St. Ignatius with the young nobleman, Francis Xavier

Francis Xavier (1506 – 1552) was born into an aristocratic family in the Kingdom of Navarre (now part of Spain). He grew up surrounded by war. Francis’ brothers were soldiers. They participated in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders from the kingdom. After 18 years, the war ended with the Kingdom of Navarre being partitioned into two territories: the King and some loyalists abandoned the south and moved to what is now France.

Instead of going into the military like his brothers, Francis chose a life of study in Paris. He was a promising scholar, an athlete, proud, somewhat wild, and ambitious to get ahead. There he met a man fifteen years older than him, a former soldier who had experienced a profound conversion while recuperating from a war injury, who would eventually become St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatius worked hard to win him over as a friend and eventually opened Francis’s heart to the love of Christ. Together they founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

Francis led an extensive mission into Asia. He was influential in the spreading of Catholicism in India, Borneo, Japan, and other areas which had thus far not been visited by Christian missionaries. Though it seemed his missionary work in Japan was destroyed by persecution,  three centuries later, missionaries were amazed to discover tens of thousands of “hidden Christians” still living in the area of Nagasaki. The Catholic Church that was built in Nagasaki then became ground zero for the second atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Japan. “What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, destroy Japanese Christianity, American Christians did in nine seconds.” — Dr. Gary G. Kohls

“St. Francis Xavier in Japan” by Utsumi

Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916) was born in Strasburg, France. He entered Saint Cyr, the top French military academy, when he was 18. He graduated 87^th in a class of 87 students and continued to live a riotous life while employed by the French military. He was eventually suspended from military service for lying about being married to a woman he was not married to. Hearing that his regiment was involved in dangerous action in Tunisia, he abandoned the woman, asked to be reinstated, and joined a new regiment in the south Oran area. For the next eight months, he proved to be an excellent officer, praised by his superiors as well as by the lower ranks.

“The encounter with Islam caused a profound upheaval within me.” Letter, July 8 1901

He was fascinated by Northern Africa and impressed by the faith and religious devotion of the Moslems. He resigned from the Army, settled in Algiers, and learned Arabic and Hebrew. When he went home to France, he led an austere, ascetic life. He went into churches, without any faith, and repeated this strange prayer: “My God, if you exist, let me know you.”

“As soon as I believed that there was a God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live only for him…” August 14, 1901

He experienced a conversion and felt a calling to the religious life. For a time he lived as a Trappist monk and then went to the Holy Land to work as a servant for the Poor Clare nuns. Eventually he was ordained a priest. He took up the life of a hermit in the desert, where he wrote down a plan for two religious orders. The members of these orders, he envisioned, would live a life patterned on the life of Jesus at Nazareth.

In 1916, living among the fierce Tuaregs of Tamanrasset, Charles de Foucauld was murdered in an attempt to warn two Arab soldiers of danger from a group of Senussi rebels.  The life of Charles de Foucauld was like the biblical seed which had to die before it sprouted into a healthy plant. At the time of his death, neither his missionary contacts nor his designs for new religious orders had borne visible fruit.  Within twenty years after his death, there appeared three congregations which derived their inspiration, purpose, and Rules from Charles de Foucauld.

St. Zechariah and St. John the Baptist. A medieval Georgian fresco from Jerusalem.

St. Zachariah was the father of John the Baptist. Orthodox Christian tradition recounts that, at the time of the massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all males under the age of two in an attempt to prevent the prophesied Messiah from coming to Israel, Zechariah refused to divulge the whereabouts of his son (who was in hiding), and he was therefore murdered by Herod’s soldiers.

St. Menas (285-309) is one of the most well-known Egyptian saints. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Roman army and was given a high rank. Three years later he left the army in order to devote his whole life to Christ. He spent five years as a hermit in the desert. He was martyred. The soldiers who executed him set fire to his body, but after three days, it was still not burned. His sister bribed the soldiers and took his body away.

Jesus and Abba Menas. A 6th-century icon from the Monastery of Bawit in Middle Egypt, currently at the Louvre. It is one of the oldest icons in existence.