I don’t think what I am saying will receive much empathy but I am not looking for it.
What if the reality created around the saint does not reflect the facts that might have occurred? Here is a nobleman from Spain caught up in the fanatical religious fervour of his time and country, sailing off to convert the heathen. Only, they were not heathen, they were an organized society finding themselves constant victims of the greed of invaders and neighbouring kingdoms. Of course this society had its ills like caste and discrimination and the various undesirable traits of the sixteenth century when viewed from the eyes of the twenty-first. Come to think of it, the Christian world of the time had at least an equal number of bad habits not the least of which was burning people who didn’t share your views, at the stake, not to mention the sexual and other profligacies of the popes. So the man sails off to Goa and converts much of the local population. This is something that remains a mystery to me to this day. What is it he said to the population that had its own religion, practices and deep rooted culture that could have turned wide swaths of them to his way of worship. Violence and really heavy enticements could be plausible answers. So time passes, this man dies, somebody embalms some corpse somewhere and brings it to Goa, building so called miracles that defy all rational belief around that body and that man. So powerful do the myths and the legends become that we are led to imagine he is now the saviour and protector of Goa. A man that came to convert people for the glory of his king and pope and for a god that had never made an appearance to the billions who have humbly and faithfully worshipped him out of fear of what they think awaits them after death but have no proof of it. So the people of Goa ascribe all sorts of events positive to them to blessings of this saint. What are blessings actually? Some good word whispered in the omnipotent creators ear of which he should have been himself acutely aware due to his (or her) omnipotence and omnipresence. Why should this god tolerate all the killings done directly or indirectly by this saint to people that were made in his own image. So off we go in our Sunday best to worship (we will deny it as worship, calling it pray) and then celebrate it with food and drink worthy of sixteenth century fiesta. Spare a few moments to dwell upon what would have happened if the man had not reached Goa. Of course we would not have had food and drink and merriment on the third of December every year, but by not being bathed in the joys of Christianity, would we have been children of any lesser god. As for me all I know is that I would not have had the simple pleasures of a stale bun and lukewarm coffee in a dreary lunch hall after a high mass in a Jesuit school where the Jesuits priests I am told, partook of a table loaded with a fancy hot breakfast of all kinds of egg preparations, cold meat cuts, croissants and cakes with juices and coffees, that the alter servers among us got a minuscule, hurried bit to share. Roland Toronto.
