Letters Written in Salt & Grace — Cartography of Covenant

From Goa

TO IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, IN ROME

20 September 1542

EXCERPT

I have begun to walk through the villages of the Pearl Coast, baptizing all who ask. When the children hear that I teach them prayers, they gather in crowds and will not let me sleep. Day and night they come to my door crying for the word of Heaven. I go from village to village, and so great is the crowd that I cannot give attention to one alone. I have now made myself responsible for the whole Fishery Coast, and I leave to others the duty of collecting the names of those who have been baptized.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

Within four months of arriving in Goa, Xavier had already walked barefoot among the Paravar pearl-fishers of the southern Coromandel coast, baptizing tens of thousands.

COMMENTARY

Already the letter betrays the tension that would define Xavier's whole mission: a harvest so vast that one man could not gather it. His constant, urgent plea for more labourers begins here.

From Cape Comorin

TO HIS COMPANIONS IN THE SOCIETY, AT GOA

1543

EXCERPT

There is one thing I ask of all of you — that you remember me before God, for I have no time now to pray as I ought, being all day long in the midst of a people who know me only as one who saves them. Of myself I have no leisure to gather my own soul; I give it away by the handful, and yet I would not trade it for all the quietudes of the cloister.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

By 1543 Xavier had baptized a people almost wholesale along the Fishery Coast and was struggling to instruct the new converts without helpers.

COMMENTARY

Xavier's own spiritual dryness — too busy serving to pray — would become the quiet ache beneath every later letter. He does not complain, but he notes the cost.

From Amboina, the Moluccas

TO THE STUDENTS OF THE SOCIETY, IN COIMBRA AND PARIS

10 May 1546

EXCERPT

Tell the students of Paris and the young men of the Society: here is a harvest so great that the labourers could never be too many. Many, many more would have become Christian, had there been only brothers enough to send. There are whole islands where the people have never heard the name of Christ, and they ask us only for someone to teach them.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

Fever-ridden and starving among the spice islands, Xavier had pushed further east than any European missionary before him.

COMMENTARY

This is the letter that crossed Europe and stirred the first great wave of Jesuit missionaries to volunteer for the East. Xavier saw the harvest — and made others see it too.

From Malacca

TO IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, IN ROME

1548

EXCERPT

Here I have met a Japanese named Anjirō, who fled his homeland after a quarrel and found Christ in these port waters. He tells me of a people curious, courteous, and learned beyond any I have seen — a nation unlikely to refuse the truth once it is shown to them, and yet wholly without it. With him I have begun to learn the language of Japan, and I am on fire to set out.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

At the great Malay port, Xavier met Hanashirō (Anjirō), a fugitive Japanese of the samurai class, who told him of a homeland with no knowledge of the Gospel.

COMMENTARY

What began as one chance conversation became Xavier's final and boldest horizon: Japan. The decision to cross the China Sea to a people he had never seen shows the restless momentum of the whole voyage.

From Kagoshima, Japan

TO HIS COMPANIONS IN GOA

5 November 1549

EXCERPT

On the feast of the Assumption we landed at the harbour of Kagoshima. The people are the most courteous and curious race I have ever met; they question everything, and they hold argument in honour. I have committed their tongue to writing and translated the chief prayers and the beginnings of the faith. Verily I would not have believed, even had I been told, that there were such people in the world.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

Xavier, with Anjirō and two companions, reached Japan on 15 August 1549 — the first Christian mission to that nation, which would shape Japanese history for a century.

COMMENTARY

Xavier's frank admiration for the intelligence and courtesy of the Japanese finally resolved the cultural arrogance typical of his age: he sought no conquest but argument offered in respect.

From Goa

TO FATHER GASPAR BARZEO, AT ORMUZ

January 1552

EXCERPT

As for myself, I am altogether beside myself; I cannot contain myself for the joy I feel when I think of the empire of China, and the countless souls who wait there for the word of salvation. Tell me, what profits a man — the whole world — if he gain it and lose the one thing that matters? I will go everywhere in search of souls; I will go, if it please God, even to death.

Paraphrase of the original · for the contemporary reader

CONTEXT

Back in Goa at the end of his years in the East, Xavier was planning an illegal entry into China — a kingdom then closed to all foreigners.

COMMENTARY

The last shadow of Ignatius's old question — 'What profits it?' — falls once more over this letter. Within eleven months Xavier would be dead on Sancian Island, watching the shore he never reached.