Celebrating the Feast of St. Francis Xavier

Joining together with other Jesuit works around the world, the Xavier community gathered this morning to mark the feast of our patron and namesake, St. Francis Xavier.

Rev. Louis Garaventa, S.J. celebrated the feast day Mass, offering reflections on Xavier’s life and “fiery passion for souls” to the 1,200 students, faculty, staff, and alumni in attendance. Xavier’s commitment to setting the world aflame with the Gospel remains instructive 463 years after his death, Fr. Garaventa noted. (To read the text of his homily, click here.)

Born into a Basque noble family, Francis Xavier arrived at the University of Paris in 1525. There he met Ignatius Loyola, who would become his close friend and mentor—and change the course of his life. Ignatius worked patiently to convince his proud, ambitious friend to embrace a life of devotion, asking him, “What profits a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”

Eventually inspired by Ignatius’s example, Xavier became one of the founders of the Society of Jesus. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1537. Four years later, Xavier accepted Ignatius’s charge to spread the Good News in the East. As apostolic nuncio to Asia, he embarked on a challenging missionary journey from which he would never return.

“What was it that impelled Xavier to leave everything and go to the literal frontiers and edges of the world? What made him go almost halfway around the world on a harrowingly long and dangerous journey to lands of strikingly different cultures and religions and strange and difficult languages?” Fr. Garaventa asked in his homily. “Jesus gives us the answer in today’s gospel reading in which he speaks of the importance of listening to His words and then taking those words and acting on them. … It was in listening to God and acting on his words that Xavier found his fiery passion for souls. No wonder then that Ignatius sent him to the East to set that hemisphere on fire with the Holy Spirit.”

For the last 10 years of his life, Xavier traveled from India to Japan, preaching the Gospel to the poor and the sick, baptizing an estimated 30,000 people. His only attention to his personal needs was a pair of boots. He barely ate enough to stay alive. (To view a digital representation of his missions, visit the USA Northeast Province website.)

Xavier’s great goal was to preach the Gospel in China, but illness befell him before he could achieve it. He died on an island near the Chinese coast at age 46, on December 3, 1552. He was canonized alongside Ignatius Loyola in 1622.