Xaverian Missionaries

And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). In Church history, St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), is an outstanding figure who fully treads in the Apostles footsteps. His missionary spirituality is still relevant in our “digital era”.

For Francis Xavier the “kingdom of God”, set its seed in the consciousness of the disciple.

“What Master Francis saw and experienced during these holy Exercises he was never again to forget. When he returned again to his companions after thirty days he wan another man. Though he was the same cheerful and lovable companion as before, a holy fire illuminated his countenance. His heart was burning with an earnest longing and a holy love for the crucified Christ, his King and Lord. He desired to serve Him henceforth with all the strength of his soul; he wanted to follow Him in life and death… and wished to serve Him alone.” (St. Francis Xavier: G. Schurhammer )

Francis Xavier is an example of a disciple of Christ who goes in search of the precious pearl by getting rid of the mass-mindedness and borrowed consciousness and putting on a new consciousness of a free man.
In our world political environment where power is its own justification and where manipulation and self-perpetuation are the dominant style of leadership, the gospel must testify to a Messiah who “came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20,28)

Francis Xavier, after his conversion to Christ, did not receive an automatic pass to celestial bliss but was called to take up a cross and follow in obedience the One who fed the hungry, healed the sick, was a friend to all manner of men and women, most identified with the poor, the oppressed the weak, and the broken, blessed the peacemakers, and was executed as a political criminal and subversive.

The Gospel presents a call to the church to live in radical contradiction to the values of the world by its proclamation and demonstration of a whole new order called the Kingdom of God.

In a world that does not know God, the church lives in radical antagonism to the existing order of things.

On April 1541, he embarked in a sailing vessel for India, and after a long and dangerous voyage landed at Goa, on May, 1542. He devoted almost three years of his life to preaching to the people of Western India.
In Goa Francis practised itinerant preaching. He went into the street calling, with a bell, the children. He began as he was to go on for the too-short, packed ten years of his earthly work – he based himself as an assistant nurse in the chief hospital. When he was not helping, washing or amusing the sick, he walked in the streets and acquainted himself with the language of the people of Goa, with the mingling of faiths and races in the region, and with the relation to the local life of the self-indulgent and greedy habits of his fellow-European.

Francis grew to realize this as he worked among the oppressed and exploited races, and again and again in his letters spoke with forthright wrath and bitterness against the evil things he witnessed. There is here a power, which I may call irresistible, to thrust men headlong into the abyss. … Robbery is so public and common that it hurts no one’s character and is hardly counted as a fault; people scarcely hesitate to think that what is done with impunity cannot be bad to do… I never cease wondering at the number of new inflexions which, in addition to all the usual forms, have been added, in this new lingo of avarice, to the conjugation of that ill-omened verb “to rob”’. Schurhammer
It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of 10 years (542-1552) could have visited so many countries traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations and converted so many. The great apostolic zeal which animated him and the good deeds performed witness to the healing and empowering presence of the Risen Lord at work in the midst of our history.