Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and it signifies re-birth and renewal of each and everyone of us. 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. 

Attached are some recent pictures of his birthday celebration in Weuda, a small village outside Kandy, where he was taken prisoner by the guards of the King of Kandy.  These pictures, more than any words can say, show that not only the French and the Europeans, but also we Asians  treasure our past and spiritual heritage.  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
www.josephnaikvaz.org
email: [email protected]