Xavier’s death
DEATH OF XAVIER
The Chinese did not come looking for him. Javier was in a very poor shack, with his faithful Antonio de Santa Fe, who was going to ask for food from “Santa Cruz” because they were starving. A cold wind swept across the island, and Santo caught a lung. He was ending his life. Flushed with fever, he looked to see if the Chinaman was coming.
– “Do you think, Antonio, that I go to the Pereira ship?”, I asked him.
– “It seems very good to me: there he will have food and someone to take care of him.”
But Santo was only in the ship that night, because he couldn’t stand the rocking. In the morning he returned to land, bringing a pair of trousers for the cold and some almonds. He looked like an ember lit by fever. A Portuguese friend took him to his cabin and bled him. The Saint fainted. Then came great delusions. He would say: “Mother of God, have mercy on me… Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” He was there for five or six hours, with a lot of fervor.
On day 1, looking sadly at the Indian Cristbal, he said:
– “Oh, sad about you; oh, sad about you; oh, sad about you!”.
I knew that he would become perverted and that he would die in Malacca from an arquebus shot.
began to lose speech
“As soon as I saw this,” says Antonio, “it seemed to me that Our Lord wanted to take it away quickly, and I prepared to watch over him that night from Friday to Saturday. At the break of dawn I saw him make a strange movement, and putting a candle in his hand, being alone with him, he fell asleep in the Lord. Heavenly peace transfigured the rosy face of the Saint. The stars beat at night. Christ carried the soul of his holy apostle to heaven. Thus died at dawn on December 3, 1552, on the island of Sancin (China), the great apostle of the Indies and Japan. He was 46 years old. He had traveled 120,000 kilometers, about three times the earth. He had been stealing hearts for God. Whoever looked at his sympathetic and smiling face, which reflected the divine, felt happy and better. When he preached, more than his arguments, he convinced with his holiness and with the strength of his miracles.
Xavier’s burial
The Portuguese from the ship “Santa Cruz” came immediately. Antonio, helped by two mulattoes, put the body of the Saint, who seemed to be alive, in a wooden box and took it on a boat to the other side of the port. The others “for fear of the cold” did not attend the funeral. He put lime in the coffin so that the flesh would rot quickly and the skeleton could be carried more easily. Three months passed and the ship “Santa Cruz” was preparing to return to Malacca. Antonio said to the captain:
– “Are we going to leave the body of the Saint here?”
They unearthed it, and were amazed: it was fresh, as if it were alive. They put it in a better box which they smeared with pitch, and took it to Malacca.
There they received him with great enthusiasm. The great mortality that there was ceased in the city. A sick man kissed him and he was cured. In Goa they gave him a great reception. This city has the great honor of still having the incorrupt body of the great apostle.
Javier was canonized on March 12, 1622 by Gregory XV. Benedict XIV declared him, in 1748, patron saint of the East. In 1904, Pope Pius X, now a Saint, named him patron of the Propagation of the Faith and Universal Pattern of Missions.