Christopher Columbus (12 October)： Know Your History： An Imperfect Man That Loved God

In 1492, Christopher Columbus stole the land of indigenous peoples and gave it to you. That's how the modern revisionists are labeling it these days. So today, October 12th, I won't be speaking about any saint, but about Christopher Columbus. This is the day that he did land in the Bahamas in 1492, discovering the New World and altering the course of history. One of the most significant courses of history there ever has been, our Lord aside. It was inevitable. Somebody was going to discover the New World. It just so happened to be Christopher Columbus, one of the first of what was certainly going to happen. But it's important for the sake of piety. Piety is that virtue that honors those who came before, good or bad. We get this in the genealogy of Christ. It just mentions, this is who came before, this is who his father was, and so on and so forth. There are very unsavory characters in the past of our Lord. There are harlots and prostitutes and all kinds of things. It's like, this is who came before, these are my ancestors, that's the way it was. That's important. Christopher Columbus, certainly far from being any kind of criminal, was very pious, as you will see. He was motivated by very good desires. He was born in 1451 Italy, discovered America in 1492, and died in 1506. He was just about 55 years old when he died. He had a wife and a son, as well as a mistress and a son from her. So he had difficulties. His journey to the Americas lasted from August to October. It was several months long, and it wasn't easy. Actually, he would say, you can't cross the ocean without losing sight of the shore. So it did take some courage to do that trip. But he was a third order Franciscan. He wore frequently the habit in his daily affairs, and on the ship he brought it with him. He would frequently be seen most often wearing his Franciscan habit. He said, of his desire to go westward and open that trading route to the Indies, he said, it was the Lord who put into my mind the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. But there is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Ghost, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures. And his name, Christopher Columbus, right? Columbus is from the Latin Columba, which means dove, the Holy Ghost. And, of course, Christopher is the Christ-bearer. And it would be Christopher Columbus, it was his discovery that eventually, in 1531, that would lead to St. Juan Diego having the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe, after which millions and millions and millions of Indians would convert to the faith. And, in fact, that was one of the primary goals of Christopher Columbus, was evangelization. Two goals, in fact, that he had. In presenting it to Queen Isabella of Spain, he was thinking he wanted to open a trade route with the Indies, a spice trade, which would bring a lot of revenue to the crown. And why? Why did he want to bring all this money? How did he sell the idea on Queen Isabella? He said, with all this extra money from the East, you'll be able to fund a new crusade into the Holy Land, where we can take back Jerusalem and make it open once again for pilgrims and so on. That was his primary concern. That, and evangelizing the Indians that may be there. What did he say? He said, after discovery of the Indians and so on, he wrote back to the Queen, Your Highness ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of this enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and the glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts. So something that perhaps our white Anglo-Saxon Protestant founding fathers would do well to remember, in that it was a good Catholic who discovered the Americas and the Holy Land. In fact, this is why Father McGivney, in founding the Knights of Columbus, called it after Christopher Columbus. His idea was that Catholics are good Americans. There's so much anti-Catholicism in this country, discrimination against Catholics and so on, especially the Irish Catholics who would come into this country. So the idea that you can be a good Catholic and a good American, that was what the Protestants were afraid of. These Catholics are going to take over and so on. So Father McGivney is reminding them it was a Catholic who discovered the Americas and this country. And indeed, it's been pointed out that the Catholic Church these days, especially the traditionally minded Catholics, those are the ones who have saved. Anything good about those original Protestant founders, their belief in God, their focus on virtue and integrity and so on, that's being preserved by the traditional Catholic Church. Everything good about the founding fathers, it's the Catholic Church that is most, we would say, zealous in defending and keeping that. So Christopher Columbus, he was pretty interesting. He was very much a dreamer, as you can imagine. He said, life has more imagination than we conceive of in our dreams. So very much believed in the wonder of God's creation. He also said, riches don't make a man rich, they only make him busy. That was a rather interesting quote of his. Also, back to his pious nature, no one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Savior, if it is just and if the intention is purely for his holy service. The working out of all things has been assigned to each person by our Lord. So he would have kind of a rough end. He became the governor of a town called Hispaniola, and it didn't end up well for him. There was, you know, mistreatment of the natives and exploitation and arguments back and forth between the queen of who owed who what and how much money was owed him. And he ended up actually being arrested and sent back to Spain on a ship in chains. So not the best of career endings for Christopher Columbus. But he did, he did have a good, a very deep prayer life. And perhaps he, towards the end of his life, you know, was finding more communion with God, we could say. For he says, I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy his marvelous presence. So when Christopher Columbus would die in 1506 at the age of 55, he left most of his fortune to two causes, funding a new crusade in the Holy Land and funding for missionaries to go to the new world that he had discovered. So kind of showing, showing that the desire and the, really what was in his heart in seeking out this exploration, which was evangelizing. You know, so people, people complain about, you know, the exploitation of the natives and so on. But, I mean, name me a country that wouldn't have exploited the natives, right? I mean, it's sad to say, but that's what always happens. It always happens. Anytime you have any kind of exploration or discovery, somebody gets exploited, right? Somebody gets taken advantage of. I say this all the time. It's, it's a modification of Thomas, what Thomas Akempis says in The Imitation of Christ. Akempis says, we do not know what we are until adversity shows us. That's true. Reveals our character. But we also do not know what we are until opportunity shows us. And when people are presented with an opportunity to exploit others to huge advantage, most people can't resist that. And they end up rationalizing and doing all kinds of things they perhaps never thought they would have done because they never even dreamed they would ever have this opportunity. And so that is a sad, sad reality. In fact, I'm going to have to quote Jordan Peterson, a brilliant psychologist, well on his way to the Catholic Church. But he said that there's, there's a little Hitler in everybody. He was on, on a, on a, it was on giving a, was it an interview about Vladimir Putin. And he said, there's a little bit of Hitler in everybody. And the interviewer was surprised. And he said, are you serious? He says, oh, I take it back, more than a little. And that's true, right? And that's, that's original sin. That's what happens when secular, even atheist psychologists or social people, when they study man, when they study human beings, what do they find? Original sin. It's all over the place. They see the capacity for goodness and they see the capacity for evil. And people who are really honest, they'll just mention it. They'll say, look, here's what I'm seeing. And it's in everybody. And if you, if you don't admit that, then you're either ignorant or you're in denial. That's the truth. And so these days, I would say that, you know, what's happening with this whole thing against Christopher Columbus, it's against piety, right? There's no respect for the people that founded this nation. You know, why is it that we inherited, what are we listening to? The pop music that people listen to, that's the pentatonic scale. That's in the Baroque orchestras from the Middle Ages. It's the Catholic Church that discovered that. It's the Catholic Church that developed that. And that was from the original Greeks and the mathematics and so on. So the music, the music people listen to today, it's from Western culture, right? All the things we enjoy, the physics, the advancements, it's all built in the Catholic Church. It's all built in Western civilization. You know, we're not out in the back, you know, eating bugs and pounding sticks together, which is what the natives are doing when we got here. That's what you celebrate. You celebrate what do we have now? Where did it come from? Who should we appreciate for giving us the good things we have today? That's what history is for, is showing you where did we come from? How did we get here? Go look in the past. What's happening now, I tell you, is that the past is being rewritten by Marxists who are exploiting the young people. Just like those Indians were exploited by people for their benefit, so the young people today, they're getting exploited. For those who want to overthrow, who want to tear down, who have, you know, serious mental issues, they want control, they want power, and they're using young people, young minds to do it. So the exploitation is still continuing, it's just in a different format, in a different way, with different people. It's always going to happen. So it's on us, right? It's on us to know the past, know the history, and teach it to our children. This is one of the things that Moses says in the book of Deuteronomy to the Israelites. He says, you're going to go. You're going to go into the holy land, the promised land given to you by God, and you're going to forget. You are not going to teach your children. You're not going to obey the commandments. You're not going to do what I told you to do. And all the people said, oh, we're going to do it, we're going to do it. And Moses has them build a testament, a monument. He says, here's a testament. I'm going to build this. It says, I told you what you were supposed to do, and you swore to it. You said you were going to do it, but I know you're going to fail. And all the people swore, and they built that testament, and then what happens two, three generations later? Parents didn't tell their children. Children lost sight. They weren't told about the wonders in the promised land. Children were not told about the man from heaven and everything that God did for them before the holy land. And people forgot. Children forgot. They weren't told. They weren't taught. And I tell you, people don't realize how important the youth is and education is. And I'm seeing that more and more with the schools. People are not paying attention to what our children are being taught. People are not paying attention to it. And I saw this 20 years ago. I was like, shouldn't people? I'm seeing what's coming out in the schools and the curriculum. Shouldn't people be paying attention to this? And now that I've had some time to look at it, I see it is a big deal. And I am getting more involved. That's a different matter. But tell your children. And you can't tell kids what you don't know yourself. So if you need to do some reading, if you need to do some research on the church, on history, on catechism, then you need to be doing that. Read that catechism so you can tell your children. That is how the faith is passed on. So we don't want our children to be able to point back at us or our grandchildren and say, how did we fall away from the faith? Well, I just didn't know. Nobody ever told me. We don't want that to be said of us. So it's good to know our past, to know our history, even if the men ahead of us, men and women, weren't perfect. You know, listen to Christopher Columbus. Listen to what he said about why he went there. It was the Lord who put this in my mind. I wanted to do this for the glory of God. I wanted to convert souls. That's a good thing. He had a mistress. He had his problems. But he also loved God. And that's most of us, right? There's a little bit of good and evil in each of us. That's why it's so important to focus on the little things. We continually do little good things over and over and over again, and we build that part of us. And we continually put down that evil side of us. That's the whole goal of the spiritual life. Let us ask for the intercession of Christ our Lord, from the mercy of Christ our Lord, the intercession of the saints, the Blessed Virgin, that we might continue in a good work the Lord has begun in us. So God bless you all. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.