r. Rino Benzoni, Superior General of the Xaverian Missionaries, provides us with the following reflection on Saint Francis Xavier.
April 7 2006 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier. For this reason we celebrate a
“Xaverian Year’, which goes from December 3 2005 to December 3 2006, the liturgical feast of Saint Francis Xavier.
A Providential Occasion
A name, we know, can be a simple conventional way to call a thing or a person. It doesn’t matter, really, that one be called one way or another. We just need to agree!
But a name can also be something which defines the identity of a person, different from any other, unique and impossible to duplicate. As the old Latin goes
“nomen est homen;” the name is the man.
Hence derive also two possible mindsets on the part of the Xaverians and their friends with regard to the 500th anniversary of the birth of Saint Francis Xavier, patron of the missions and of the Xaverians. We could take it as a simple recurrence, a conventional fact. After all, what will change in this year compared to previous years?
It could be, however, a good occasion to come to know better this great person which has left a mark on the history of mission, the Church and society, not just of his times, but also later. Above all, it can offer us, once again, the occasion to question ourselves and the mission that has been entrusted to us and we are called upon to carry out.
Francis Xavier, model of a missionary
Of course, times have changed radically. Some of the reasons that urged Saint Francis Xavier and certain ways of making mission in his era, today are no longer feasible. What has not changed is our need to know the true God as only Jesus could make God known to us. Also not changed is the openness to receiving this God, when this God who is Father, is proclaimed.
Neither has changed the main means for this proclamation, and this is the witness of life more than of words. The encounter with Jesus has, in fact, deeply changed the life of the one who announces him and it has filled it with meaning. Not for nothing, Saint Francis Xavier himself had to go through a conversion.
His great missionary zeal
And then we must remember all that he has “worked and suffered to spread the kingdom of God.” We can say it with a word, a bit out of fashion, but which seems to be the principal characteristic of Saint Francis Xavier: his great missionary zeal.
During the day Francis Xavier belonged wholly to others. The night belonged all for God.
Even today we are struck by his untiring activity, how in only eleven years he was able to visit so many lands, with the transportation means of those days and in the midst of so many dangers, and how he was able to start so many and flourishing communities which have resisted the wear-and-tear of time.
He wrote: “During this storm, I asked God our Lord that, were I to be freed from it, it be only for me to face storms as strong and more so, for His greater
service.” And besides these labors and dangers, the disappointments and the deceitfulness of the European colonists and merchants, themselves Christians, which undermined the credibility of Christianity. About these Francis wrote:
“It’s because of them that we don’t make headways.”
He was not an adventurer
Saint Francis Xavier was not a seeker of adventures. He was not after riches nor success in life. What impelled him was not the whim of tourism nor the simple wish to know new cultures and new peoples. He would write:
“To live on earth without relishing God it’s not life, but continual
death.” What sustained and urged him on was the love of God, relished and cultivated.
A witness has written of him: “During the day he belonged wholly to others. The night belonged all for
God.” Here, once again, also for today’s missionary, appears clear the fundamental law of the Christian life: one cannot truly love one’s fellowmen, particularly the poor, if this love is not nourished and sustained by the love of God.
The beneficial influence which Saint Francis Xavier has had on the lands where he has lived and worked has been great. Through the centuries, his example has attracted so many to follow his example and dedicate their life to the proclamation of the Gospel among the peoples. The importance of his activity has been felt not only by the Church, but also by civil society.
Francis Xavier and Guido Conforti
We Xaverians, particularly, ask: “Why did Bishop Conforti want to give us this name and not another? Why didn’t he want us to be called ‘Confortians,’ thus perpetuating his own name, as has been the case with other religious and missionary institutes?”
He insisted, instead, that we be called the “Pious Society of Saint Francis
Xavier,” now popularly known as “Xaverian Missionaries.
In the Constitutions, which he left us the very year of his death (1931), Bishop Conforti wrote that our Congregation
“takes its name and inspiration from the glorious Apostle of the Indies."
Few words, in the language then in use for Constitutions, but for us Xaverians important words. In another text of the same Constitutions he invites his missionaries to have
“a special devotion to Saint Francis Xavier and to the Apostles, who have labored and suffered for the spreading of the Kingdom of God. And may they consider these as excellent models to imitate and powerful intercessors with
God.” Hence, inspiration and model.
The true missionary is a saint
We can understand, now, why our Founder Bishop Conforti, wanted us to be named after this godly missionary, Francis Xavier. He wanted to tell us that, to be entirely dedicated to mission, we must be entirely dedicated to God. Pope John Paul II told us the same things in his Encyclical
Redemptoris Missio, when he wrote: “The true missionary is a
saint.”
It is for this reason that Blessed Conforti wanted that his missionaries be “consecrated” in religious life. Mission is a task which surpasses so much our mere human strengths that it can only be God’s work. To be “consecrated” means to be totally available to God so that God be the one who acts through us.
Xaverian Best Wishes
Dear Xaverians and dear friends of the Xaverians, how to make my Best Wishes to you for this
“Xaverian Year?” I will do it with the very words with which Francis Xavier closed some of his letters. He used to write:
“May God grant you to grasp His holy will and, once grasped, to have the great strengths and the graces to fulfill it in this life in
love!”
Happy 2006, with Francis Xavier and the Xaverian Missionaries!
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)