Christian Perspective

Blessed Joseph Vaz - the Apostle of Sri Lanka

W T A Leslie Fernando

The 300th anniversary of the death of Blessed Joseph Vas known as the Apostle of Sri Lanka was celebrated yesterday. Blessed Joseph Vaz came to Sri Lanka in 1687 under the guise of a coolie. He ministered to forlorn Catholics in Sri Lanka for 24 long years amidst the Dutch persecution. He passed away in Kandy, January 16, 1711 and his remains were interred in Kandy.

It was Blessed Joseph Vaz, who saved the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka from extinction during the Dutch period. He also laid the foundation for an indigenous Church in our country. He was beatified in Colombo on January 21, 1995.

In 1658 the Dutch ousted the Portuguese from the maritime provinces in Sri Lanka. For both political and sectarian reasons the Dutch set their face against the Catholics, proscriend the religion drove away the Catholic priests and took over Catholic churches and schools.

For 30 years there was not a single Catholic priest to minister to Catholics and Catholic activity almost disappeared in the island. It was in this plight of the Catholics that Blessed Joseph Vaz came to Sri Lanka and revived the Catholic faith.

Blessed Joseph Vaz was a Konkani Brahamin by lineage and was born at Benelim in Goa on April 21, 1651. He was ordained a priest on 1676 and was the superior of the Oratory of Goa when he came to our country. Before leaving Goa he made arrangements for other Oratorian priests to follow him for missionary work in Sri Lanka.

Blessed Joseph Vaz proved himself to be an embodiment of Christ. He waked barefooted all over the country visiting the scattered Catholics and attended to their spiritual needs. He slept on a mat and fasted daily unless he was ill. When an epidemic of small pox spread in Kandy, He and his companion Fr Joseph Carvalo nursed both Christians and Non-Christians.

Blessed Joseph Vaz and other Oratorians who followed him had to work hard in Sri Lanka under the Dutch persecution of Catholics. They were never disheartened and looked after the spiritual welfare of Catholics under severe oppression, victimization and humiliation. They went from place to place leading simple serene and austere lives.

It has the history of the Church that the religion strived at his best when the faith was persecuted. It was so during the Dutch times in Sri Lanka. During this period the Catholic faith strengthened and its roots struck deep down in the soil in our country. Besides Blessed Joseph Vaz unlike the European missionaries during the Portuguese times did not implant Western culture along with the Christian faith. The Catholic faith in Sri Lanka under Blessed Joseph Vaz and his fellow Oratorians witnessed an excellent form of cultural adaptation.

The Oratorian priests being Easterners were in a better position than the European missionaries in Portuguese era to understand and appreciate the indigenous culture.

Rather than transplanting foreign forms they made an attempt to present the religion to suit the cultural traits in our country. Blessed Joseph Vaz himself composed Catechisms, a summary of Catholic doctrine, meditations on the Way of the Cross and devotions and litanies to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Tamil.

It was Blessed Joseph Vaz who initiated the performance of Passion shows in Sri Lanka with the images of sacred personages modelled on the Catholic puppet drama he had witnessed in Goa. It is on record in the ‘Oratorian Mission’ that there had been Passion shows in Kandy and in Vanni in the season of Lent in 1706 and later in Trincomalee and several other places. These Passion shows with images of sacred personages are still enacted in churches on the Good Friday.

Blessed Joseph Vaz organized Catholic feasts and processions with a national outlook. There were dances with sticks (Lee Kelinatum) and traditional music at the feast of St. Anthony celebrated in Kandy under the patronage of Blessed Joseph Vaz in the reign of King Wimaladharmasuriya II. It was Blessed Joseph Vaz who introduced the carrying of tender coconut palms in place of Olive branches on the Palm Sunday.

The Church structure and usages, ecclesiastical set up, Catechesical instructions, prayers and hymns and Catholic culture in Sri Lanka all could be traced to the traditions set up by Blessed Joseph Vaz.

Thus Blessed Joseph Vaz not only rescued the Catholic Church from almost extinction but also endeavoured to set up an indigenous Church in our country.

In the light of the present context, the ascetic life of Blessed Joseph Vaz – his spirituality, holiness and achievements should be an inspiration to all the Catholics, both the religious and laity in Sri Lanka.

(The writer is a former President of Newman Society Alumni Association).

The Kingdom, the Glory and the Power

New book on Seminary life:

This book is unique in the annals of Catholic literature in Sri Lanka. It not only narrates the author’s intense spiritual odyssey towards the Catholic priesthood which eludes him when on the verge of crossing its threshold, but is also punctuated with penetrative insights regarding the Catholic Church.

This treatise is furthermore a rich compendium of the momentous events that shook the country, Italy and the world in the nineteen fifties and sixties.

Preface

Professor W S Karunatillake, University of Sri Lanka writing a preface about the book says, the Kingdom, the glory and the power by Mario Perera narrates the life, the times and the thoughts of a Roman Catholic Seminarian. It is probably the most complete account of Catholic seminary life ever written and spans over eleven years.

The author has spent four of those years in Rome while Vatican Council 11 was in full session.

While studying at the prestigious Gregorian University, he has personally witnessed the great events of that period and experienced the wide ranging changes that took place within the Church at that time. The narrative begins with a description of a well-known family entirely imbued with the spirit of the Catholic Church and willing to sacrifice all, including its three sons and wealth for the Church’s cause.

Narrative

As the narrative unfolds the author is shown advancing to the priesthood, meeting challenges on the way and surmounting them, firmly determined to reach his objective come what may. This spiritual odyssey however comes to a bitter end when the aspirant is on the very threshold of his spiritual goal, destroying his own and his family’s hopes.

This book contains the reminiscences and reflections of one acclaimed by his superiors and confreres as an outstanding student of Catholic philosophy and theology.

Treatise

I congratulate the author for having accomplished such an arduous task and whole heartedly recommend this book to all interested readers irrespective of any religious affiliation.

The Kingdoms, the glory and the power is a new book written by Mario Perera.

Haiti must rebuild civil ‘coexistence’: Pope

Pope Benedict XVI said the time had come to rebuild civil “coexistence” in Haiti, in an address released by the Vatican to mark the first anniversary of the country’s devastating earthquake.

“The time has come to rebuild, not only material structures but, and above all, civil, social and religious coexistence,” the Pope said in a message read out by Cardinal Robert Sarah during a commemorative mass in Haiti.

The Pope said he wanted to bring words of hope in the particularly difficult circumstances of Haitians, who were mourning the more than 220,000 people killed almost instantly in the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010.

“I hope that the Haitian people will become the main actors in their own present and future,” Benedict said, while also praising “the support of international aid which has already demonstrated great generosity.”

The Pope marked the anniversary by naming Guire Poulard as the new Archbishop of Port-au-Prince.

His predecessor, Joseph Serge Miot, was killed in the earthquake.

The mass was held outside the capital’s collapsed cathedral, whose ruins have become a symbol of the tragedy — and the failure, after 12 months, to get the country back on its feet.

AFP

John Paul II to be beatified May 1

The late Pope John Paul II is on the fast track to sainthood and will be beatified May 1, the Vatican said Friday, to the joy of supporters and alarm of clerical abuse victims.

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to beatify the Polish-born Pope in the preliminary step to canonisation was immediately celebrated in his home country.

The archbishop of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz, a longtime influential aide and friend to the late pope, spoke of his “great joy” on behalf of “the whole of Poland.”

The country’s Solidarity legend Lech Walesa, a fervent Catholic, said he was delighted. “A man who was a living saint will officially become a saint. Our Pope did great things,” Walesa told AFP.

But news of John Paul II’s beatification alarmed clerical abuse victims who called on the Church to “move cautiously” in honouring the ex-pontiff, saying he did not do enough to combat abuse by priests during his pontificate.

Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)

condemned the “hasty drive to confer sainthood on the pontiff under whose reign most of the widely-documented clergy sex crimes and cover ups took place.”

The Pontiff himself will conduct the ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, according to Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

The process of beatification is usually lengthy, but calls for John Paul II to be canonised came immediately after his death on April 2, 2005 and Benedict waived the usual rules which require a five-year cooling-off period.

Karol Wojtyla, the first non-Italian pope in four-and-a-half centuries, will beat Albanian nun Mother Teresa’s record, being speed-tracked to beatification just six years and a month after his death.

May 1 falls this year on the first Sunday after Easter, which is the Feast of the Divine Mercy, a devotion promoted by John Paul II.

As is traditional, his remains will be moved up from the crypt to the nave of the basilica after he is beatified.

Works are under way in St. Peter’s to make space for the pope’s tomb in the Chapel of St. Sebastian, between the Chapel of Michelangelo’s Pieta and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.

The ex-pontiff’s body “will not be displayed, it will be placed in a tomb closed by a simple marble tombstone with the words: Beatus Ioannes Paulus II,” (Blessed John Paul II), Lombardi said. The beatification follows the Congregation of the Causes for Saints’ decision this week to recognise the first miracle attributed to the Polish pope’s first miracle.

The commission confirmed that French nun Marie Simon-Pierre was miraculously cured of Parkinson’s disease through the intercession of John Paul II, who also suffered from Parkinson’s.

AFP

Free will and Suffering

Human being has faculties both mental and physical.
The organs, the senses, the intellect that makes all that is social.
Imagine the man with no free will to make choices in life.
It will be a vegetable or robot with no responsibility and spice.

The thrill of life is being able to make choices.
Unknown to many the will it is that makes all choices.
Use free will and then reap what you sow with clarity
Then will you know that what happened is not fatality.

It is the free willed choice that earns your due reward.
For if it wasn’t willed with sacrifice, what use of that award
Use your will righteously at all times
For your reward awaits you when the last bell chimes

To the individual using free will in accordance with that of the Maker
Suffering is minimal and with good conscience life is made easier.
Where-they ask is the Maker’s justice when the world is full of suffering.
The free will collectively misplaced brings universal misery unending.

Why blame the Maker if free will is not righteous on every choice?
Suffering will follow each decision adding to the woes of the vice.
Take the child in the womb willed to distort and end life,
But struggles to survive-be born deformed-continue to pass on in style.

The mothers had free will to choose and avoid the debacle
And even before that-to avoid pleasure beyond rhythmic cycle.
Suffering will continue with free will not righteously used.
Don’t blame the Maker-with no free will the final reward cannot be abused.

Collective free will shouted crucify-crucify to Christ
This collective psyche with un-righteous will paid a future price
For Christ said-weep not for me but for generations to come,
Implying wrong use of will has collective repercussions as humanity is one.

Oscar E V Fernando

Rev Fr Pius Kennedy Parish Priest, Madampe accepts offerings from children at an all religious ceremony held at the Samagiwatta Playground, Medagama January 1 to herald in the New Year and invoke blessings on the country and people. Picture by Puttalam Group correspondent