a master. To his college, Sainte-Barbe, came a Basque with a limp, fifteen years older, Ignatius of Loyola, who kept repeating a question to him until he wore him down: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses himself? In 1534, at Montmartre, seven of them took the first vows: that was the beginning of the Society of Jesus. In 1541, on his thirty-fifth birthday, he sailed from Lisbon for India. He never came back. In eleven years he traveled through Goa, the Fishery Coast, Malacca, the Moluccas and finally Japan, where he was the very first Christian missionary and where he stayed two years, learning what he could of the language and customs. He was the one who understood that in Asia local cultures had to be respected rather than replaced — an idea his successors would carry forward and that would prove costly in Rome. He died on December 3, 1552, on the island of Shangchuan, off the coast of China, which he was trying to reach. He was forty-six. He is patron of the missions together with Thérèse of Lisieux. If your name is Francis Xavier, today is your name day.