In India, St. Francis Xavier writes to friends he expects never to see

GOA, September 20, 1542 AD — Saint Francis Xavier finished his first letter from India at Goa on September 20, 1542 AD, four months after he landed. It told his companions in Rome what he had done in the city’s hospital, its jail and its leper house, and that the Portuguese Governor of India was sending him 200 leagues south, to the Cape of Comorin.

St. Francis Xavier was thirty-six, a nobleman of Navarre and one of the first companions of St. Ignatius of Loyola in the Society of Jesus. King John III of Portugal had asked for men for India. When one of the companions chosen fell ill, St. Ignatius sent St. Francis Xavier in his place.

St. Francis Xavier had sailed from Lisbon on April 7, 1541 AD, on the ship of the new Governor of India, Martim Afonso de Sousa. Two companions went with him, an Italian Jesuit and a Portuguese who was not yet a priest. St. Francis Xavier writes that the passage took “a year and more”, where it “is generally made in about six months”. The fleet wintered six months at Mozambique, where the three lodged in the hospital and “as many as eighty died”. His companions nursed the sick, and St. Francis Xavier heard their confessions and gave them communion. He caught a fever there, was bled nine times and was delirious for three days. The Governor was also ill, and he sailed on ahead of the fleet. He left the two companions behind with the sick and took St. Francis Xavier with him, to hear the Governor’s confession if his illness got worse. The two men reached Goa on May 6, 1542 AD.

At Goa St. Francis Xavier took a room in the hospital. “Aquí en Goa possé en el espital: confesava y comulgava á los enfermos que ay estavan” (Here at Goa I live in the Hospital, administering to the sick the Sacraments of confession and communion), he writes. So many others came to him that, as he put it, “if I could be in ten different places at once, I should never lack penitents”. After midday he went to the jail, where he first taught the prisoners how to confess the sins of their whole lives and then heard their confessions. Then he began teaching boys the prayers, the Creed and the Commandments in a chapel of Our Lady near the hospital; more than three hundred often came. On Sundays St. Francis Xavier went outside the city to say Mass for the lepers. He heard the confession of every leper in the house and gave them all communion, and he wrote: “after the first sermon I preached to them they were all devoted to me.”

“Agora me manda el señor Governador para vna tierra, donde todos dizen que se an de hazer muchos cristianos” (Now the Governor is sending me to a country where everyone says many will become Christians), St. Francis Xavier writes. The country was the coast of the pearl fisheries, near the Cape of Comorin. Two young deacons born on that coast were going with him as interpreters, because they spoke good Portuguese and their own language better still.

St. Francis Xavier lists the hardships of the mission: the long voyage, looking after other people’s souls when a man can barely look after his own, and living in a hot country where idols are worshipped everywhere. “Los que gustan de la cruz de Xpo. nuestro Señor descansan viniendo en estos trabaxos, y mueren quando dellos huyen” (those who take delight in the cross of Christ our Lord find rest in coming into these labours, and die when they run from them), he writes.

St. Francis Xavier did not expect to see his companions again in this life, so he asked them to write to him at length about every member of the Society. He put it in Spanish with Latin mixed in: “porque ya que en esta vida no espero más veros fatie ad fatiem, sea saltem per enigmata id est, per literas” (since in this life I do not expect to see you again face to face, let it be at least through a glass darkly, that is, by letters). The Latin phrases come from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. St. Francis Xavier also asked the companions for full advice on how to deal with the gentiles and Muslims on the coast. He expected God to show him through their letters how to convert them.

He closes the request with a prayer that Christ grant him one favour: “que huse deste inútil istrumento mío para plantar su fe entre gentiles” (that He use this useless instrument of mine to plant His faith among the gentiles). He calls himself “dust and ashes and the vilest of men”, and writes that even so he was in India, and had seen with his own eyes how badly workers were needed there. If God made use of a man like him, St. Francis Xavier writes, “it will put to shame men who are born with capacities for great things, as well as be a spur to others of weak courage”. He offers to be the lifelong servant of anyone who comes out to India “ad laborandum in amplísima vinea Domini” (to labour in the vineyard of the Lord of all). He signed the letter in Latin: “Vester inutilis frater in Cristo” (Your useless brother in Jesus Christ).