This Day in Church History (St. Francis Xavier Starts Missionary Work)

Apr. 7, 1541—On his 35^th birthday, Francis Xavier departed Lisbon, Portugal with two Jesuit colleagues for Goa, India—on what would begin 11 years of missionary work halfway around the world, with the Spanish native never returning home.

I’ve come to think of Xavier as the St. Paul of the Far East. In fact, in certain ways, his adventures and achievements may surpass those of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Xavier never wrote texts that defined the nature of Christianity, or even, like mentor Ignatius Loyola, guidelines for what became a global religious order.

But Paul, for all his hardships (shipwreck, imprisonment, martyrdom), journeyed in lands largely under an established order that he knew well: the Roman Empire. Xavier went to lands that had only recently been opened to European traders—or worse yet, lands that feared and retaliated against Westerners. 

Xavier could never have undertaken an activity with such uncertainty and risk had he not mentally prepared himself on multiple fronts. A brilliant scholar at the University of Paris, he had challenged his fellow Basque and roommate Loyola on theological matters before his skepticism melted at last, joining him and six others in 1534 in taking vows as the first members of the Society of Jesus.

Although he had to resolve his intellectual doubts before joining what came to be known as the Jesuits, a far more intense trial awaited Xavier in the first year following his ordination, when he arrived in Venice to serve in a hospital for incurable patients. The charisma that drew others to him at the university was not enough here. 

Now, he had to develop an all-encompassing zeal for serving others that would help him surmount an instinctive revulsion at the stench and ugliness of the hospital, all while maintaining faith that God would see him and those to whom he ministered through their trials.

All the toughness he had learned could only go so far in preparing Xavier after he answered a request by King John III of Portugal to evangelize the East Indies. The voyage, entailing rounding the Cape of Good Hope, lasted 13 months, in an era when a ship’s inhabitants could fall victim as easily to scurvy and dysentery as to pirates. The destination, Goa, provided scant comfort—a slave port marked by the physical abasement of the conquered and the moral debasement of the conquerors.

But Xavier never forgot his objective. As he wrote once he reached India: “I looked or desired for nothing here but to wear myself out with work and sacrifice my life itself in bringing about the salvation of souls.”

His first task was one he was familiar with from Venice: ministering to the sick in hospitals. He began to make his mark outside after several months by walking the streets of Goa, ringing a bell that attracted children whom he would then catechize. Later, he turned his attention to the pearl fishermen on the eastern coast of Cape Comorin, using basic Christian prayers translated into Tamil. Over three years he traveled tirelessly, even reaching as far as Ceylon.

Frustrated by the obstacles represented by Portuguese political and military officials, he struck out for Malacca in 1545, then for the Molucca Islands. All the while he had to deal with work just as necessary but sometimes not as pleasing as preaching: supervising the men inspired by his example who were now flocking to missionary work from Ormuz to Indonesia—an activity that could mean recruiting native converts into the priesthood, but could also mean reproving or even removing Europeans he did not believe measured up to the tasks ahead of them.

While bringing Christianity to the Far East—or rekindling it among faithful not ministered to in years—Xavier was also lighting the way for future missionaries through his letters back home. Though modern readers may read this vast correspondence from an anthropological point of view—as a record of how a Westerner reacted to the customs and living conditions of exotic people—his contemporaries took spiritual sustenance from his reflections on how he survived adverse conditions:

“The day we encountered these disasters and all that night, God our Lord was pleased to grant me the great grace of wishing to make me feel and know through experience many things with respect to the cruel and dreadful fears which the enemy causes when God permits him (…) The best of the remedies at such times is to show very great courage against the enemy, having no trust whatever in oneself but great confidence in God.”

In 1549, with a couple of Japanese converts, Xavier took up the last great missionary work of his life: evangelizing Japan—first by taking a year to learn the language and customs, then another two in evangelizing and setting up communities that would carry on his work afterward. In 1552, he turned his attention to China. He was on the Island of Sancian off the coast of that country when he fell ill and died in December 1552.

Within weeks of his death, astounding accounts—including the incorruptibility of his body after his passing and miracles attributed to him—began to circulate. In 1622, he was canonized along with his beloved mentor Loyola. Credited with as many as 30,000 converts in his lifetime, he richly earned his posthumous distinction as the patron saint of Catholic missionaries.

This Day in Western History (Narcissa Whitman Becomes 1st White Woman to Cross America)

Sept. 1, 1836—When Narcissa Whitman reached what is now Walla Walla, Washington (then part of what was known as Oregon Country), on this day 180 years ago, with her husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman, as part of a small missionary group, she became what is believed to be the first white woman to cross North America. The couple’s epic, 3,000-mile journey paved the way for similar journeys (many conducted with the help of Marcus) undertaken in the following decade along the Oregon Trail, and even beyond into the post-Civil War era.

I’ve long felt that the story of Narcissa and Marcus would make a compelling subject for a film: a couple engaged in missionary work who must face all kinds of struggles to achieve their goal--physical hardship, internal dissension, the constant threat of attack. But it would not be the kind of happy, triumphant film about strong pioneers favored by Hollywood in its Golden Age, but rather a kind of Protestant counterpart to the 1990 adaptation of Brian Moore’s Black Robe—about cultural conflict, misunderstanding, and self-doubt among all-too-human people who choose to do divine work.

At the time of her transcontinental trek, Narcissa was, at 28 years old, still young and strong enough to survive the rigors of an overland journeyl. (After comparatively easy steamboat travel, the trans-Mississippi portion was accomplished partly by wagon train, then on horseback, over often bumpy terrain.). But she would encounter other circumstances far less happy and far more troubling over the next 11 years, and her spirit would be tried in ways that even her deep religious faith could not help her sustain.

Ever since I read Jane Eyre, I’ve applauded the decision by that heroine not to become the missionary wife of St. John Rivers. Not only is there the rather large matter of how she could stay devoted to this repressed clergyman who is still carrying the torch for someone else, but all Jane’s considerable hard work and self-discipline might not even be enough in India, a land completely alien to her. 

That mismatch between a woman’s skills and temperament in a much different environment was even more marked in the case of Narcissa Whitman in the Pacific Northwest, among American Indians. On the surface, it shouldn’t have appeared so: She had learned the kind of skills needed to survive life on the frontier, away from a community: how to weave and spin, sew, cook over an open fire, and make soap and candles. As a result of a second spiritual awakening at a revival meeting, the 16-year-old resolved to "consecrate myself without reserve" and "go to the heathen" as a missionary. A comparatively well-educated woman for her time, she was among the first students at Franklin Academy, a church-affiliated secondary school in Prattsburg, N.Y., where she was raised.

But the question faced by Jane Eyre—of how much commitment to a spouse can help one in missionary work—was present in Narcissa’s life, too. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the governing agency for missions sponsored by Presbyterian and Congregational churches, made it plain that it preferred married rather than single people for this work, perhaps believing that couples were more likely to reject any temptations in faraway places. As it happened, Narcissa and Marcus had not known each other long or well before they wed in New York State. They had still only been married six months when they reached Walla Walla.

The Whitmans, anxious to have at least one other missionary couple accompanying them to Oregon County, prevailed upon Henry Spalding, an ordained Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Eliza Hart Spalding. This turned out to be a mistake.

Historians have divided on whether or not Narcissa had rejected a marriage proposal from Rev. Spalding before her marriage to Marcus. But at very least, they had been students together at Franklin Academy and had worshipped at the same church, and for whatever reason, he had expressed misgivings about her before the trip.

Trouble between the two couples soon erupted, as they differed even over the elementary question of how to load their wagon train. As they crossed prairie, mountain, and desert, guided at various points by fur traders and Nez Perce Indians, the weather turned hotter, the diet more tiresome and their patience thinner. After seven months, with the Whitmans traveling a bit ahead of their companions, they finally made it to Fort Walla Walla.

“The whole company galloped almost the whole way to the Fort,” Narcissa wrote home. “The fatigues of the long journey seemed to be forgotten in the excitement of being so near the close….[S]oon we were seated at the table and treated to fresh salmon, potatoes, tea, bread and butter. What a variety, thought I. You cannot imagine what an appetite these rides in the mountains give a person. I wish some of the feeble ones in the states could have a ride in the mountains; they would say like me, victuals, even the plainest kind, never relished so well before.”

What delighted Narcissa was a crowing rooster, as well as other animals she could no longer take for granted: “You may think me simple for speaking of such a small circumstance. No one knows the feelings occasioned by seeing objects once familiar after a long deprivation. Especially when it is heightened by no expectation of meeting with them. The door-yard was filled with hens, turkeys and pigeons. And in another place we saw cows and goats in abundance, and I think the largest and fattest cattle and swine I ever saw.”

Eleven days later, after a far less grueling trip down the Columbia River, the Whitmans and the Spaldings reached Ft. Vancouver. The two wives stayed put while the husbands, undoubtedly glad to be out of each other’s company, scouted separate missions. Henry Spalding chose one in what would become Idaho, while Marcus picked a site 120 miles away: Waiilatpu, or "Place of the Rye Grass."

The location, on the Walla Walla, was every bit as pleasant as the Indian name indicated. But it lacked good, abundant timber, and Marcus ignored warnings that the Cayuse tribe was harder to persuade than the Nez Perce. Arriving at their mission in mid-December, when food was hard to find and Narcissa was already well along in her pregnancy, the couple only survived that first winter by killing 10 wild horses. It was only the first example of misfortune arising from their own failure of vision.

In Narcissa’s case, this was more than metaphor: Within a few years, her eyesight rapidly deteriorated. That was by no means all of the couple’s problems:

*Marcus was absent from the mission for long periods, plunging Narcissa into increasing isolation and depression.

*In 1839, their two-year-old daughter Alice Clarissa—her mother’s chief solace—accidentally drowned in the river behind the mission house.

*While Alice, before her death, had, amazingly enough, started to pick up Nez Perce, the primary language of the Cayuse, Narcissa never learned the native language.

*The Whitmans denounced practices that the Cayuse enjoyed, including dancing and gambling. In fact, they made few attempts to accommodate native ways—and little headway in converting the Indians.

*Unease on the part of the Whitmans toward the Indians grew into dislike. The Indians sensed this condescension, and reacted accordingly.

*The Whitmans pretty much gave up converting Indians, concentrated on medicine and aiding white settlers. The Cayuse grew alarmed at the swelling white influx onto their land.

*In 1847, Marcus attempted to treat an outbreak of malaria in the area. The Cayuse died in greater numbers under his care than the white settlers did. The Indians, acting on their belief that the families of those who died under the care of a medicine man (as they viewed Marcus) had the right to take his life, did so. Shortly afterward, they killed Narcissa and the couple’s adopted children as well.

Quote of the Day (G. K. Chesterton, on St. Francis Xavier)

“He left his dust, by all the myriad tread

Of yon dense millions trampled to the strand,

Or 'neath some cross forgotten lays his head

Where dark seas whiten on a lonely land:

He left his work, what all his life had planned,

A waning flame to flicker and to fall,

Mid the huge myths his toil could scarce withstand,

And the light died in temple and in hall,

And the old twilight sank and settled over all.”—Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “St. Francis Xavier” (1892)

Four hundred and sixty years ago tomorrow, the Jesuit Francis Xavier died of a fever in China, still awaiting passage to China, thousands of miles from his native Basque region of Spain and unable to fulfill his ambition to preach his faith to one more land in the Orient. That fate strikes me as terribly lonely.

That same sense informs the above passage from a larger poem about the missionary saint by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936). The verses won a prize for the future essayist-novelist, then an 18-year-old at St. Paul’s School, an English academic institution that had earlier produced John Milton and Samuel Pepys.

In a sense, the turn in the poem, almost despite its author’s intention, reflects the later evolution of his own religious thinking. Certain anti-Catholic references (“Yon dim Enchantress with her mystic claim” and “monkish myths”) may very well have appealed to the authorities at his school.

Remarkably, however, even after proclaiming Xavier’s “Eastern Church a dream, his toil a vanity,” Chesterton couldn’t help but admire the indefatigable fortitude and zeal of the Jesuit, and even went so far as to suggest that the surface disappointment of the saint’s last days did not end his story: “God only knows, man failing in his choice,/ How far apparent failure may succeed.”  Even amid what was still apprentice poetry, Chesterton is already exhibiting his lively, lifelong interest in paradox.

In spite of himself, Chesterton had come to feel a certain admiration for the greatest Christian missionary since St. Paul, a man who, in only 15 years between his ordination and death, had traveled to India, Ceylon, Japan, Borneo, and the Moluccas. In time, Chesterton would embrace the Roman Catholicism he had scorned in his youth, proclaiming its value, in an increasingly secular world, with the same zeal as the prototypical Jesuit missionary.

(This painting of St. Francis Xavier is held in the Kobe City Museum.)