I'm sure that you've heard about all the trouble in India over the last several weeks. Terrorist attacks tore up the city of Mumbai (Bombay) and ongoing violence plagues the rest of the country. Extremists have even put a $250 price on the head of every Christian pastor killed in the country. Want to make some money? Kill a Christian.

These are hard days, gentle reader.

In May, I wrote about the violent earthquakes rocking China and how St. Francis Xavier led his mission trips through the East into China in the 1500's. (a Google cache will have to suffice until I've loaded all the old posts back onto this site).

Today is the feast day of St. Francis Xavier, 456 years and a day after his death. He died from sickness in the land where he worked so hard to bring Christ's message. His missionary work in India and Southeast Asia took him to the poorest and most forgotten people in the East--some in cities that don't look a lot different today, save for the mopeds and call-centers for American businesses.

In India, he landed in the city of Goa where he immediately took to ministering in the city's hospitals. In the evenings, he'd walk the streets ringing a bell to call children from their homes where he would teach to them. Later Francis Xavier lived for several months in a seaside cave in the coastal village of Manapad to teach and serve the pearl fishers. His missionary work was focused on the poorest and the sick, moving from India to the Indonesian islands and later Japan.

He survived risky sailing on dangerous seas, sickness and persecution by local rulers to spread the Gospel--only to have it largely undone by Portuguese soldiers and misguided inquisitors just a few years after his death.

Today, his casket and remains are interred in a public display in a church in Goa, India--in the very city he landed in May of 1542.

Francis Xavier never had it easy in his mission trips--missionaries live a hard and lonely life away from their home, often in parts of the world where they don't speak the language, are seen as hostile invaders with an unwelcome message and where sometimes their only friend is Christ Himself, to whom they dedicate their arduous work. I can't even imagine.

Those, too, were hard days, gentle reader.

What a strange world in which we live. These days where police are still finding explosives in train stations and the two most unpredictable members of the "nuclear weapons club" are raising their dander towards each other while we Americans try to stick our nose in the middle of the fight... well, these are hard days.

St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.