For Zion’s sake I will not be silent,
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,
until her vindication shines forth like the dawn
and her victory like a burning torch.
My dear brothers and sisters, when I read these lines of the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, they urged me to proclaim the truth that I know must be proclaimed. Before I do that, however, I would like to quote from the words of the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade:
Fizemos Cristo nascer na Bahia. Ou em Belém do Pará.
We made Christ to be born in Bahia, or in Belém do Pará
Now the Oswald de Andrade was not proclaiming a Christian message, quite to the contrary! Nevertheless, I found these words useful to make the point that we must all recognise; that when the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ was proclaimed by the good missionaries who came to us, they once again incarnated the Word in these lands. They then incarnated the Word once again when, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and the words of Our Lord, converted bread into body, and wine into blood, and then once again when they consumed this body and blood, and became the Incarnation of the Word, inviting our ancestors to the faith.
My dear brothers and sisters, when Christ is incarnated and proclaimed in a land, it does not stay the same, it becomes another Zion, another Jerusalem. As prophet Isaiah proclaims in the first reading:
you shall be called by a new name
pronounced by the mouth of the LORD.
You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the LORD,
a royal diadem held by your God.
Prior to the Portuguese, there was no Goa. Goa was the name of the little port which the Portuguese took in 1510 on the feast day of St. Catherine of Alexandria. And by divine providence various territories kept getting added to this little town, until the words of the prophet Isaiah came to pass “you shall be called by a new name.” That new name was Goa, and it represented a particular Christian project, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the incarnation of the values of the Gospel so that these values could be imitated by all – both Catholic and non-Catholic – who lived in this land with a new name.
The prophet Isaiah prophesied that this land would be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem; and so it was that Goa was also called the Pearl of the Orient.
The story I am trying to tell, my dear brothers and sisters, is of the salvific project in which Goa plays a role. The role of spreading the Gospel of Christ throughout the world. This is Goa’s special role in the evangelisation of the world. Like our Lord in the Gospel today, we are called to turn the waters of the peoples, into wine.
This role was amply fulfilled by earlier generations of Goans, who lived pious lives, and who sent sons and daughters into religious life so that they could become missionaries and preach the Word to people in all parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe. But not just in religious life, even the lay Goan was known for virtuous living throughout the British Empire. Indeed, through their lives, they made their own the words of the psalm we heard today “Proclaim his marvellous deeds to all the nations.” St. José Vaz, whose feast we celebrated on the sixteenth of this month, is a notable example of this special calling of the Goan people.
And yet, dear brothers and sisters, it would not be an understatement to say that today we are failing in this duty to preach the Gospel and evangelize the world. It would not be wrong to say that with every day, the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “No more shall people call you “Forsaken, “or your land “Desolate,”” seem to be like a mockery of the Christian project in Goa. Our piety is being forsaken, and as we migrate or are forced into exile, the land seems increasingly desolate. Ancient spirits once though vanquished are once again asserting themselves to the common detriment of all.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, from which we read today, St. Paul tells us:
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
My dear brothers and sisters, it is our bounden obligation to discern, and then fulfill, the manifestation of the Spirit given to each of us. As St. Paul says earlier in the same letter to the Corinthians (9:16), “woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel.”
The proclamation of the Gospel requires that we enter into spiritual battle with all the evil spirits that seek to reclaim what was gained in the name of Christ. The spirits of envy, or jealousy, of greed, of licentiousness, of lust, of idolatry.
I began this homily with the words of the Brazilian poet, I would like to end with the words of an unknown Gujarati poet,
Mero gaam kaatha parey
Jaha doodh ki nadiya baahe
Translated these words mean:
My village is Katha Parey
Where rivers of milk flow
Our land blessed with so much water, once ran with the rivers of wine that flows from His Sacred Heart. These rivers have been blocked dear brothers and sisters, by our disinclination to preach the Gospel and live the Gospel in our lives. Let us, therefore, espouse ourselves to Our Lord that once more, to use the words of the prophet Isaiah:
you shall be called “My Delight, “
and your land “Espoused.”
May Our Lord, and His Blessed Mother, bless you and those you encounter this week.
(This homily was written to be preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 19 Jan 2025.
Image reference: “The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine,” Barna da Siena, c.
1340, Museum of Fine Arts Boston.)
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