Friday 3 December 2021

Special Guest Blogger: St. Francis Xavier

It tough being a Saint and having your Feast Day in December because nobody really cares, all eyes are on the big day towards the end of the month but my story is great so put that mince pie to one side and read about how Francis Xavier changed the World, or the Asian bit of it anyway.
I wasn't really content with the Christian religions we had at the time, they just never seemed proactive enough in recruiting new soul's so six of us drew up a formula for a new religious order, the Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits, with the idea of going out into the World and spreading the word of our God and his son and the Pope gave his blessing and told us to go ahead, so we did.
After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was thwarted by war, me and my companions went to Rome instead and accepted a request that we bring Christianity to the Portuguese-run colonies overseas.
I wasn't too thrilled at being sent off to minister to the people of Asia, over here in Europe the world was a simpler place, everyone just took our word for things but on my 35th Birthday, straight after the cake and candles bit, i boarded a boat and headed to Japan where Shimazu Takahisa, the Daimyo of Satsuma, gave us a friendly reception and due to the language barrier i took along a painting of the Madonna and the Madonna and Child to help teach the Japanese about Christianity.
Unfortunately, the Japanese people were not easily converted. Seriously, have you ever tried converting somebody? It's way harder than it looks. Most of them completely refuse to stand still and let you change their minds on who created them. Totally unreasonable and anyway many of the people were already Buddhist or Shinto and they refused to believe that a God who had created everything, including evil, could be good. They also refused to believe in Hell, that really got numerous panties quite tightly knotted, it bothered them that their ancestors may be living in Hell.
I wasn't making much headway when the previously friendly Daiymo changed his mind and forbade the conversion of his subjects to Christianity under penalty of death so i packed up my paintings and went to China instead because damn it, i came all this way to convert somebody or that was the plan but as i was waiting for the boat i caught a fever and died, falling into a consignment of fruit destined for Europe.
What i am mostly known for though is the many miracles attributed to me, such as healing, raising the dead, creating and replenishing water supplies, stopping storms, casting out demons and evil spirits, returning sight to the blind, telling prophecies, and my personal favourite of a crab bringing back my crucifix that i carelessly dropped into the sea.
Despite devoting my life to God however, God wasn't such a huge fan of me and i assume i died as divine punishment for the crucifix on a crab thing but while i did not get to see how far my ideas spread, i certainly left an impression, unfortunatey it was on a dozen boxes of apples in a Japanese dockyard.

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