Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Goa's own Son Juze Vaz to be Canonized Tomorrow in Sr. Lanka by Pope Francis


The Church in Goa is blessed with two great men– St. Francis Xavier and Bl.  Joseph Vaz who will be canonized on 14-01-2015. With the canonization of Bl. Joseph Vaz, the first Goan Saint, the church in Goa has reached its maturity as our Bishop Filipe Neri rightly affirmed in his latest circular. It inspires us to act as mature and responsible Christians and religious. It calls upon us to rededicate ourselves to be true missionaries through our way of life, words and deeds. 


Life of Blessed Joseph Vaz


Apostle of Kanara and Sri Lanka

1651 - Born in Benaulim, Goa, India, on April 21.
1676 - Is ordained a priest. Shortly after, volunteers to go to Sri Lanka where the Dutch were persecuting Catholics and had banned all priests from entering the island. The Chapter of Goa refuses his offer because the mission would have meant certain death for him.
1681 - Is sent to rescue the almost extinct mission in Kanara, present-day Karnataka in India. Rebuilds the Church in Mangalore and Kanara, establishes missions, tends to the sick, ransoms prisoners.

1684 - Returns to Goa and joins a band of native Indian priests who formed a community.
1685 - Founds a religious Congregation, the 'Oratory of St. Philip Neri', on September 25.
1686 - Leaves Goa secretly and sets out for Sri Lanka.
1687 - Arrives in Jaffna in the Tamil region of Sri Lanka, with a servant, John Vaz, both disguised as coolies. He works with a price on his head.
1691 - Is almost captured by the Dutch and is advised to go to Kandy. Is brought into Kandy in chains and imprisoned as a Portuguese spy by the Buddhist King, Vimaladharna Surya II.
1693 - Works a miracle of rain during a severe drought. The King releases him and gives him protection and freedom to preach in his kingdom. As in Goa and in Mangalore, is often seen in ecstasy in prayer. The people call him "Sammana Swami" or Angelic Father.

1697 - Is joined by three of his Indian Oratorians from Goa. During a small-pox epidemic in Kandy, the King and the people flee the capital. Fr. Vaz and Fr. Carvalho, tend to the dying and abandoned victims for almost two years.
1705 - Dedicates the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu.
1711 - Dies in Kandy on January 16, after 23 years of arduous missionary work in Sri Lanka.

The Work of Blessed Joseph Vaz


His missionary work was not colonial, not helped, authorized, associated with conquest by a colonial power.
He gained the protection of a non-Christian King, Vimaladharma Surya II, a devout Buddhist.
He used Inculturation as a missionary method. He founded a Catholic para-liturgy and literature using the two languages and cultures of Sri Lanka, Tamil and Sinhalese; he practiced and taught Meditation.
He educated his servant John Vaz, a member of the Indigenous tribe of Kunbis, and sent him back to Goa with a letter of recommendation to the priesthood. At that time, the Portuguese Church Councils reserved the priesthood only for the two higher castes in Goa.

He rescued and expanded the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, one of the 5 officially crowned Marian Shrines of the Church. It was crowned for its fame for miracles and for pilgrimages in 1924, even before Fatima.
He is the first non-European native in modern times to found a Mission and Church in a "Third World" country; to found a fully native Catholic Religious Congregation; and to be given the official title of "Apostle" (of Kanara and Sri Lanka) by the Church, for his work in rescuing th Church there. His Indian Oratorian Mission is the only fully native, non-European Catholic Mission of our colonial era.


The Church he re-founded in Sri Lanka was persecuted and survived isolation from Rome for 140 years:
"Here is a country in which the faith was first preached, and a Church founded with great success to flourish for over a century, by missionaries who, being afterwards forced by the political failure of their nation to abandon the field, left this island for good and their converts without churches or priests and under the heel of a persecutor; and a single priest (Joseph Vaz) from another country, came here of his own accord and labouring heroically with a price upon his head, revived the faith and made many conversions in the subsequent political, social and ecclesiastical changes in the country were ever able to undo his work. It must be stated with caution and subject to correction, but no other instance of such an achievement is known in Christendom."

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