On Thursday, November 5th, we had a Keralan breakfast (rice flatbread with, I think, dal (curried lentils with potato, as well as toast and jam. Then we packed, checked out and met our driver.
The ride down to the Kottayam area took two hours and twenty minutes. Traffic wasn't heavy because it was local Election Day, a holiday, On my Kindle I had been reading Ramesh Menon's (much abridged!) version of the Ramayana, but for an epic, Rama is too perfect a hero. Of course, Ramayana is not only an epic, but sacred scripture, and Rama is not your standard epic hero: he is God incarnate, as if Jesus were the hero of the Song of Roland. So for this drive I switched to Menon's (much, much, much abridged!!) Mahabharata, which, so far, is a lot of fun.
We arrived at a retreat house near Kottayam, where we met Mary Joy's former boss, Father George. Our room was fairly spartan: while there was air conditioning and a ceiling fan, there was no hot water, so Mary Joy learned how to take a cold shower.
After lunch, Father George took us to visit his brother and sister-in-law at his nearby family home,
then, since Mary Joy had expressed an interest in seeing churches, he took us to three of them in the area.
Kerala has many more Christians than any other state in India: in central Kerala they are the majority of the population, mostly Roman Catholic. There are Christian shrines at many street intersections and there are many large and elaborately decorated churches.
The first church we saw was the seven-year-old Church of St. Joseph, I don't remember whereaA. It is situated, like many Kerala churches, at the top of a hill, with a broad staircase climbing from the bottom. Alongside the stairs is a very large statue of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Near the altar there is another statue of her, for veneration. Below the church there is a museum relating to her, including some relics. Around the grounds are trash containers in the shape of white rabbits.
Keralans are very proud that in recent years two of them were canonized as saints of the Church by Pope Francis. Our next stop was the tomb of one of them, St. Kyriakose Elias Chavara (1807-1871) at another Church of St. Joseph, in Mannanam. The new tomb-church was built on the hill above the old church, in front of the monastery where the saint spent much of his life (we visited the room where he lived). Down the hill a little from the tomb is a large, gilded statue of Kyriakose appearing to the bedridden St. Alphonsa (the other Keralan canonized by Pope Francis). Nearby is the first school he founded, with the press on which he printed the first Malayalam-language magazine.
It was starting to get dark when we approached our last church, St. Mary, in Athirampuzha. Parking was difficult, because there was a service going on--vespers, I think. It was a very large church, filled with worshippers. As we walked to the church, some small children came up to Mary Joy, practicing their English. We didn't go inside, but listened to the singing--which was wonderful, from outside
The ride down to the Kottayam area took two hours and twenty minutes. Traffic wasn't heavy because it was local Election Day, a holiday, On my Kindle I had been reading Ramesh Menon's (much abridged!) version of the Ramayana, but for an epic, Rama is too perfect a hero. Of course, Ramayana is not only an epic, but sacred scripture, and Rama is not your standard epic hero: he is God incarnate, as if Jesus were the hero of the Song of Roland. So for this drive I switched to Menon's (much, much, much abridged!!) Mahabharata, which, so far, is a lot of fun.
We arrived at a retreat house near Kottayam, where we met Mary Joy's former boss, Father George. Our room was fairly spartan: while there was air conditioning and a ceiling fan, there was no hot water, so Mary Joy learned how to take a cold shower.
After lunch, Father George took us to visit his brother and sister-in-law at his nearby family home,
Kerala has many more Christians than any other state in India: in central Kerala they are the majority of the population, mostly Roman Catholic. There are Christian shrines at many street intersections and there are many large and elaborately decorated churches.
The first church we saw was the seven-year-old Church of St. Joseph, I don't remember whereaA. It is situated, like many Kerala churches, at the top of a hill, with a broad staircase climbing from the bottom. Alongside the stairs is a very large statue of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Near the altar there is another statue of her, for veneration. Below the church there is a museum relating to her, including some relics. Around the grounds are trash containers in the shape of white rabbits.
Keralans are very proud that in recent years two of them were canonized as saints of the Church by Pope Francis. Our next stop was the tomb of one of them, St. Kyriakose Elias Chavara (1807-1871) at another Church of St. Joseph, in Mannanam. The new tomb-church was built on the hill above the old church, in front of the monastery where the saint spent much of his life (we visited the room where he lived). Down the hill a little from the tomb is a large, gilded statue of Kyriakose appearing to the bedridden St. Alphonsa (the other Keralan canonized by Pope Francis). Nearby is the first school he founded, with the press on which he printed the first Malayalam-language magazine.
It was starting to get dark when we approached our last church, St. Mary, in Athirampuzha. Parking was difficult, because there was a service going on--vespers, I think. It was a very large church, filled with worshippers. As we walked to the church, some small children came up to Mary Joy, practicing their English. We didn't go inside, but listened to the singing--which was wonderful, from outside
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