(This is the full text of the homily delivered by Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan president Fr Roberto "Bobby" C Yap SJ during the opening mass of the XU Festival Days 2016 celebration. Photo source: XU Festival Days)

Experience Excellence #XavierAteneo: This is the theme of our 2016 Xavier Festival Days. Our XU Festival Days is a celebration of the Feast of Francis Xavier, the Jesuit Saint after whom our University is named. It is but proper and fitting that as we open Xavier Festival Days, we reflect on what Experiencing Excellence meant for San Francisco Javier.

For Francis Xavier, experiencing excellence did not mean doing extraordinary things; it did not mean accomplishing heroic deeds. For Francisco Javier, experiencing excellence did not mean becoming a champion or winning according to the secular standards of the world.

For Francis, experiencing excellence meant only one thing: obeying the will of God. For Xavier, God’s will was first and foremost. God’s will: nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Excellence for Francisco meant listening to what God desires and doing what God wants. Excellence for Javier meant being pushed to the ever-greater glory of God and the ever-fuller service of our neighbor.

My XU friends, let us recall three episodes in the life of our patron saint that illustrate how Xavier experienced excellence: his mission-sending; his first acts of missionary service; and his manner of dyingⁱ. And let us draw three lessons of excellence from these three episodes.

His mission-sending. God acts in strange ways. In 1541 after recovering from serious illness, Francis was living a quiet life as Secretary to Ignatius Loyola, founder, and first General Superior of the Jesuits in Rome. That same year, King John III of Portugal requested that one of Ignatius’s men be sent to help evangelize Portugal’s overseas dominions. The man Ignatius had chosen, Fr Nicholas Bobadilla, fell ill before he could leave, and Ignatius immediately turned to his close friend, Francis Xavier. And when Javier was asked, he responded in generous availability, Hemi Aqui, "Here I am, send me." Providence arranged for Francis Xavier to become the first Jesuit missionary.

My dear friends, for St Francis Xavier, excellence means "not my will but God’s will be done."

Francisco, aged thirty-five, soon found himself aboard the ship Santiago with two Jesuit companions on the four thousand-mile journey to Goa. Many of the men who left on such voyages never reached their destination; some died of sickness; some went overboard in a typhoon or a fog; some were taken by pirates; some were shipwrecked going around the Cape of Good Hope or were driven onto the coasts of Africa only to become slaves of tribal chiefs. The voyage that Xavier took was no exception; it would be filled with great suffering.

In the ship’s hold, packed like sardines, were criminals fleeing from justice, poor people, adventurers and a host of others seeking a new life in India. For the first days of the voyage, the ship rolled and pitched; all were seasick, and the miseries of the voyage were made worse by the lack of space, the unbearable stench; the cries and groans of hundreds cooped up in the suffocating, foul atmosphere of the holds.

His first acts of missionary service. Day after day, Francis and his two companions descended the ladder into the holds. Between their own bouts of sickness, they attended those lying in the half-light. They washed the sick and their filthy clothes. They diverted the rations sent to them by the captain. They scrubbed and cleaned the holds as best they could. They carried the dying up the ladder, and laid them on the beds in their own cabin, comforting them, and preparing them for death. They wrapped the dead in clean shrouds, and read the burial prayers. They wrote letters to the wives, mothers, and families waiting for the return of their loved ones in Portugal.

Francis preached on Sundays, and taught catechism every day. The outcasts and convicts were glad when the Padre they called "el Santo" stopped to talk to them. He loved them all, and they knew it – the seamen who manned the ropes and sails, the rabble in the hold, the officers in their cabins, the good, the bad, and the unregenerate. All were important to Francis.

My good friends, for St Francis Xavier, excellence means doing God’s will, especially serving the poor in the peripheries.

Francisco started his missionary endeavors in India, and then in Malacca, a port city in the Malay Peninsula, then he proceeded to Japan. In Japan, the people always ended their discussions with Francis by saying, “If what you say is true, why do the Chinese not know about it?” The Japanese tended to think of the Chinese as the oldest and wisest people on earth. Francis dreamed of bringing the Gospel to China.

Eventually in 1552, Francis set sail for China. He arrived on the island of Sancian in the Bay of Canton. Sancian was a hideout for Chinese smugglers but also for Portuguese traders. No sooner had he arrived, he and his companions fell ill prostrated by fever, and needing constant attention. No Portuguese ships could go any closer to Mainland China. Indeed while at Sancian, the Portuguese always had to be ready to weigh anchor as the mandarins, only six miles away, sometimes swooped down on the island, dragging many an unfortunate European to prisons where, chained flat to the ground in corridors and galleries, many a man was overcome by rats and died. Francis knew that he himself, if he succeeded in landing on the mainland with his imperfect knowledge of its language and customs, was almost certain to end up in one of those dungeons. Yet Francis was determined to venture into the Empire of the Dragon for the sake of the Gospel.

It had been planned that a smuggler in a junk from China would come to take him to the mainland. The days and nights passed, but the smuggler from Canton never arrived.

His manner of dying. On November the 21st, 1552, Francis started to burn with a fever. Then he became delirious, speaking in strange languages that no one understood. For eight days Francis suffered, watched by Antonio, his Chinese interpreter. China was there on the horizon, but he was never to reach it. His last words as he lay dying were the words of his Master: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Francis Xavier was forty-six when he died on December the 3rd, 1552.

My dear brothers and sisters, let us contemplate the sadness of Xavier’s last moments. In the small island of Sancian, he died alone, half a world away from home, without his friends in Europe even knowing that he was in extremis. He died, after years of pioneering work of bringing the Good News to Asia: after baptizing till his arms ached with weariness in India; after traveling through the steaming jungles of Malacca; after enduring humiliation because of his appearance, his wretched Japanese, and his strange doctrine in Japan. And he died on this lonely island of Sancian, precisely because, in order to win the peoples of Asia for Christ, he was convinced he had to do the impossible: enter the great and mysterious Empire of China and preach the Gospel there. He died with an unfulfilled dream, a longing unrequitedⁱⁱ.

Xavier’s experience is an illustration of the Gospel truth that God does not promise success, health, a long life. God does not promise wealth, power, and honors. God’s sole promise is that He will be with us through everything life throws at us, good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer. God’s only promise is that He will always be with us.

My sisters and brothers, for St Francis Xavier, experiencing excellence means being faithful to God’s will, with unlimited trust that God is always with us … always.

As we celebrate Xavier Festival Days with the theme, Experience Excellence #XavierAteneo, let us turn to San Francisco Javier as our exemplar of excellence. Let us ask him to intercede for us that we may experience excellence, the Francis Xavier Way: putting God’s will above all else. Praying not my will but God’s will be done. Seeking God’s will in serving the poor in the peripheries. Remaining faithful to God’s will, trusting that God is always with us and for us.

St Francis Xavier, pray for us.∎

ⁱThe narratives of the three episodes are taken from “The Life of Saint Francis Xavier” by Philip Fogarty SJ, Messenger Publications Jesuits in Ireland, 2012.

ⁱⁱThis reflection on the pathos of the death of Xavier is taken from “A Balcony, A Tomb, A Letter: The Gifts of the First Jesuits and Formation at the Ateneo” by Daniel Patrick L Huang SJ, 2009.