Asia’s Love For the Mother
by Zsolt Aradi
As the morning rising,
Fair as the moon, bright as the sun,
Terrible as any army set in array?"
--Canticle of Canticles
And the unspotted mirror of God's majesty,
And the image of His goodness."
--Wisdom VII, 25-26.
The Virgin whose coming was prophesied in the Old Testament was born on Asiatic soil. Yet it would appear to the casual observer that the vast masses of Asia do not venerate her as does the rest of the world, or that at best the veneration is vague and remote. In addition, the Christian religion is by no means the principal religion of Asia, and recently it would seem that the atheist terror and propaganda might be able to eliminate all forms of religious belief. However, the Asian's profound religiosity is yet untouched and Asians, both Christian and non-Christian alike, are aware of the Virgin.
From the early days of Christianity, more and more of the peoples of Asia were cognizant of the existence of Mary. The Gospel reached Persia, India and China early in the history of Christianity. The Three Kings who came to the Manger were by no means symbolic figures; they came from faraway lands and returned. It was St. Thomas the Apostle who first brought Christianity to Asia. Later Christianity slowly penetrated, though mostly in the form of Nestorianism, named after Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century. His teachings, based on the erroneous belief that the two natures of Christ, divine and human, were separate, gave rise to a schismatic form of Christianity which survives until this day in India, Persia and other parts of Asia. True, there were no mass conversions in the wake of the Gospel in those early days. Buddhism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, and Brahmanism remained the ruling religions of the East, but the interest in Christ was always manifested in Asia--even in such camps as that of Attila the Hun. Mohammed incorporated some parts of Christianity into the Koran; Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan had emissaries of the Holy See at their courts; Matteo Ricci, the courageous Jesuit, was well received in China . . . and besides all of this, the news of the Gospel traveled in distorted and true form through the centuries from mouth to mouth, from region to region.
However, the first extensive and successful effort to capture Asia for the Christian faith was launched by St. Francis Xavier, and it is safe to assume that his Herculean task was undertaken with the protection of the Holy Virgin. From many corners of the Asiatic continent, the people responded. The subsequent expulsions and mass murders of Christians, particularly in Japan, were the consequences of an "isolationist" fear that the new faith was but the tool of foreign rulers. Despite these persecutions, the once-planted seed remained firmly rooted, eventually to blossom into flower.
During the last century, when missionaries resumed the labor of Christianity in Asia, they discovered descendants of the early Christians in India and in Japan who had somehow managed to keep their faith sacred for some two hundred years.
The story of the different phases, the heroic aspects and dramatic episodes of missionary work in this part of the world would require volumes; let us remember here only that wherever the missionaries traveled, they sensed the support and help of Our Lady, for the great masses in Asia, even the non-Christians, had miraculously retained their love of her.
The great Hindu leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, had a deep understanding of Christianity, although they objected to those features, which, in their view, made it "a religion of the Western world." Tagore once said: "Do not always be trying to preach your doctrine, but give yourself in love. Your Western mind is too much obsessed with the idea of conquest and possession… The object of a Christian should be to be like Christ" (Across a World, John J. Considine, M.M.).
Indeed, wherever the Christians adopted the approach advocated by the great Indian poet, they touched the hearts and minds of Asia. The people came to realize that Christ and Mary are universal. Today, Asian priests, bishops and even cardinals kneel by the side of Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Indochinese, Ceylonese, before altars from which Chinese, Japanese or Hindu Madonnas smile down upon them, the sublime expression of the universality of faith and brotherhood of men.
The Church of Mary in Nagasaki
On the Shores of the Ganges River
This item 3177 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
