Learning from an Unlikely, but Hugely Successful Evangelist

Today we continue our regular series called “Learning from the Saints.” Our guide is expert Bert Ghezzi, a dear friend of mine and the author of numerous books including Voices of the SaintsSaints at Heartand Discover Christ: Developing a Personal Relationship with Jesus.

His more recent books are The Heart of Catholicism and Prayers to the Holy Spirit. You can learn more about Bert and his work at BertGhezzi.com.

Today, Bert profiles St. Francis Xavier, perhaps the greatest Catholic evangelist of all time.
 


 
By a series of divinely inspired accidents, St. Francis Xavier abandoned his plan to be a scholar and became a great missionary, second perhaps only to St. Paul. If you could interview him, he would say that he was unskilled in evangelism and languages, and so a most unlikely candidate to carry the Gospel to foreign lands. Yet in just one decade he introduced Christianity to tens of thousands in the East.

Francis XavierIn 1533, Xavier completed his studies at the University of Paris and was about to begin his career as a theologian. Instead, however, he sensed a divine call to join St. Ignatius Loyola in the Society of Jesus. So in 1534 Francis Xavier became one of the first Jesuits and was ordained a priest three years later.

Ignatius planned to deploy Francis as a teacher, but reluctantly sent him to India in the place of a sick brother. En route, Francis, the intellectual, made friends of many rough seamen and evangelized them. He arrived in Goa in 1542 and plunged into his work.

Xavier’s mission strategy was simple. When he entered a village, he gathered the idle and the young. He introduced them to Christ and the Church, using the Creed, the Our Father and the Ten Commandments. He won the children with songs and jingles and they helped him reach the village adults. As soon as people expressed faith in the Creed, he baptized them. With this primitive method, St. Francis Xavier converted thousands of souls and planted the Catholic Church from south India to Japan.

In the face of hardship, St. Francis drew strength from his Jesuit brothers in Europe. “For my own great comfort,” he wrote them, “and that I may have you constantly in mind, I have cut from your letters to me your names written in your own hand, and these I always carry about with me, together with the vow of profession which I made, to be my solace and refreshment.”

Xavier exhausted himself trying to meet the needs he saw, and wished that other young people would decide to abandon their own plans and serve on mission. “How many in these countries,” he once wrote to Ignatius,

“fail to become Christians, simply for the lack of a teacher of the Christian faith! Often I think of running throughout the universities of Europe, and principally Paris and the Sorbonne, there to shout at the top of my voice, like one who had lost his senses–to tell those men whose learning is greater than their wish to put their knowledge to good use, how many souls, through their negligence, must lose Heaven and end up in hell. If all, who with so much labor, study letters, would pause to consider the account they must one day render God concerning the talents entrusted to them, I am sure that they would come to say: ‘Here I am, Lord. Send me where you please, even to India.’ How much happier and safer they would be, eventually, when facing that dreadful hour from which no man can escape. Then, with the faithful servant of the Gospel they could say: ‘Lord, five talents you gave me; behold five others I have gained.'”

St. Francis Xavier died in 1552 while he was waiting to be smuggled into China.
 
 
(Image Credit: Novena of Grace)
 


 
Read more from Bert at his website www.BertGhezzi.com, or check out his many books on Amazon.