Saint Francis Xavier, East Asia, and the "Catholicity" of Christ

December 3: The incredible SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER, missionary to East Asia. To his intercession (among others) I entrust my ongoing and increasingly difficult work of studying and "listening to" the great historic civilization of China and the drama and difficulty of its recent past and present reality. Today's Saint began to build a "Great Bridge" to facilitate an encounter with the peoples beyond the "Great Wall", and his confreres - Ruggieri, Ricci, Trigault, Valignano, et. al. along with their Chinese collaborators Li Zhizao, Xu Guangqi, Yang Tingjun, Candida Xu, and many others - continued a remarkable, profoundly human, mutually enriching dialogue of cultures within the missionaries' witness to Christ and the free response of Chinese converts. This permitted the Gospel to take root and flourish in an "organic" Chinese inculturation wherein all that was true and beautiful in China's great wisdom tradition opened itself to the West and showed new facets of the "Catholicity" of Christ's Church. Tragically, misunderstandings and, eventually, the greedy abuses of colonial domination by Western nations obscured this evangelical and cultural work (though not entirely — the Catholic faith remained through the centuries and has endured many trials).

But Francis Xavier was no seeker of earthly power or riches; he was a man on fire with the love of God, with a passion to witness to Jesus through all the world. He preached in India, was the first Catholic missionary in Japan, and longed to reach China - where he finally died of an illness (having reached the limits of human endurance) on an island seven miles from the coast of the southern province of Guangdong. The ardor of his missionary heart brought a great many people to Christ, shined the light of the Gospel explicitly in nations where it had never shone before, and planted seeds - many of which have yet to grow, blossom, and bear fruit. But they will…