VJTR 74 (2010) 215-234

Retelling the Story of Jesus

through the Stories of People

Antony KALLIATH, cmi

In February 2007 VJTR informed its readers of the first Asian Mission Congress, in Thailand, and its theme of “Telling the Story of Jesus.” In this article the author <antonykalliath@gmail.com>, on the staff of the NBCLC in Bangalore and visiting professor at the Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, reflects theologically and missiologically with the help of Paul Ricoeur and John Paul II, on the significance of “retelling” the story of Jesus as part of our personal story, and suggests that this is the missiological approach we should have in Asia, as autobiography is non-threatening, based on experience, and avoids excessive concern for dogmatic formulations and normativity.

1. Introduction

The Asian Mission Congress which was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 18-22 October 18-22, 2006, proposed a focused vision and praxis for mission in Asia through its theme, “Telling the Story of Jesus in Asia.” What is implied and entailed in this theme is a culturally sensitive shift from Western normativity to Asian narrativity. Such a shift is positively entertained because of the collective discernment of the Asian churches that the Church has to proactively ‘re-conceive’ itself in the cultural womb of Asia, especially in the present scenario of an Asian assertion of its identity in world politics. This new identity construction and Christian discourse are a creative insertion of the Church into the ‘story-culture’ of Asia, on the one hand, and, on the other, a return to Jesus’ praxis of ‘story-telling’ in line with the Jewish tradition of narrative, parables and poetry. Jesus was not merely ‘telling’ the story of the God of the Old Testament, but rather ‘retelling’ it from his ‘telling’ experience of his Father. When such a re-telling springs from a new intense experiential encounter with God, it spontaneously becomes a new interpretation and embodies a rare, intense, creative versatility, and a new promise.

It cannot be otherwise when the story of Jesus is narrated in the Asian context by his disciples. When “telling the story” springs from a ‘telling experience’ of one’s encounter with Jesus, in one’s journey of life, the story of Jesus acquires a new depth and focus. For the ‘telling of the story’ of Jesus to become an engaging and transforming narrative, it spontaneously has to become a ‘retelling’, which implies a new hermeneutics. Otherwise, it is a mere ‘telling’ or ‘parroting’ the story of a Jesus who lived and died once upon a time. Such a story is only ‘history’ of facts and figures, which may teach some ideals and morals, and may be relevant or irrelevant to today’s context. But if the telling of the story of Jesus is a faith-sharing, then it becomes a ‘retelling’ of one’s experience with Jesus.

The New Testament abounds with stories that ‘retell’ the encounter with Jesus. The four Gospels are basically ‘retelling’ of the encounters with Jesus from four different hermeneutic horizons. In Asia, by and large, the Church has been ‘telling’ the story of Jesus by parodying the western spirituality, theology or liturgy or whatever. Pope John Paul II speaks, in Ecclesia in Asia, of an Asian pedagogy which will introduce people step by step to the full appropriation of the mystery of Christ (§ 20). What is imperative is to write a ‘Fifth (Asian!) Gospel’ so that the teeming millions of Asian hemisphere participate in the Good News of “Fullness of Life” (Jn 10:10). Over the past four decades, the Church in Asia has been engaging in an ‘inculturation model’ to proclaim the Good News. A judgment on the success of ‘inculturation’ is not available. But one can infer that there is a silent and collective re-thinking in the Church that it is high time to go beyond this model and search for new constructs and discourses to make the Church more Asian. Before we deliberate upon the nuances, promises, and challenges implied in the “re-telling,” a brief retrospective assessment on ‘inculturation’ over the years seems warranted.

2. Reality Bites of Inculturation Discourse

The overarching theological vision which guided and undergirded the mission of the Asian Church was configured in the praxis and discourse of ‘inculturation’ in the fields of Bible, catechetics, and liturgy. If we are perceptive enough we know that the praxis as well as theory of inculturation is often misconceived, misinterpreted and misused. It often misfired the objective of incorporating the Word in the body and soul of the Church of India. Even now the concept of ‘inculturation’ is treated as neologism; it is not yet convincingly defined; and a reasonable consensus over its praxis and theory is still to be worked out at the people’s level. By and large, it remains a loaded academic idea, not yet brought to the level of faith praxis. Often, it is muddled with adaptation, accommodation, enculturation, acculturation, hinduization, so on and so forth. I don’t want to enter into a debate on inculturation in the present context.1 I want only to say that the question still remains undefined.

Even the present Pope Benedict XIV has functionally disowned the word inculturation in his controversial speech at the University of Regensburg. He insists that Greek language cannot be reduced to one of the mediums of God’s revelation but it is the medium of revelation. He finds that the Reformation, Liberal Theology (Harnack), and the inculturation theologies in Asia/India are attempts of dehellenization. He refutes the thesis that the Hellenization of the Word was a first inculturation of Christianity, and that consequently, Hellenized Christianity must not be binding on other cultures, and that, therefore, there exists an imperative of returning to an ‘original’ message in order to inculturate it afresh when the Word encounters a new culture. This thesis, according to the Pope “is not simply false, it is coarse and lacking precision. The NT is written in Greek and reflects the encounter with the Greek spirit; which matured in that development that preceded it in the OT.”2 Therefore, hellenization is not one of the forms of inculturation but the fundamental revelatory mediation of revelation; implicitly, it means Greek wisdom is indispensable to comprehend the Biblical revelation!

Indeed, the idea of inculturation is revisited from diverse vantage points in the theological discourses over the past years. The incarnational model, often employed to interpret inculturation, is not palatable because the idea of emptying the ‘root’ paradigm of cultures and ‘embodying’ the Word in it is perceived as a western instrumentalist approach to culture. In the case of Asia, culture is not an ‘instrument’ or a ‘tool’ but an innate and integral ‘real’ in which there exists a continuum of ethnicity, creed, history, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, etc. Thist implies that in the Asian experience culture is soteriological. The praxis of treating culture as a mere instrument or means in inculturation does violence to Asian cultures. Therefore, the model of ‘embodiment’ of the Word after an incarnational pattern does not resonate with Asian sensibilities.

Moreover, the question of in whose culture the exercise of inculturation is being done is crucial.  If a major chunk of Indian populace belong to ‘dalit’ culture,3 how to interpret the brahminic culture as Indian culture? It is certainly outside the purview of the Gospel logic and Christopraxis which are preferentially associated with the culture of the ‘poor’ (masses). This does not mean that we belittle the Hindu Dharma, but it is a question of the Christian option to continue Jesus’ Kingdom ministry.

The new concepts like mutual empowerment, dialogue, partnership, pilgrimage, identity, interculturation, multiculturation, mutual appropriation, etc., are increasingly finding space in the talk and walk of inculturation. To phrase it differently, what is now debated on inculturation is the urgency of going beyond inculturation.4

3. In Search of New Paradigms and Praxes

As mentioned above, the first ever Asian Mission Congress in Thailand was a defining event and an emphatic ecclesial statement of the vibrant and confident Asian Churches. The Congress could silently generate a collective consciousness that God had invested a great promise on the ‘little-flock’ to tell the story of Jesus in Asia, the most populous continent in which two third of humanity finds its habitat. The most recent statistics show that Asia has only ten per cent of the world’s Catholic population, and Asian Catholics are only three per cent of the total Asian population of more than two billion people. This statistical fact entails a new mission imperative: the Asian Church needs a new creative paradigm for, and an innovative path to the mission.5

Responsive to the FABC’s call for the simultaneous triple dialogue with Asia’s poor, its local cultures, and other religious traditions (FABC I), the Asian Mission Congress sharpened this multi-process dialogue by proposing mission as ‘telling’ the ‘story’ of Jesus. This new way of doing mission resonates well with the narrativity of the Asian religious pursuits. Vibrating with the vision and praxis of the Asian Mission Congress, the NBCLC has articulated a new and improved proposal in its Ruby Jubilee theme, namely, “Retelling the Story of Jesus” and “Widening the Horizons.” A mere ‘telling’ the story of Jesus would not do justice to the newness of the Gospel in the Asian cultural milieu. Indeed, we were ‘telling’ the story of Jesus in Asia over the past years with enormous financial resources as well as human capital but, sadly, without much success.

What is needed is a ‘re-telling’ of the story of Jesus. ‘Retelling’ entails a new hermeneutics resonant with our cultural sensibilities and claims, making Jesus’ story delightful and promising for in the modern wo/man’s journey of life. Jesus’ own pedagogy initiating the Reign of God is the inspiration for this. Jesus was not merely ‘telling’ the story of Yahweh of the OT through ‘commandments’ and ‘diktats’, but was verily ‘retelling’ the story of Yahweh by being a “parable of God” in a “paradigm of humanity.”6 To phrase it differently: the Christopraxis was a ‘narrative hermeneutics’, and the Kingdom of God revealed through Jesus’ parables and ministry has a ‘narrative identity’ rather than a conceptual or institutional entity. One can say that the Gospel has not radically percolated into the body and soul of Asia/India because we were ‘telling’ the Gospel only through institutional structures and notional categories. Specially in the present globalized world of knowledge and cultural ‘flows’, it is not conceptual identity but narrative identity that seems capable of communicating the Church’s mission.

4. Call for a Narrative Identity

The role of ‘narrative’ in the formation of subjectivity is increasingly recognized now when cultural liminality is the human experience in the globalized multicultural world. Moreover, the present epoch of knowledge, media and ‘speed’ witnesses time and space coalescing and becoming seamless at the cost of the human quality of historicity.7 We have to rediscover the logic of time to gear to the mystery of history, an unavoidable  constituent of our human existence. Otherwise our lives become rootless and fragmented in today’s cultural and ideological fluidity. The deep crisis of the present generation is its estrangement from its own ‘core experience’ in the postmodern juncture when overarching systems like Communism, Capitalism or Catholicism are under revision. To live out our lives to the full we need a meaningful ‘story’, not an ideology. Paul Ricoeur writes: “Time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.”8 We all need a story to live by in order to make sense of the temporality of our life. Devoid of narrative, our life turns out to be a random sequence of unrelated events: birth and death, victories and tragedies, joys and sorrows become unintelligible and inscrutable.

The construction of a life-story supplies form and substance to experience. Story-telling helps us configure the disparate components of our life experience. Each life is an incipient story rendered intelligible by a narrator. Our identity or selfhood is born by scripting our life-story. One’s quest for authenticity and integrity leads us to write or tell a life. The story interprets us before we interpret it. We all need a vibrant ‘story of life’; in fact, scripting our journey of life as a meaningful story is the ‘art of living’ with a meaningful self-identity.

Engaged in the construction of identity as we are, we should take note of the distinction between identity as sameness (idem-identity) and identity as selfhood (ipse-identity). Idem denotes identity as a subsisting permanence and an uninterpreted continuity in life. Ipse stands for a struggle to interpret one’s life, and to continually re-figure various events through stories that one appropriates as one’s own. Idem-identity is a fait accompli, whereas ipse-identity is a hermeneutical process with no a priori outcome. Generally speaking, ‘identity’ connotes ‘sameness’ – the self is understood in terms of the Cartesian cogito. It is a fixed substratum that perdures over time.9 Cartesian essentialism reduces the subject to its brain functions. But the self is neither a fixed entity nor a mere bio-chemical compound. The human being is not a mere “rational being” (cogito). The subject who only thinks is a “wounded cogito” riddled with illusions of freedom and self-sufficiency.

Above all, we are cultural beings who write stories through which we construct our selfhood. Therefore, ‘cogito’ can have new translations. For example, “I love, therefore, I exist”; “I rebel, therefore, I exist”; “I believe, therefore, I exist”; “I dance, therefore, I exist” (Africans). The selfhood is an organic and unfolding ipse-identity. If so, what we need is a narrative hermeneutic to comprehend the inclusive organic nature of the subject which is realized in historicity. Historicity signifies that we are fundamentally historical beings and that we make history; indeed, our life narratives are unfolded in the mystery of history.10 In the narrative interpretation of life, both history and fiction (imagination) interplay, for the reference of both genres criss-crosses in the plane of human historicity – a life mediated by stories is a “fictive history, or if one prefers, a historic fiction.”11

5. Understanding the Narrative Identity of Religions

Religion is the constituent component of human historicity and, hence, is crucial in the formation of human subjectivity. Religious traditions employ potent language and imagery to shed light on that which ultimately concerns human beings – our questions about the meaning of life, our confrontations with death, our struggles on this planet earth, etc. Scriptures open up new ‘revelations’, possibilities, and horizons for alternative forms of being in the world. These scriptural discourses are by and large narratives rather than conceptual treatises. For example, the stories of the Bible are not monolithic constructs and discourses in a rigid concordance. The Bible is a vast narrative canvass of multivalent and multidimensional discourses, and is full of contrasting theological themes, including laws, prophecies, wisdom writings, hymns, etc.

Indeed, religion is not a sui generis exclusive phenomenon. Religious beliefs have their own coherence but may not be reduced to exclusive schemes and rigid formulations. Religious literature has different modes of signification, symbols, myths, narratives, metaphors, and models. They give birth to a plethora of meaning. These literary forms are not taxonomic devices or constructs for varying the discourse but rather resources by which theological meanings are generated. The scriptural figuration of the divine life, for example, is a complex of mixed genres. God embraces diverse profiles in the biblical discourses: sometimes He/She visits our lives as a hero who saves them; at other times, He/She is compassionate; one can meet a God who is wrathful and impatient, but who also enters our life as a friend and builds up an I-Thou type of relationship. Indeed, we infer God’s presence from the cosmic order: God is the creator, sustainer, and destroyer (s¨·Êi-sthiti-samh?ra), who is at the same time the restorer of the whole cyclic existence. In Hindu tradition, the god of death (Yama) is the son of the sun god! In other words, the God who appears in the scriptural texts is, by and large, experienced more as a narrative, aesthetic and poetic presence than a canonical or dogmatic surveillance.12

The advantage of narrative hermeneutics to understand religious texts is that it attends to the asymmetrical inter-text of opposite genres, which alternatively complement and conflict with each other. If one, for example, takes the Bible as a narrative rather than a codified and unified book with a singular construct, one can participate in the playfulness of the paradoxical logistics of biblical stories (e.g., God as just and merciful, God as the Lord of life and death, etc.). The narrative approach towards biblical literature is useful to interpret it positively, recognizing the prevailing innate dialogical interplay of various religious traditions in the formation of the Bible. It broadens the inclusive understanding of the religious phenomenon of the Bible, especially valuable in the present epoch of dialogue of religions.

If we apply a strict non-narrative ‘word’ hermeneutics to biblical literature we do no justice to the religious vision operative in the biblical tradition. Customarily, the Bible is interpreted in a linear understanding of history with the poles of Creation and Eschaton. However, as Paul Ricoeur deciphers it, a hermeneutical link of both cyclic and linear time is quite obvious in the biblical religion. The cyclic understanding of the non-scriptural primordial religions is built up in the numinous and pre-verbal experiences of nature and cosmos, whereas the scriptural religions of a Semitic type are built up on the hermeneutic of the ‘word’ and a body of iconoclastic teachings. Such scriptural traditions are proclamation-specific whose truth and meaning are authoritatively fixed by the revealed word. But non-scriptural tribal or folk religions root themselves in the correspondence between agricultural cycles and divine power; they understand revelation in terms of ‘sound’, ‘drum’,13 and the ‘visual’. The difference between these two types in their perspective towards time is striking. While non-scriptural religions vibrate with archaic time as repetitive of the original cosmogony, the scriptural religions are attuned with the forward-oriented, progressive historical time. Seen as ideal types, the former is aesthetic, generic, cyclic, and nature bound, whereas the latter is ethical, particular, interruptive, and history based.

The Biblical narratives flow back and forth between the celebration of ‘cyclical’ festival and seasons, and the testimony of the word in ‘linear’ history. One of the recurring theological concerns in the Bible is the clarifying equation between the ‘word’ in history and the ‘sacred’ in nature. Unless proclamation traditions are rooted in the cosmic patterns and symbols, they will be empty of the power and mystery that are familiar to primordial people in their perception of the numinous cosmos. “In truth, without the support and renewing power of the sacred cosmos and sacredness of vital nature, word itself becomes abstract and cerebral.”14 A narrative hermeneutic will have a greater reception today because it has an innate potential and versatility to be inclusive and dialogical in the ongoing dialogue of religions and cultures.

6. Recovery of Narrative Identity

The western philosophy of religion, be it Hegelian or Kantian, and western theology constructed in Aristotelian and Thomistic categories, by and large attempt to project an idea of God as a speculative concept which is free of figurative dynamics.15 The temptation of Christian theology is invariably to eclipse the narrativity of biblical literature by opting for philosophical categories. But, biblical literature being a narrative, one can state that theology must, first and foremost, be a hermeneutical exercise upon the multiple mode of discourses and constructs within the Bible. Otherwise, justice cannot be done to the multi-layered and multidimensional character of biblical literature.

The call of the Asian Mission Congress is for a reinvigoration of theological discourse on the basis of a narrative hermeneutics, which will vibrate with the Asian sensibilities. That is to say, to make the Christian presence at home in the story culture of Asia, what is demanded is a re-reading of the Bible in favour of a text-centred approach that offers immense possibilities of meaning as found in the texts themselves. “The question is rather whether there is, before the philosophical-theological interpretation, an interpretation that would not be an interpretation of the text or an interpretation about the text, but an interpretation in the text and through the text.” This intrinsic approach is guided by a sensitivity to the interpretation already operative in the text under consideration. The Bible is an ocean of multi-layered and polyvalent disparate traditions. Only a narrative hermeneutic can decipher the hidden meaning latent in these texts. Paul Ricoeur refers this excavation process as a “depth semantics” (structural analysis), a “semiotics of texts” (intertextuality), or a “synchronic reading [that] completes the diachronic approach of the historical-critical method.”16

What we want to suggest is that theologians labour to homogenize the Bible’s semantic and semiotic polyphony in notional constructs independent of the multilayered discourses of the scriptures on divine life. But before God is defined univocally in a metaphysical system, God is ‘named’ polyphonically in diverse biblical genres. “The naming of God, in the originary expressions of faith, is not simple but multiple. It is not single but polyphonic. The originary expressions of faith are complex forms of discourse as diverse as narratives, prophecies, laws, proverbs, prayers, hymns, liturgical formulas, and wisdom writings. As a whole, these forms of discourse name God. But they do so in various ways.”17 The polyphony and polyvalence of biblical traditions should be the presupposition and telos of all theological work and biblical interpretation.

Unfortunately, Christian theology has worked out in conceptual “Christian pattern,” i.e., the salvation-history paradigm (in the enclosure of creation and eschatology), in an exclusive way. When the Bible is read as a seamless coherence of chronological schema of the “history of salvation,” the Bible’s fête du sens (festival of meaning), vibrant in its ‘multiplex nature’, is lost or suppressed.18 “Concordance finally conquers discordance.”19 This led to the reduction of the vibrant ‘discordance’ of biblical narratives into the immutable canons of the scriptures!

One would not disagree that the post-Enlightenment era caused the collapse of the very capacity to tell stories and to listen to stories. “It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us … were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.”20 Narratives are the vehicles for exchanging experience and they thus constitute the identity of the community. By telling and retelling the stories, communities create a narrative identity. Jesus told and retold stories; and many stories were told about Jesus. As it concerns the Bible as a whole, “the most important texts, the ones most relevant to religion, are stories.” This is the status of the Christian tradition: “We too become part of an unbroken tradition of storytelling. Christianity is a community of story tellers” (a “community at table together”).21

The fight for a “rebirth of narrative” is a specifically Christian task and a responsibility of those called to ‘break the Word’, especially in the present context of the intensive visual culture of media and communication. The advocacy of “retelling the story of Jesus through the stories of people” is, on the one hand, for building up a narrative identity for the Church in Asia and, on the other, for a “narrative intelligibility” of its vibrant missional existence.

7. Import of ‘Story’ in Asian Religiousness

The Asian Mission Congress’s vision of mission is a further deepening and expanding of the process of the triple-dialogue of the line of thought initiated by the FABC. This new way of doing mission verily and obviously resonates with the sensibilities of Asian religious pursuits and cultural horizons. However, any Christian whose faith formation is by tradition accomplished in the conventional notional theology (faith as an intellectual conformity to dogmas) might naturally be apprehensive of the idea of mission as ‘story telling’. Is Jesus and his message merely one story among numerous stories? Are stories binding in one’s life? Is Christian evangelization a mere ‘story’ telling? Isn’t ‘story’ nebulous and very relative idea to the mindset of the listener as well as the communicator?

To answer these questions, let me narrate an event. A protestant missionary delivered a moving sermon on the passion and death of Jesus Christ on a Good Friday in one of the remotest villages in North India. The majority of the listeners were, of course, poor villagers of Hindu lineage. Customarily, Good Friday sermons would be intense and dense with the details of Jesus’ sufferings and his crucifixion so that love of and devotion to Jesus become truly personal and emotional. After hearing the sermon, a villager, a Hindu, while returning home whispered to a fellow companion: Jesus had such a painful death because of his karmas in the former life!

What an anticlimax to the best intentions and rhetoric of the preacher! The sermon was counterproductive not because of its substance (the Gospel of salvation) but because of an argumentative and dogmatic style which did not vibrate with the cultural ‘reception’ of the hearers. ‘Reception’ is a good hermeneutic principle to assess the relevance and competence of truth in specific cultural and religious settings. ‘Costly’ religion cannot come out of a well articulated arguments through notional categories in a story culture: there must be an experiential sharing to which one is invited to participate. What is at work in such faith sharing is narrative intelligence rather than of normative reason. This does not mean that reason has no role to play, but it is a question of discretion, a ‘culture-thing’ especially in the Asian context where culture is hardly delinked from the sundry events of socio-political life.

Indeed, there exists, especially in Asia, an interface between style and substance. The most important aspect in the Asian religiousness is ‘experience’, not abstractions and arguments. The message must be nuanced with ‘experience’, and the messenger must primarily give a ‘witness’ of his/her faith. A witness (s?k·i) is the one who has the ‘Third Eye’ (ak·a), the one who is more of a ‘seer’ than a ‘seeker’. The ‘seer’ is the awakened one who ‘sees’ without mediation. Visibility and visuality of experience both in ‘walk’ and ‘talk’ are of paramount importance. In the light of a three decade long experience in the Hindu world, Swami Abhishikt?nanda (Henri Le Saux) stated that once one has become ‘awakened’ (a guru, yogi, maharshi, buddha) one is considered as the ‘possession’ of the whole humankind; and one can be beyond the bonds and binds of one’s religious tradition. It was Swamiji’s experience that he, a sanny?s´ (a realized person), was accepted by the Hindus, not as a Christian missionary but as a man of realization (s?dhu), and the Hindus often spontaneously flocked around him to hear about Jesus at Hindu sacred centres like Rishikesh. Hindus do not think that Jesus, a Guru, is a private possession of the Christians, but a guru of humanity, who showers blessings on any one who approaches him. In India and in Asia, a missionary should be able to say that he or she has ‘seen’ the risen Jesus, as Mary Magdalene proclaimed: “I have seen the Lord” (Jn 20:18). Then, the Hindus would come to Jesus and his reign of God. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims at the Christian pilgrim shrines like at Velankanni, or thousands of Hindu Christubhaktas in North India are living witnesses of the ubiquity of the risen Lord. The Christophany in their lives is a ‘narrative’ presence of Christ, not a ‘Christology’ of metaphysical categories.

Once, Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta approached a baker to get bread for her children. The baker was annoyed by her frequent pleas and spat on her in anger. After brushing away the spit fallen on her dress with a gentle smile on her face, Mother Theresa looked up at the baker and told him that she got her due, but what about something for her children. The baker was taken aback by her composure and gentleness in spite of his outrageous act. From that moment onwards, he began to daily supply bread to the poor of Mother Theresa! The ‘story of Jesus’ was so transparent and obvious in her love for the poor and her forgiving gesture, that if needed no further explanation. What was at work in the witness of Mother Theresa was Christophany, the Jesus’ story narrated in an ordinary transaction through which an extraordinary message was transferred: it had the potential to transform the baker. There was neither an argument nor a debate in this communication but only a silent but gentle ‘invitation’ to the baker to participate in the person and mission of Jesus. Jesus’ Gospel is not an argument but an evocation! Mother Theresa was ‘retelling the story of Jesus’ in her concern for the poor. Compare it with the laboured Christological advocacy and rhetoric of the Protestant pastor’s Good Friday sermon and the consequent anticlimax; he was merely parroting the ‘story’ of Jesus without any reference to the unconscious of an Indian who is under the traditional spell about the sins of past lives. The Good Friday sermon within the Indian cultural milieu could have been a liberative Gospel has the pastor been able to ’retell’ the death of Jesus in the glow of resurrection, responding to the ‘unconscious’ of the Hindu’s karma belief.

‘Telling the story’ of one’s encounter with Jesus on one’s journey of life has the power of transformation. This means that Jesus’ story has to become autobiographical. Then our own life story can become a spontaneous faith sharing, an invitation to the Good News. That is to say, Jesus’ story has to be ‘retold’ in the narrative of our own life. Such a faith exercise entails a new interpretation of faith, which is to be responsive to our cultural and social unconscious. When our own story is transformed into a ‘parable of Jesus’, the Gospel acquires its missional nuance. This is what we learn from Jesus’ story narrated in the Gospels.

‘Story telling’ was, indeed, the style of Jesus’ ministry. He retold us the story of Yahweh because of his consistent encounter with God throughout his ministry and life (“the Father is in me and I am in the Father,” Jn 10:38) so that he could ‘draw’ many to him (Jn 12:32). The Samaritan woman retold the story of her encounter with Jesus and invited the people of her village to her new awareness: “Come and see” the Christ (Jn 4:29). Spontaneously she became the continuation of the “living water” for the Samaritans of her village. Mary of Magdala retold the ‘story’ to the disciples because she had seen Lord (Jn 20:18). Thus, she empowered the apostles who had been shattered at the death of Jesus; subsequently, they themselves became ardent ‘re-tellers’ of Jesus’ story of what they have ‘seen’ and ‘touched’ to the ends of the earth (Mk 16:19-20).

St John narrated the story of what he had ‘heard’ and ‘seen’ with his own eyes, and what he ‘looked at’ and ‘touched’ with his hands (1 Jn. 1). Jesus retold the ‘story’ of his ‘journey’ from the Father and the ‘return’ to the Father (Jn 16:28) to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, when he “came up and walked with them”; he narrated to them “everything in the scriptures concerning himself” and “stayed with them” and then, finally, “he took the bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them.” Their hearts were burning within while Jesus was ‘retelling his story’, which finally opened their eyes and made them ‘recognize’ Jesus as the Saviour (Lk 24:13-31). Jesus was not telling a mere story, but a real ‘story’ (an autobiography) of his own life journey that transformed the hesitant disciples into new agents of the reign of God. Jesus was preaching the Good News through parables and stories throughout his Kingdom ministry but these disciples were then unable to ‘recognize’ Jesus as Messiah. But this time, when Jesus ‘retold’ the Good News in an autobiographical narrative format, their hearts caught fire, and they became disciples again. Was Jesus hinting at the importance of the Asian way of ‘retelling’ one’s own ‘story’ in this post-Easter appearance? A shift from the abstract notional theology to an autobiographical experiential story-theology is called for in our Christian life to build up an authentic Asian orthopraxis and to develop a competent theology responsive to the Asian sensibilities.

8. Missional Nuances of Retelling

Firstly, we will really be able to ‘retell’ Jesus’ story only when our heart catches fire so that our ‘inner eyes are opened and have recognized the Lord’ (e.g., the Samaritan woman, and Mary of Magdala) in our life journey. For, only at that moment we are transformed (Saul became Paul! The disciples who went to Emmaus returned to Jerusalem! Doubting Thomas became the Apostle of India, etc.), and consequently Jesus’ story becomes an unavoidable part of our autobiography which, in turn, invites others to Jesus and his reign of God.

Secondly, ‘retelling’ the story of the encounter with the Lord will be a ‘delightful experience’, because it is the Good News which one has come to know through the Lord’s mercy (Evangelii Nuntiandi, § 80). Then, “with ever increasing love, zeal and joy” (EN, §1) one shares one’s ‘story’ and invites others to take part in it because the heart compels to do it. One writes stories and poems from the musings of heart and its desires. The heart’s logic operates by itself; the heart beats out of inner joy and peace because it has fallen in love with its Lord!

Thirdly, one can share one’s story in an ambience of mutual respect, friendship, hospitality, and in a culture of dialogue and love (‘the triple dialogue’), in which there is an open space for both hearer and the communicator, and a mutual transformation and empowerment simply happens without reason, because the Spirit blows where it wills!

Fourthly, one’s story (or the breaking of the Word) can truly be shared in the context of ‘breaking of the bread’. That is to say, only when one becomes a co-pilgrim in the other’s journey of life characterized by the struggles as well as dreams, can one build up bridges of mutual trust, acceptance and respect. This will eventually lead the partners of this ‘story telling’ to mutual growth in their life journey. This is the incarnational dimension of story telling. In the new dispensation, the Christian God is Immanuel who accompanies the journey of humanity and partners in its struggles and hopes; he is no more a distant God in Heaven, but the risen one who is the very ‘heart beat’ of reality. As St Gregory of Nyssa put it, Jesus is the “rich and munificent Entertainer in our nature” who invites us to a house adorned, to a feast prepared, and to refreshments readied.22

Fifthly, this is ultimately the work of the Spirit of the risen Lord whose ways are inscrutable, and of the heavenly Father (Mt 16:17) who reveals Jesus as the Saviour beyond the ambit of “flesh and blood” (Mt 15:17) to our Asian co-pilgrims in the logic of the ‘Universal Salvific Will’ (Col 1:15-20; Eph 1:3-23), the Missio Dei of AG §2. As Karl Rahner put it, Jesus’ story has to be retold in the “Holy Optimism” intrinsic in the reality that God desires everybody’s salvation.

Sixthly, ‘retelling the story of Jesus’ as mission should be conceived and practised within the eschatological horizon. It needs time for the seed to sprout and to grow and, finally, to blossom and fructify. Doing mission in Asia entails an ‘eschatological-waiting’ which implies ‘listening’, ‘solidarity’, and an ardent faith in the ‘Lord who comes’ – Maranatha (1 Cor 4:5; Rev 19:11). He will restore “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Seventhly, “retelling the story” as religious discourse in a multi-religious context implies an interdisciplinary interrogation in which ‘truth’, as Socratic dictum holds, is a dialogical event (not an immutable notion, aletheia), as one tests one’s faith from a variety of possible perspectives. Here ‘dialogue’ means the interaction of diverse streams and strands of thought on a narrative platform. Dia- is a component of the word ‘dialogue’: its root is not duo which means ‘two’. ‘Dia’ means ‘through’. Dialogue implies an open space in which a free flow of ideas happens without prejudice and judgement. ‘Truth’ emerges as an ‘event’, an a posteriori result in a mutual ‘conversion’ of the partners in dialogue. ‘Retelling’ is more of probing than proving, and is itself turned out to be the end because the ‘end’ is subtly present in the very process, and is an active agency in the very dynamics of dialogue. Thus, there exists a coincidence of end and means in dia-logue.

9. Dynamics of Story Telling

Jesus was, indeed, a story teller. He was retelling the ‘story of God’ through his own stories and his life narratives which had diverse translations, like his interaction with the lost and the least, his options for the poor, the preferential association with the marginalized. He started with the theme of the reign of God. His pedagogy vibrated with the culture of the Jews who had the creative craft to transform history into fiction (or narrative) and transform even historical events into the story of God. The Old Testament is not a chronicle but a symbolic history which becomes a medium of revelation. Ours is also a culture of stories. The religious language of India is that of stories, myths, poems, narratives and parables. Story is the most competent and non-offensive medium for the encounter between Gospel and culture. The following are some of the advantages of telling stories23: (1) Stories invoke interest and compel action. (2) Stories unite us in a holistic way in terms of our common stuff of existence. (3) Stories are a veritable bridge to one’s cultural roots. (4) Stories bind us all to universal human family in the collective unconscious. (5) Stories help us to ’re-member’ in traditions and heritages. (6) Stories are more authentic and original than dogmas and people easily believe them. (7) Stories invoke our wholeness and identity. (8) Hearing stories is a healing experience, which leads to reconciliation. (9) Every story has a personal and universal character and, thus, it has transformative quality. (10) Stories provide a basis for hope and make our lives meaningful and delightful within their temporality.

10. ‘Retelling’ per se in Religious Discourse

10.1. The Logic of ‘Retelling’

As seen above, ‘retelling’ implies a narrative methodology whose logic is  quite different from notional, argumentative logic. The narrative style fits very well into the Asian logic of ‘experience’ (anubhava). ‘Retelling’ is not an argument but a delightful ‘sharing’ of a very unique experience (encounter with Jesus in one’s life), to one’s brothers and sisters for the very sake of it. The transference of ‘experience’ takes place at the ‘being’ level (because of ‘reasons of the heart’), not at the mind level. What happens at the ‘heart level’ is not a contest but a ‘surrender’, and a transformation (remember the encounter between the baker and Mother Theresa); what is operative in communion at the heart level is ‘receptivity’ and ‘absorption’, which are the basic elements of religiousness. Such a ‘sharing’ must not have motives, covert or overt, other than the ‘sharing’ itself. The very ‘sharing’ of ‘a telling experience’ is justified in virtue of itself, and it works by itself and in itself without an external mandate, because the logic of the ‘witness’ is simply its transparency and forthrightness. It is the logic of goodness that diffuses itself! ‘Retelling’ is possible, as in the case of Jesus who has become the ‘parable of the Father‘, only in the praxis of Christian discipleship. This is how we Asians have to write the ‘fifth Gospel’ to lead the Asians to Christ.

10.2. The Mission of ‘Retelling’

‘Retelling the story of Jesus’ turns out to be missionary if it is a sharing of one’s encounter with Jesus in hospitality and friendship with our sisters and brothers belonging to different religious traditions. It cannot be a laboured exercise but a spontaneous happening. I remember an episode in my life journey in which a Hindu had ‘retold’ the story of Jesus through her life. I had gone to a dispensary near my provincial house to take an injection. A Tamil young lady was the nurse. She knew my identity. While organizing the injection she simply ‘proclaimed’ with a tremendous enthusiasm and joy that she was a fan of Jesus Christ! She continued to say that she visited churches whenever she got an opportunity and would spend some time in front of Jesus. She declared that Jesus never failed in her life. In Tamil Nadu, being a fan means much. It is a common knowledge that fans of political leaders and film artists will immolate themselves to show their love and devotion to their heroes. There is a profound intensity and fire in the loyalty of a fan, maybe naïve and blunt, but the radicality of a fan is indisputable. ‘Being a fan of Jesus’ is a new translation of being a disciple in the Tamil Nadu context! In this case, paradoxically, the Hindu girl was ‘re-telling’ the story of Jesus to a theologian-priest who was unknowingly ‘converted’ to Jesus with new intensity! The glowing delight in the eyes of that Hindu nurse while she was narrating her faith in Jesus is still fresh in my memory. In her sharing, I do not find any hidden motif: just the pure and innocent joy of encountering Jesus in her life, which was simply proclaimed for the sake of sharing. This episode shows that the Father is still anointing new “Cyruses” (Isa 44:25) to reveal his Son, even to the disciples of Jesus!

‘Retelling’ is not a mere ‘story-telling’ but it is an invitation to one’s ‘autobiography’, scripted along with Jesus, the mentor and co-pilgrim. Such a sharing naturally brims with delight because it is the ‘gospel’ of my own life story; it  bubbles up spontaneously with enthusiasm and urgency because it embodies ‘experiential’ and ‘realizational’ nuances. Besides, when one narrates Jesus’ story in one’s own story of life there emerge a new translation and hermeneutics of the Good News, because such a story is churned out from life’s struggles, and embodies one’s cultural and social sensitivities. Thus, one’s story becomes an engaging, continuous, and even a commanding mission narrative in virtue of itself.

Moreover, the mission in this sharing implies that one is a ‘mentor’ who ‘awakens’ the friend to the Lord. The ‘story’ generates a space where no one is threatened or imposed upon. It is an inclusive and dialogical ‘space’. It is a space of ‘playfulness’, spontaneity and honesty. Story telling creates a ‘welcoming space’, a space of ‘understanding’, a space of ‘reception’ and a space of ‘commonsense’, so much so that listeners cannot but be ‘converted’ by the pure joy and promise latent in such faith sharing. Since the recounting is ‘autobiographical’, a story of one’s encounter with the Lord, it will concomitantly be charged with God’s blessings and grace. It engenders  mutual enlightenment and empowerment and it witnesses to the Truth, the Life, and the Way (see Jn 18:37), which in such undisguised sharing needs no further explanation or demonstration. Sharing one’s own story is free from hidden missionary agenda in the customary sense of the term. What is at work in such faith sharing through ‘stories’ is the principle of ‘connaturality’. The hearer ‘naturally’ vibrates with the ‘revelation’ because the Spirit of the risen Christ is ever active. He or she is delighted to participate in it. The rest, to lead someone to the Lord, is the work of the Spirit and the Father (Mt 16:17). Thus ‘retelling’ turns out to be an mission testimony of one’s faith in the Lord.

10.3. Asian Imperative of ‘Retelling’

While doing mission in Asia, one has to situate oneself in the very matrix of Asian experiential logic. Pope John Paul II’s Ecclesia in Asia (EA) says: “Narrative methods akin to Asian cultural forms are to be preferred. In fact, the proclamation of Jesus Christ can most effectively be made by narrating his story, as the Gospels do” (EA, §20). The missiology followed in Asia has largely been guided by the western notional and normative compass. Even the ‘inculturation’ much in vogue since the Vatican Council II has been a subtle and shrouded Christian ‘argument,’ not a Christian narrative. The Christian mission has been full of ‘prose’ and ‘reason’; it wants poetry, myths, and stories! Phrasing it differently, the Gospel of Jesus is largely proclaimed as ‘rational knowledge’, not in narrative aesthetics. While doing theology in Asia, one should remember the counsel of St Gregory of Nazianzus who, in his orations, speaks of the imperative of “the theologian in us” “to be polished into beauty.”24 Asian theologians have to rediscover the relevance and competency of the forgotten Christian legacy of the Philokalia (love of the beautiful) of the Eastern Orthodox Hesychast tradition from the 4th to 15th century. to engage in a narrative theology in Asia.

The ability to see ‘beauty as it is’ (not as it should be) is innate to the Asian genius. Beauty can be perceived only when our religiosity is not crowded and burdened by abstractions. In Asian religiousness, there is a conscious reference to God as Beauty, and Beauty as Truth. That is why the religious language of Asia is largely of stories, metaphors, myths, narratives, poetry, and autobiographies. To engage in a narrative theology, Asian theologians should generate an inner space for ‘innocence’, where God self-manifests as beauty. To respond to the call of Asia, an exercise of ‘unlearning’ is imperative in Asian theological discourses. Asia’s call for renunciation, contemplation, and mysticism has to generate this inner chamber of innocence, where everything is a part of the creative play of God.

Gregory of Nyssa says that the best theologian is not the one who gives a clinical account of his subject but the one who assembles more of Truth’s image and shadows and thus moves beyond the bounds of ‘pure’ rationality.25 ‘Retelling the story of Jesus’ is a way of going beyond the ‘pure’ rationality and to participate in the Lord’s Christophanies within the cultural, social and religious pursuits and liberative struggles of the peoples in Asia.26

11. Conclusion

To sum up: ‘retelling’ implies reinterpretation of the Gospel through stories, parables, and narratives of people’s struggles. It entails creativity, innovation, profound personal encounter of Jesus, and faith sharing in an ambience of friendship and mutual trust. Above all, ‘retelling’ as narrative hermeneutics subtly entails three simultaneous movements: denouncing, announcing, and renouncing. Denunciation means a ‘deconstruction’ of normative notions and idioms of the western legacy; announcement entails a ‘reconstruction’ which offers new alternatives in terms of Asian metaphors and stories. Renunciation entails a ‘radical’ surrender to the activity of the Spirit who ever re-creates and renews; it is the humble acceptance of the fact that we are only participating in the Missio Dei.

If we analyze Jesus’ stories, parables, narratives, and, above all, the very life story of Jesus himself, we will not miss these three movements. Since these movements are shrouded in stories and symbolic actions, they do not overtly offend others but they unsettle the dominant consciousness and, eventually, become an ardent invitation to the vision of God’s Reign. The theme of ‘retelling the story of Jesus’ is an earnest ‘welcome’ to the people of Asia to participate in Jesus’ Kingdom while respecting the Asian sensibilities and responding to the triple dialogue with the Asian Poor, Asian Religions and Asian Cultures.

Footnotes:

1See Antony Kalliath, “A Call to the Liberative Praxis of the Gospel: Inculturation in India,” Ishvani Documentation and Mission Digest 20, 3 (Sept.-Dec. 2002), 352-400.

2See Pope Benedict XVI, “The Breadth of the Logos,” Tablet (23 Sept. 2006), 10-12.

3‘Dalit’ means ‘broken’, ‘ground’, ‘split’; the dalits are the dispossessed in the nefarious caste system. They constitute 16% plus of India’s population and two thirds of the Indian Christians. Here ‘dalit’ is used in a wider sense as the term that may include all those who are oppressed and marginalised in the name of caste, creed, colour, language, tribe, race, gender, etc. In other words, ‘dalit’ can be interpreted as an Indian translation of the biblical ‘poor’.

4See Michael Amaladoss, Beyond Inculturation, Delhi: ISPCK, 1998.

5See Mario Saturnino Dias, ed., Telling the Story of Jesus in Asia: A Celebration of Faith and Life at the First Asian Mission Congress. Bangalore: ATC, 2007, 143-55.

6See Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus an Experiment in Christology. London: Collins, 1979.

7Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Toronto and New York: Bantam Books, 1992, see especially chapter 2.

8Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984, 3.

9See Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another. University of Chicago Press, 1992, 1-39.

10See Paul Ricoeur, “The Narrative Function” in Hermeneutics and the Human Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

11Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 114.

12Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, Religion, Narrative and Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995, 41.

13Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,1999; see chs. 4 and 5.

14Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 67.

15For example, Hegel emphasizes pure conceptual thought in which the spirit is  conscious of itself. In his scheme, Christ is only a figurative symbol, and the Spirit a sublated thought. It is in the Trinity that the reality is revealed in itself. Immanuel Kant would say that the final absorption of figurative religious thought into speculation is not a dialectical realization of reason’s inner directionality but rather a transcendental illusion. Such an illusion is a violation of the logistics of reason. Hence, the hermeneutics of symbols can be exercised outside the parameters of critical philosophy. However, he holds the position that the potentials of religious faith abide in the practical realization of human freedom: Christ is only a practical ideal not a reflective moment of the absolute itself. Ricoeur, “A Philosophical Hermeneutics of Religion: Kant,” 79.

16Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 140 ff., 148 ff., 171.

17Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 199.

18Paul Ricoeur, “Contribution d’une réflexion sur le langage à une théologie de la parole,“ in Exégèse et herméneutique: Parole de Dieu, ed. Xavier Léon Dufour. Paris: Seuil, 1971, 315; also in Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 27.

19Ibid., 238.

20Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, 83.

21Herald Weinrich, Narrative Theology, 9: The Crisis of Religious Language, ed. Johann-Baptist Metz and Jean-Pierre Jossua. New York: Herder and Herder, 1973, 45-6, see also, Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 241.

22Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 27.7., quoted in Frederick W. Norris Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Orations of Gregory Nazianzen. Leiden: Brill, 1991, 221.

23See William J. Bausch, Storytelling: Imagination and Faith. Bangalore: ATC, 1999.

24Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 221.

25Frances Young, “The Critic and the Visionary,” in Scottish Journal of Theology 41(1988), 265, cited in David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, New York: Orbis Books, 1991, 353.

26See Antony Kalliath, “Re-Cognizing Christ in Asia,” in Sharing Diversity in Missiological Research and Education, ed. L. Stanislaus and John F. Gorski. Pune: Ishvani Kendra and ISPCK, 2006. 226-47.

VJTR 73 (2009) 845-852

Minguel Vaz, Lay Man and

Unique Vicar General (circa 1485-1547)

Msgr Francis CORREA

On this Year for the Priests we are happy to publish this article about a lay person who exercised, with exemplary fidelity and efficiency and in perfect harmony with the priests and the civil authorities of his time, what is generally considered to be an ecclesiastical office. His report to the King of Portugal resulted in St Francis Xavier and the gesuits being sent to India. Msgr1 Correa <frans_correa@sify.com> is Parish Priest at the Sacred Heart Church, Varkhanda P.O., Dapchari, Talasari, Thane Dt, Maharashtra 401610.

In the history of the Church in India, Minguel Vaz was indeed a unique Vicar General. He was probably one of the greatest achievers. In his capacity of Vicar General he was in charge of a very extensive area with unhindered jurisdictional powers, which no other Vicar General in India ever enjoyed or exercised.

The post of the Vicar General is normally held by a distinguished priest. But Minguel Vaz was a rare case in the Latin Church. He was just a layman, and yet appointed Vicar General for whole of India1 – having the largest jurisdiction. This highest ecclesiastical office in a diocese was conferred upon him after his predecessor, the Rev. Fr Bastiao Pires Cerqueira had completed his term.2

Not ‘Msgr’ but ‘Mr’

Admitting his dynamic leadership and giving due credit to the bold steps taken by this able administrator and considering the far-reaching effects of his missionary policies, some historians have addressed him ‘Msgr Minguel Vaz’.3 Others have addressed him ‘Fr Minguel Vaz’. Minguel was neither a priest nor did he possess the coveted title of ‘Monsignor’. He was a zealous and dedicated layman who held this administrative post in Goa for fifteen years: 1532 to 1547.4

His full name was Bacharel Minguel Coutinho Vaz.5 Bacharel was a ‘bachelor’ as far as his marital status was concerned and a ‘bachelor’ in Canon Law, as far his educational qualification was concerned (a few historians address him ‘Doctor’ in Canon Law). Being a committed and dedicated bachelor and being appreciated by one and all for his virtuous life, he could have easily sought the sacrament of Holy Orders but, like St Francis of Assisi, he refrained from receiving them.

The Ecclesiastical Offices

To appreciate the office of the Vicar General, it is necessary first to know the office of the Bishop and its historical background. We are aware that the sea route to India was discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1498 and thereafter the wave of the western form of Christianity came to the shores of India. This form of Christianity was placed under the Prior of the Military Order of Christ, who governed the mission lands. At first there seems to have been no co-ordination in the work of these priests and evangelizers,6 until the office of the Vicar General was created for Goa. The first Vicar General was appointed in 1514.7 The Vicar General was required to look after the orderly functioning of ecclesiastical affairs. He was bound to send reports to the king from time to time. The Vicars General were not always ecclesiastics. As conversions increased and the new communities of Christianity were formed along the coast of India, they were to be placed under the Bishop.

The history of Catholic Goa began in 1514 with the creation of the Diocese of Funchal, so named after the city on the Island of Madeira, off the northwest coast of Africa. Goa was placed under Funchal. At that time, the Bishops were sent out in order to administer the sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders. They were called ‘Obispos de Anel’, which meant ‘Bishops of the Ring’. There were three or four such Bishops: the first we know with certainty was Duarte Nunes, a Dominican,8 the last was the Capuchin Friar Fernando Vaqueiro. The day-to-day administration of the diocese was carried out by the Vicar General,9 a person canonically called the ‘Shadow of the Bishop’.

It was soon realized that the growing Indian mission could no more be governed from a far-away bishopric such as Funchal. Therefore, at the request of the King of Portugal, Pope Clement VII erected the See of Goa on 31st January, 1533 and appointed a Bishop for it.10 It was only in 1539 that the Bishop began residing in Goa. The diocese of Goa stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to China. The Vicars General were supposed to take care of certain regions. Minguel Vaz was housed in Goa taking care of the territory of India in addition to some other regions.11

The First Vicar General of ‘Goa’

Vaz was appointed Vicar General in the year 1532.12 He was the last Vicar General in India under the old arrangement which lasted till Goa became a bishopric in 1533. He reached Goa, the capital of the Portuguese Empire in the East, in 1533 and took charge of the diocese in 1534 as the diocese was just created in the previous year. Vaz, however, continued to serve as Vicar General under Goa’s Bishop Joao de Albuquerque, O.F.M, who took possession of the See only in 1538. By that time Goa had a Bishop’s Palace and a Cathedral. Under the leadership of Minguel Vaz, the newly constructed Cathedral was consecrated by the Bishop on 25th March 1539, the Feast of the Annunciation.13

A God-sent Opportunity: The ‘Hidden Pearl’ at the Pearl Fishery Coast

A golden opportunity came in the way of Minguel Vaz. It was most unexpected. In 1536 an emergency call came to Goa suddenly from the south of India. Minguel left Goa and proceeded to Cochin. From where was the call? The Fishery Coast was the dry and barren strip of the eastern coast that stretched from Cape Comorin to Adam’s Bridge (Rameshwaram), covering twenty-two groups of villages. The Paravas had made it their permanent dwelling place. Most of the people on this coast earned their living by fishing. There were others who earned their daily bread by diving for pearls. Pearl-fishing was an organized industry in and around Tuticorin. The actual divers were Paravas. The Paravas led a rather secure life till the Muslim Arabs swarmed the region. By the XV century, they had acquired mastery over the pearl-fishery coast. About the year 1516, the Muslims of Kayalpatnam had obtained on lease the pearl-fishery trade from the Chera King Udaya Marthande Varman, reducing the Parava divers to near slavery.14

Some of the pearl-divers happened to pick a quarrel with their Muslim masters… a Parava woman was mishandled by a Muslim…. This resulted in bloodshed on both sides. The Muslims were determined to annihilate the Paravas. At this critical juncture John De Cruz introduced the Paravas to the Portuguese power. The deputation of 85 persons went from the Fishery Coast to Cochin and asked help and protection from the Portuguese. Their request was granted. The Paravas were overjoyed. In gratitude, they requested for baptism from Minguel Vaz, the Vicar General. Along with Rev. Pedro Gonsalves, a diocesan priest and the Dean of Cochin, the Vicar General went to the Fishery Coast. He was instrumental in baptizing the ‘entire’ caste of Parava fisher folk, who lived on the Coast of Cape Comorin opposite Ceylon, numbering about 30,000.15 These conversions were carried out during the period 1536-1537.

Launching into the Deep

When the Paravas received baptism it was impossible to impart to them any instruction in the Christian faith worth the name. The priests who had gone there in 1536, and others who visited the coast, just to administer baptisms, left the place soon after, as they found the climate unhealthy and food scarce. As a result, the new converts were left without shepherds to look after them or to give instruction. The believers had continued to live the same life of non-believers that they had been leading before.16 This was disturbing for Minguel Vaz.

The Confraternity of ‘Santa Fe’

While the crowd of the Fishery Coast came to Christianity, Minguel Vaz and his friends increasingly felt that it was necessary to take some positive measures and have some permanent organization to ensure continued evangelization of Goa and the adjoining regions. Five distinguished men came together at the beginning of 1541 and brought about an organization called the ‘Confraternity of Santa Fe’ (Holy Faith). The five founder members were: (1) the Vicar General, (2) Dr Pero Fernandes the Cathedral preacher, (3) the Judge of India (Ouvidor Geral) and a close friend of Diogo, (4) Cosme Anes and, (5) Fr Paulo de Santarem, the Franciscan commissary.17 The members of the executive committee were quite enthusiastic. The purpose of this organization was, as its name signified, to spread the faith of Christ and to sustain it. This organization was solemnly inaugurated on 24th April, 1541, the Sunday after Easter.

In order to sustain the faith in Christ and for the consolidation of the Church, they felt it was necessary to have the laity well formed and the local clergy adequately trained in sound theology. Therefore, they considered that the construction of a seminary was needed. To run the seminary and to maintain the faith of the people with the help of the growing number of missionaries and catechists, finance was necessary. How to raise the funds? The problem of finances and all such responsibilities were to be shouldered by the founder members of Santa Fe and the executive committee members called mordomos.18

Establishment of the Seminary

Santa Fe, as mentioned earlier, felt the need of constructing a seminary. It took the committee a long time to arrive at the decision with regard to the venue. Finally, under the guidance of the Bishop, the venue was finalized. The work of the construction of the seminary started on November 10, 1541. Subsequently the seminary came to be known as ‘College’, with a church attached to it. It was completed on January 25, 1543, the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, to whom the Church was dedicated. At the inauguration sermon Fr Diogo de Borba19 elaborated not only upon the aims and objectives of Santa Fe but also on the aims and objectives of the seminary. The main purpose for the founding of the seminary was to train the local young candidates to become shepherds of their flock.20 The Confraternity, though short-lived, initially played a vital and decisive role in the evangelization all over with the help of the Jesuits, the master-mind behind its vitality being, of course, the Vicar General, Minguel Vaz.

An Able Administrator

On his arrival in Goa, the Portuguese Province of the North (Provincia do Norte),21 Vaz found seven parishes already existing in Goa. He created two more.22 Among all his efforts, the episode of the ‘big catch’ at the Fishery Coast was a landmark in the life of the Vicar General. He sent a glorious report about it to the King. Learning of the turn of events, the King of Portugal asked Ignatius of Loyola in Autumn 1537, to send some of his sons to India. As a result, Fr Francis Xavier was sent. It was this learned priest who was to catechize the people of the Fishery Coast in the Catholic faith and was to initiate the newly born children to the new faith. Upon the arrival of Fr Francis Xavier in Goa and finding him to be a man of great learning and an erstwhile professor at Paris, Vaz offered him the administration of the seminary. It became the formation house of the Jesuits and the cradle of learning of the native priests and catechists. It came to be known as St Paul’s College.23

Vaz was keen on his priests and lay faithful living an orderly and righteous life. He wanted his priests – diocesan, Franciscan and Jesuit – to be exemplary men of learning and of high moral standard. The lay faithful too sometimes received severe lashes from him, for not all the Portuguese soldiers, craftsmen and traders that arrived in Goa were known to be men of morals. Not all of them set good example. They neglected administering the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and communion to their kin and kith. Vaz had to come down heavily upon such lax ‘mere Sunday Catholics.’

Asking for More from Lisbon

As plans for the construction of the houses of God were taking shape in his mind, Vaz sailed to Portugal to conduct business for the mission. Before proceeding to Portugal he first met Fr Xavier in Cochin in January 1545.24 He also entertained the thought of resigning from the post of Vicar General, if possible. However, the same fleet carried a message from Fr Francis Xavier, asking King Joao III to send Vaz back to Goa. This saintly priest describes him as “universally regarded as an honest and learned man, who held the office of Ecclesiastical Vicar for the whole of India.” Fr Xavier elaborated on the fact that Vaz was loved so much by the Christians of these regions that Your Royal Highness should send him back at once next year for their consolation and protection.

The King did send Vaz back the very next year in September 1546, having complied with many favours Vaz had asked for India, the topmost being the need of a spacious building for the Seminary which Vaz considered as “the fountainhead of the whole enterprise of evangelization.” Vaz returned to India bringing along with him nine more Jesuits. Among them was Fr Henrique Henriques, the forerunner of inculturation in India.25

Interaction with the Syrians

As regards the spiritual care, Minguel Vaz reported to the King that in Cranganore the Christians of St Thomas were under Fr Vicente de Lagos and his associates who were assiduous in looking after their spiritual welfare. As for Quilon, the Church there stood unprovided for as before, and much had to be done for its maintenance, and also for the Christians of St Thomas. The King in his reply to Vaz said that since he had reported to Lisbon that there were many Christians of St Thomas and new converts in Quilon, the Vicar General should find out how they were being treated. If any wrong had been done to them in trade or other matters, the King would remedy this and grant them redress.

Minguel Goes to Meet His Master

Soon after his return from Portugal, Vaz suddenly died of cholera on January 11, 1547 at Chaul, the present district of Raigad, Maharashtra, as he was going from Goa to Diu. Some suspect that he was poisoned by the Brahmins. Others go to the extent of accusing the Bishop of Goa of this tragedy. However, St Francis Xavier, writing to the King of Portugal in January 1548, vehemently refutes this accusation.

Minguel Vaz was the Vicar General at the time when the wave of Latin Rite Christianity had just come on the shores of India through the arrival of the Portuguese. He had to lay firm foundation of that Rite on the coastal area. He, therefore, received legitimate attention and recognition in the writings of the early historians of Christianity in India. He is also mentioned, on quite a few occasions, in the letters of St Francis Xavier.

The Cathedral Chapter of Goa, praised him for his good administrative qualities, edifying life and severity in correcting abuses. A certain Martin Afonso de Mello described him as follows: “A man very close to God, honest and most abstemious. He spends his allowance in alms and is very rich in virtue and reputation.” St Francis Xavier described him as being “a man filled with zeal for the cause of the Gospel.”26

A Rare Case

Minguel Vaz is a unique person in the history of the Church in India. It is a rare case where a layman serves as Vicar General. He held this post with rare distinction and commitment, discharging his duties effectively and efficiently. He enjoyed the respect both of the clergy and the laity and was never accused for being non-exemplary. In the history of the Church in India, we have a handful of persons of the caliber of Vaz. He should, therefore, be taken as a true missionary of heroic virtues and outstanding achievements.

Footnotes:

1Sr Theru Parmar, in  “Minguel Vaz: The Superstar of Evangelization,” Renovacao April-May, 2009,  pg 24.

2Anthony D’Costa, S.J., The Call of the Orient. Mumbai: Heras Institute of Indian History & Culture, 1999, p.2.

3See for example The St Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India, p. 16.

4Aloysius Soares, The Catholic Church In India: A Historical Sketch. Bombay: Eucharistic Congress Committee, 1964, p. 21.

5D’Costa, The Call of the Orient, p. 1.

6The evangelizers were mainly Franciscans and Dominicans – but sometimes the diocesan clergy too exercised the ministry of evangelization.

7A.M. Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol I. Bangalore: T.P.I., 1984, p. 242.

8Fr Nascimento Mascarenhas, Follow Me. Goa: self-published, 2009, p. 13.

9D’Costa, The Call of the Orient, p. 1. Mundadan says he arrived in India as Vicar General in 1533: Church History of India, Vol I, p. 317, n. 86.

10Prof. Dr. Xavier Koodapuzha, Christianity in India. Kottayam: Oriental Inst. of Religious Studies India, 1998, p. 205; Soares, The Catholic Church In India, p. 134. The first bishop of Goa Francisco D’Mello appointed in 1533, never reached Goa. He died in Lisbon on the eve of his projected departure for Goa. The second bishop,  Joao Afonso de Albuquerque (1539-1553) came to Goa already consecrated in Portugal. (It was necessary to hold the consecration ceremony there,  since there were no Latin Rite Bishops to consecrate him here.)

11Mascarenhas, Follow Me, Goa, p. 43.

12Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol I, p. 437.

13Fr Moreno De Souza, S.J., A Short History of the Old City of Goa. Panjim: Gulab Publ., 2000, p. 7.

14Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol I, p. 393.

15Ibid., p. 318. Minguel Vaz Coutinho, Doctor in Canon Law, arrived in India in 1533 as Vicar General. He went back to Portugal in 1545. Soon after returning to India, he died on 11th January, 1547. He was no cleric; cf. DI, I, p. 85, n. 5. History of Christianity in India, Vol. I p. 317 n. 86.

16Mundadan , History of Christianity in India, Vol I, p. 400.

17Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. 49.

18Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. 50.

19Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. 62.

20The first Goan diocesan priest was Fr Andre Vaz from Carambolim, Goa, ordained in 1558.

21Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. xii.

22The first Christian in Illhas was a certain Miguel Vas from Agacaim. Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. xiv (does this name connote the influence of Minguel Vaz, the Vicar General?)

23The Jesuits made the College so famous and took it to such a height that they themselves came to be known as ‘St Paul’s Fathers’. This institution was officially accepted by Francis Xavier in the name of the Society of Jesus in 1549. Two years later, King John III donated it to the Society of Jesus with all its properties and revenues. Mascarenhas, Follow Me, p. 62.

24See Joseph M. Costelloe , S.J. The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier. Anand: GSP, 1992, p. xvi.

25D’Costa, The Call of the Orient, p. 19.

26D’Costa, The Call of the Orient,  p.1.

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