This is the movement of the Holy Family.

Welcome to our daily rosary meditation.

Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let's call the mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today, December 3rd is the feast of St. Francis

Xavier, one of the greatest missionaries in the history of Christianity. But Francis would not have become a missionary or a saint without friends, especially

without his friend Ignatius of Loyola.

Born in the castle of Xavier in Spain in 1506,

Francis went to college in Paris,

but he lived a pretty wild lifestyle at first, until he met Ignatius of Loyola, a former military officer who was wounded when a cannonball crushed his leg in a battle.

But after that he converted as he convalesced. Ignatius went to Paris also to go to the university.

And there he took the initiative to develop a deep friendship with Francis Xavier and five others.

And these seven friends shared life together.

They often met in one another's homes to share a meal, to talk about

everything going on in their lives, to enjoy leisure together and to pray. In a letter of June 16, 1547, one of them writes, every few days we would take our provisions and eat at the home of one of the companions and

after that at the home of another we would visit each other often and I think this

helped us to stay close.

In this time the Lord gave us special help with our studies

in which we did fairly well.

Directing them always to the glory of the Lord

and to the help of our neighbors. We had a special love for

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