3/12 Feast of Saint Francis Xavier (Lễ Quan Thầy Thánh Francis Xavier) Francis Xavier, SJ, born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta (7 April 1506 – 3 December 1552), was a Roman Catholic missionary born in Xavier, Kingdom of Navarre (now part of Spain), and co-founder of the Society of Jesus. He was a study companion of St. Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, (Paris) in 1534.[1] He led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly in the Portuguese Empire of the time. He was influential in evangelization work most notably in India. He also ventured into Japan, Borneo, the Maluku Islands, and other areas which had, until then, not been visited by Christian missionaries. In these areas, being a pioneer and struggling to learn the local languages in the face of opposition, he had less success than he had enjoyed in India. It was a goal of Xavier to extend his missionary preaching to China but he died in Shangchuan Island shortly before doing so. St. Francis Xavier was beatified by Paul V on 25 October 1619, and was canonized by Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624 he was made co-patron of Navarre alongside Santiago. He is considered to be one of the greatest missionaries since St. Paul.[2] He is known as the Apostle of the Indies, and the Apostle of Japan”. In 1927, Pope Pius XI published the decree “Apostolicorum in Missionibus” naming St. Francis Xavier, along with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions.[3] He is now co-patron saint of Navarre with San Fermin. The Day of Navarre (Día de Navarra) in Spain marks the anniversary of Saint Francis Xaviers death on December 3, 1552. Francis Xavier was born in the castle of Xavier, in the Kingdom of Navarre, on 7 April 1506 according to a family register. He was born to an aristocratic family of the Kingdom of Navarre, the youngest son of Juan de Jasso, privy counselor to King John III of Navarre (Jean dAlbret), and Doña Maria de Azpilcueta y Aznárez, sole heiress of two noble Navarrese families. He was thus related to the great theologian and philosopher Martín de Azpilcueta. Notwithstanding different interpretations on his first language,[4] no evidence suggests that Xaviers mother tongue was other than Basque, as stated by himself and confirmed by the sociolinguistic environment of the time. In 1512 under Ferdinand the Catholic as King of the first political unit referred to as Spain, joint Spanish troops from both the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon commanded by Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, second Duke of Alba, first invaded partially the Kingdom of Navarre. Three years later, Francis father died when Francis was only nine years old. In 1516, Francis brothers participated in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders from the kingdom, and the Spanish Castilian kingdoms Governor Cardinal Cisneros ordered to confiscate the family lands, demolish the outer wall, the gates and two towers of the family castle, and fill in the moat. In addition, the height of the keep was reduced in half.[5] Only the family residence inside the castle was left. In 1522 a brother of Xavier is found along with another 200 Navarrese earls staging dogged but failed resistance against the Castilian Count of Miranda in Amaiur, Baztan, the last Navarrese territorial position south of the Pyrenees. For the following years with his family, till he left for studies in Paris in 1525, Francis life in the Kingdom of Navarre, then partially occupied by Spain, was surrounded by a war that lasted over 18 years, ending with the Kingdom of Navarre being partitioned into two territories, and the King of Navarre and some loyalists abandoning the south and moving to the northern part of the Kingdom of Navarre (currently France). In 1525, Francis went to study at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris. In 1529 a new student, Ignatius of Loyola, came to room with Francis and Pierre Favre. By the time they met Ignatius, Peter and Francis were already friends sharing lodgings. At 38, Ignatius was much older than Peter and Francis, who were both 23 at the time. Peter was won over by Ignatius to become a priest and work for the salvation of souls but Francis proved more difficult as he had aspirations of worldly advancement. Only after Peter left their lodgings to visit his family, when Ignatius was alone with the proud Navarro, was he was able to slowly break down Xaviers stubborn resistance.[6] Ignatius is said to have posed the question: What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?[7] In 1530 Francis received the degree of Master of Arts, and afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy at Beauvais College. On 15 August 1534, in a small chapel in Montmartre, together with Loyola and five others,[8] he made private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Pope, and also vowed going to the Holy Land to convert infidels.[9] Francis began his study of theology in 1534 and was ordained on June 24, 1537. He celebrated his first Mass in Vicenza after forty days in prayers. In 1539, after long discussions, Ignatius drew up a Formula for a new order. [6] Ignatiuss plan of the orders organization was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540 by the bull containing the Formula of the Institute.[10] It was in 1540 that the King of Portugal, John III, had, Pedro Mascarenhas, the Portuguese ambassador at the Vatican, ask the Pope for Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new Indian possessions. Loyola promptly appointed Nicholas Bobadilla and Simão Rodrigues. At the last moment, however, Bobadilla became seriously ill. With some hesitance and uneasiness, Ignatius asked Francis to go in Bobadillas place. Thus, Xavier accidentally began his life as an apostle to the East.[11] Leaving Rome in 1540, Francis took with him a breviary, a catechism, and a Latin book (De Institutione bene vivendi) written by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulić that had become popular in the counter-reformation. According to a 1549 letters of F. Balthasar Gago in Goa, it was the only book that Francis read or studied Francis Xavier was the first Jesuit missionary.[13] Francis devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, after being requested by King John III of Portugal to travel to Portuguese India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was encouraged by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to recruit the newly graduated youngsters that would establish the Society of Jesus.[14] Francis Xavier moved mainly in four centers: Malacca, Amboina and Ternate, Japan, and China. His growing information about new places indicated to him that he had to go to what he understood were centers of influence for the whole region. China loomed large from his days in India. Japan was particularly attractive because of its culture. For him, these areas were interconnected; they could not be evangelized separately.[15] Goa and India[edit] He left Lisbon on 7 April 1541, Xaviers thirty-fifth birthday, along with two other Jesuits and the new viceroy Martim Afonso de Sousa, on board the Santiago. As he departed, Francis was given a brief from the pope appointing him apostolic nuncio to the East.[13] From August until March 1542 he remained in Portuguese Mozambique, and arrived in Goa, then capital of Portuguese India on 6 May 1542, thirteen months after leaving Lisbon. Following quickly on the great voyages of discovery, the Portuguese had established themselves at Goa thirty years earlier. Francis primary mission, as ordered by King John III, was to restore Christianity among the Portuguese settlers. The Christian population had churches, clergy, and a bishop, but many of the Portuguese were ruled by ambition, avarice, revenge, and debauchery. There were a few preachers but no priests beyond the walls of Goa. To meet this challenging situation Xavier decided that he must begin by instructing the Portuguese themselves in the principles of faith, and gave much of his time to the teaching of children. His mornings were usually spent in tending and comforting the distressed in hospital and prison; after that, he walked through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children and servants to catechism.[16] He was invited to head Saint Pauls College, a pioneer seminary for the education of secular priests that became the first Jesuit headquarters in Asia.[17] Conversion of the Paravars by Francis Xavier in South India, in a 19th-century colored lithograph. Xavier soon learned that along the Pearl Fishery Coast, which extends from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the island of Manaar, off Ceylon, there was a Jati of people called Paravas, many of whom had been baptized ten years before, merely to please the Portuguese, who had helped them against the Moors, but remained uninstructed in the faith. Accompanied by several native clerics from the seminary at Goa, he set sail for Cape Comorin in October 1542. First he set himself to learn the language of the Paravas; he taught those who had already been baptized, and preached to those who werent. His efforts with the high-caste Brahmins remained unavailing.[16] He devoted almost three years to the work of preaching to the people of southern India, converting many, and reaching in his journeys even the Island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Many were the difficulties and hardships which Xavier had to encounter at this time, sometimes because the Portuguese soldiers, far from seconding his work, hampered it by their bad example and vicious habits.[18] He built nearly 40 churches along the coast, including St. Stephens Church, Kombuthurai, mentioned in his letters dated 1544. During this time, he was able to visit the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle in Mylapore, (now part of Madras (Chennai) then in Portuguese India).[13] He set his sights eastward in 1545 and planned a missionary journey to Makassar on the island of Celebes (todays Indonesia). As the first Jesuit in India, Francis had difficulty achieving much success in his missionary trips. His successors, such as de Nobili, Matteo Ricci, and Beschi, attempted to convert the noblemen first as a means to influence more people, while Francis had initially interacted most with the lower classes (later though, in Japan, Francis changed tack by paying tribute to the Emperor and seeking an audience with him) Source; Wikipedia ---------------------------------------- 3/12 Feast of Saint Francis Xavier (Lễ Quan Thầy Thánh Francis Xavier) Thánh Phanxicô Xaviê (đôi khi viết Phan-xi-cô Xa-vi-ê; 7 tháng 4 năm 1506 – 3 tháng 12 năm 1552) là nhà truyền giáo Công giáo tiên phong người Navarra và đồng sáng lập viên của Dòng Tên. Theo Giáo hội Công giáo Rôma, ông làm cho nhiều người theo Kitô giáo hơn người nào từ thời Thánh Phaolô.[1] Vì Thánh Xaviê phục vụ ở nhiều quốc gia khắp thế giới, ông được gọi theo nhiều tên, bao gồm: Sam Fransisku Xavier hoặc Sanv Fransisk Xavier trong tiếng Konkan, San Frantzisko Xabierkoa trong tiếng Basque, San Francisco Javier trong tiếng Tây Ban Nha, São Francisco Xavier trong tiếng Bồ Đào Nha, 성자 프란체스코 사비에르 trong tiếng Triều Tiên, フランシスコ・ザビエル trong tiếng Nhật Bản, 聖方濟沙勿略 trong tiếng Trung Quốc, và Franciscus Xaverius trong tiếng Latinh. năm 1904, Giáo Hoàng Piô X đã đặt ông làm làm Thánh bổn mạng các xứ truyền giáo
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:07:26 +0000
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