Today is the feast of St. Francis Xavier, a remarkable man. He was born in 1506 in Navarre, now part of Spain. Depending on who you talk to, Navarre is part of the Basque country. In any case, Francis was Basque and Basque was his first language. Xavier is the name of a castle near Pamplona.

When he was 17, he went to the University of Paris and met another Basque nobleman name Ignatius of Loyola. Francis was one of the 7 original members of the Company of Jesus, now called the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits.

Ignatius and Francis never really got along, but that’s not unusual in any group of people. Eventually, Ignatius – as head of the Society, sent Francis to Asia to preach the Gospel.

When he was 35 years old, he sailed to India, which had a small Christian community under the control of the king of Portugal. Francis also had the authority as the Pope’s representative to all of Asia. Goa, a region on the west coast of India, remains today the only Christian area of an otherwise majority Hindu population.

Traveling all over the region, Francis lived as poorly as the people did. Which is to say, utterly poor. He gained many converts.

He was the first Catholic missionary to Japan, spending a full year learning the language – a difficult task for anyone, but especially for Francis.

Japan was then a country closed to European visitors, but Francis’ personality impressed some important local war lords and, again, he made many converts, mainly in Nagasaki – still today the only place in Japan with a sizable Christian community.

He then left Japan after a few years, visited many Asian countries, including what is now called Indonesia – the largest Muslim Country in the world.

When he was 46 years old, he prepared to go to China, which did not allow Europeans to enter on pain of death.

He died on a small island off the coast of China and was later buried, partly in Goa, India and partly in Rome at the Jesuit Church of the Gesu.

He is the patron saint of missionaries, the first of a long, continuous line of courageous missionaries of the Jesuit Society of Jesus.

The sufferings of his travels, his poor diet and constant work caused his early death. Few people today are able to devote themselves so intensely to service of the peoples. But these are many – and we have seen the self-less, potentially fatal, efforts of groups like doctors without borders (Medicine sin Frontier) who work for example with Ebola patients in West Africa.

Each of us, in our own capacity, to the degree of our ability can sacrifice our own interests in the interests of the poor and outcast of the world. It is commendable to give food for food banks, to provide warm clothing to the homeless. But it does not require us to give up all that much. We have food, clothing – an excellent education, a safe environment and are not a poor country. But all our wealth seems dis-proportionally toward multi-billion dollar weapons of war.

One cannot change a nation’s misplaced priorities without personally living the values that reflect our faith. It’s a challenge – especially as we approach Christmas – a feast which the majority of the world celebrates, but with minimal reflection on the fact that Jesus was as poor as anyone of his time. It’s a good reminder to us that we live like kings in comparison to those who suffer so much – both in this country and so many other places in the world.

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