Every year around this time, I used to look forward to seeing the statue of Christopher Columbus at Saints Philips and James School in downtown Phillipsburg, New Jersey. There he stood in all his bronze glory holding a model globe with a cross on top, a look of adventure on his handsome face. On Columbus Day, a large floral wreath adorned the sculpture, making it appear even more heroic in my child’s eyes.
When I studied history in college and graduate school, professors and history books sometimes offered a very different view of Columbus, portraying him as a money-grubber who introduced European diseases and vices to the natives he met, while forcibly seizing their lands. In my own books I’ve honored Columbus’s legacy while pointing out that while he started his mission on the right foot, in some ways he didn’t end well.
One thing really impresses me about him–he had a profound desire to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people in lands where His name had never been uttered. According to an obscure book written in his hand, Columbus ventured out into the unknown not just for spices, nor gold, nor silver, and not for his own glory or even Spanish domination of the seas, but to win the hearts of the natives for Christ. He wrote:
It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be
possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my prospect rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the holy Scriptures. (Ibid.)
In addition, Columbus insisted that maps and mathematical skills were less important in guiding him than were the Scriptures that he believed foretold the momentous journey. He saw himself undertaking the dangerous voyage for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom above all.
On October 12, 1492 around noon when Columbus and his men arrived on the beach in the land he called San Salvador after Jesus, the Savior, he told them to kneel. Then he prayed:
O Lord, Almighty and everlasting God, by Thy holy Word Thou hast created the heaven, and the earth, and the sea; blessed and glorified be Thy Name, and praised be Thy Majesty, which hath deigned to use us, Thy humble servants, that Thy holy Name may be proclaimed in this second part of the earth. (Great Events in American History, p. 3)
Tags: Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, NJ, Phillipsburg, Saints Philip and James
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