Giving thanks for faith, and the faithfulness of St. Francis Xavier

National Post, 06 December 2019

To be in Goa for the feast of St. Francis Xavier is to give thanks. For what exactly? Really for everything

OLD GOA, INDIA — Who is the greatest missionary in the history of Christianity? No question about that. Saul of Tarsus set out for Damascus to persecute the infant Church, and became Paul the Apostle, its greatest herald, along the way.

He would explain why he launched himself — at the cost of beatings, stonings, shipwrecks and imprisonments, to say nothing of his final martyrdom — on constant missionary journeys throughout the ancient world. It is because without missionaries the faith will wither and die. God himself, we might say, is at stake.

“How can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent?”

That’s the Letter to the Romans. The missionary, etymologically from the Latin, is the one who is sent. Sent to do what? To preach that those who hear might believe and call upon God, encounter him, experience his love and love him in return, and accept his gift of salvation.

St. Paul was the greatest Christian missionary. A credible claim to second-place belongs to St. Francis Xavier who, from his 1542 arrival in Goa to his death 10 years later off the coast of China, carried on an immense missionary activity, preaching the Gospel to hundreds of thousands in the most astonishing of circumstances.

On Tuesday, we celebrated in Goa the feast day of St. Francis Xavier. Francis arrived here with the Portuguese explorers and the establishment of the Portuguese colonial headquarters in Goa made it his base of evangelical operation. After his death on Dec. 3, 1552, near China, he was buried, exhumed, transferred, buried again, and then brought to Goa about a year later. The corpse was miraculously incorrupt, like a man sleeping. It remained in that state for decades in Goa. In the early 17th century the arm was removed and brought to Rome, causing the desiccation of the body, though not its decomposition. It remains that way to this day, despite spending some 400 years exposed to the open air before being enclosed in a silver and glass case in the 1950s.

It is not for the wonders of his body that one comes to Goa to celebrate Francis Xavier, but for the good of the pilgrim’s spirit. Francis was sent to the Indies by his friend and co-founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola. When Ignatius sent Francis off, he knew that he would likely never see him again. And he didn’t. The parting words were thus chosen with care: Ite Inflammate Omnia – Go and set the world on fire.

Continue reading at the National Post:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/raymond-de-souza-giving-thanks-for-faith-and-the-faithfulness-of-st-francis-xavier