Saints in Advent – St Francis Xavier
St Francis Xavier, whose feast we keep on 3rd December, was born in 1506 in Spain, but as a young man was sent to Paris to study. There he met a fellow Spaniard, St Ignatius of Loyola, who inspired Francis Xavier and six others of his fellow-countrymen to form the Society of Jesus. Having been ordained a priest in 1537, Xavier was sent as a missionary to India as soon as the Jesuits had been formally approved in 1539. He spent the rest of his life on mission, based in Goa, but travelling all around the Far East, most famously to Japan, where he spent two and a half years, and China, where he was headed when he died on an island just off the Chinese coast in 1552. In the course of his ten years of mission, many spent living in the most basic conditions, he preached the Gospel to many different peoples and converted thousands.
It is particularly appropriate that we celebrate this Patron Saint of foreign missions, famous for his apostolic zeal, in this season of Advent, which reminds us of the urgency of preaching the Gospel message in its focus both on Christ’s first coming at Christmas, and his second coming. In the first, our preparation for the celebration of the Incarnation helps us better to appreciate the ‘glad tidings of great joy’ (Luke 2: 10) which we are called to share with all peoples, as the angel did with the shepherds at Bethlehem. As for the second, this season reminds us that we ‘know not the day or the hour’ (Matt. 24: 36) of that coming, encouraging us not to delay but to prepare ourselves and others for that day with the zeal exemplified by St Francis Xavier.
