>From the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute.
368th Birthday (April 21) of St. Joseph Vaz (1651-1711)
Saving a World Spiritual Heritage
Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and it signifies
re-birth and renewal. This message of Resurrection was poignantly brought home
to us as we watched the tragic fire at the 850-year-old Cathedral of Notre Dame
("Our Mother") in Paris and heard both the ordinary and the powerful of France
speak of the hope of the Resurrection of Easter and of Notre Dame in the same
breath. As has been repeated numerous times on TV, this cathedral is a
spiritual and national monument of France and of the entire Christian world.
Hence French and international politicians, billionaires, the ordinary man and
woman in the street, have immediately pledged a billion Euros to repair and
maintain the structure and its history and art for generations to come. Many
who are contributing are non-practicing Catholics who still value this national
treasure as part of their national identity and spiritual heritage.
As we celebrate the 368th birthday of St. Joseph Vaz on April 21st, we hope
that our young people, the next generation of Indian and Sri Lankan Catholics,
will similarly pause and think of saving the spiritual heritage of this very
great and unique Asian Indian and Sri Lankan saint. He risked his life to give
dedicated service to the persecuted and abandoned Catholics of Sri Lanka, to
the sick and dying in Goa, coastal Karnataka, and Sri Lanka. As Jesuit and Sri
Lankan historian, Fr. S.G. Perera, has written, there is no other story like
his of a missionary who rescued and raised the Catholic Church from the ashes
single-handedly, as he did in Sri Lanka. He gained the love and protection of
the two Buddhist Kings of Kandy against Dutch persecutors who were seeking his
arrest, imprisonment, and death. In the accounts of Christianity in Asia,
there is no Catholic saint except St. Joseph Vaz that has ever gained the
protection of Buddhist Kings. He showed that inter-religious dialogue and
peaceful co-existence can work.
Just as Notre Dame has played a large role in the history of western European
Christianity, St. Joseph Vaz has left a very large footprint in the history of
Christendom and inter-religious dialogue in modern Asia.He traveled to many
places to do his ministry and these are the sites that are today endangered. So
far, the architectural and other sites which marked his passage have been saved
largely by village people, descendants of those he converted and ministered to,
and by the local churches. The local people in villages around Mangalore have
marked where Catholic missions had been abandoned because of Dutch Protestant
military dominance in that part of India, and which he revived. After working
in coastal Karnataka, he came to Sri Lanka disguised as a coolie to escape
detection by Dutch police. Villagers have saved and lovingly preserved
underground chapels and churches, even underground schools, that he established
in Sri Lanka for those persecuted and deprived of religious freedom and other
civil freedoms by the Dutch.
In the San Francisco-Bay area and other places, the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute
has worked to preserve and celebrate the memory of St. Joseph Vaz even to the
present day. To that end, the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute has struggled with
Vatican bureaucracy and worked for forty years to get St. Joseph Vaz canonized,
have his name entered into the Catholic Calendar of Saints, and his spiritual
contributions remembered. As we celebrate Easter and also the Birthday of St.
Joseph Vaz this April 21st, we invite our Asian Indian and Sri Lankan
Catholics, especially our youth to support the loving work of past generations
of impoverished and marginalized native Catholics to preserve his memory. The
Catholic Church has canonized him as an official saint and model who belongs to
the billion members of the universal church. The Sri Lankan government, secular
and largely Buddhist in composition, has hosted the state visits of two Popes
to beatify and canonize him. The rest is up to us, to do the work of keeping
his story alive for future generations.
Joseph Naik Vaz Institute
http://www.josephnaikvaz.org
email: josephnaik....@gmail.com
