The Crown that Does Not Decay

Fr. Scott Haynes

A Meditation for the Feast of St. Francis Borgia

October 10

“I will not waste my one short life.”

“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”— Matthew 16:26

Francis Borgia was born into everything the world prizes — wealth, prestige, noble blood. The Borgia name carried both splendor and scandal; it was woven into the fabric of Renaissance politics and papal intrigue. Francis himself was pious, but his piety, for many years, fit comfortably within the boundaries of privilege. He was the Duke of Gandía, a favorite at the imperial court of Emperor Charles V, and husband to the beautiful Leonor de Castro. He could have lived and died in comfort and honor.

But one day, all that changed.

As the emperor’s trusted courtier, Francis was chosen to accompany the body of Queen Isabella of Portugal to her burial. Upon arriving, he was required to identify her body before the coffin was sealed. When the lid was lifted, he was struck by the horrific sight — the body of the queen, who in life had been radiant and kind, was already disfigured by death. The air was heavy with decay.

Francis staggered back, shaken to the soul. Later he said quietly, “I shall never again serve a master who can die.”

That single encounter with death became the hinge of his life. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, had taught that every soul should make the “First Principle and Foundation” of life this:

“Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man... in order to help him in attaining the end for which he is created.”

Francis had known these words, but now he understood them.

He began to live as if they were true.

He withdrew often to pray, studied theology, and gave alms to the poor. After his wife’s death, he renounced his title and wealth, shocking the Spanish nobility. He joined the Society of Jesus, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He would one day become the third General of the Jesuits, following St. Ignatius and Father Diego Laínez, guiding the order with extraordinary humility and zeal.

St. Peter Canisius, his Jesuit brother and contemporary, said of him:

“The grace that worked in him was not a spark but a fire. He seemed consumed with the desire to die to himself and live for Christ.”

Under his leadership, the Jesuits expanded missionary work in the Americas and the Far East, founded colleges throughout Spain and Portugal, and promoted deep interior prayer among both clergy and laity. But for Francis, it always came back to the same truth: the vanity of the world and the reality of eternity.

St. Augustine once wrote,

“You are afraid of dying, but come now, what is it to live? Is it not to die continually? For from the moment we are born, we begin to move toward death.”¹

Francis understood this not as morbid despair but as liberating truth. Death was not a threat but a teacher — it stripped away illusions and revealed what matters most.

He lived the rest of his years as a man in love with the eternal. His letters and sermons reveal a quiet intensity: he spoke not to impress, but to awaken souls. He urged others to meditate on death daily — not to fear it, but to remember that we will soon stand before the eyes of God.

“If we remembered that we must die,” he once told his Jesuit novices, “we would sin less and love more.”

In the Jesuit spirit of discernment, he taught that holiness begins not in heroic acts, but in small daily choices — the choice to turn one’s heart toward God, to give time to prayer, to serve in silence, to detach from vanities that perish.

St. Francis Xavier, another Jesuit giant of the same era, echoed this when he wrote from India:

“We have only one life, and we must spend it for souls. What a wretched thing it would be to die without having done anything for Him who died for us!”²

Francis Borgia lived that truth until the end. He died in 1572, worn out by travel and austerity, but radiant with peace. The skull crowned with an emperor’s diadem became his emblem — a reminder that no earthly crown compares to the crown of glory promised by Christ.

Reflection

How much of my life is wasted on things that cannot last? Every day passes like a page turned and gone forever. Yet each page can be filled with love, with prayer, with generosity — the things that follow us into eternity.

Today, pause for sixty seconds and remember death. Not as terror, but as light. Ask: What can I take with me into eternity?

Then do it — today.

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, teach me to number my days that I may gain wisdom of heart.

Like St. Francis Borgia, free me from attachment to things that perish.

Give me the courage to renounce vanity, the clarity to see Your will,

and the grace to do something today that will last forever. Amen.

Notes

¹ St. Augustine, Sermon 172, “On Death and the Vanity of the World.”

² Letter of St. Francis Xavier to St. Ignatius of Loyola, October 1542.