According to heritage enthusiast Fr. Cosme Jose Costa, residents of Govapuri may have venerated the Cross as early as 52 CE, when St. Thomas the Apostle is believed to have arrived in Goa before continuing his mission to Kerala and Tamil Nadu. A significant testimony to pre-Portuguese Christianity was the discovery of a 6th-century stone cross on the banks of the Zuari at Agassaim. The cross, with equal arms and an inscription in Pahlavi, the language of Persian traders, was discovered by Fr. Costa in 2001 and is preserved at the Pilar Seminary Museum.
With the arrival of the Portuguese, devotion to the Cross deepened further. The ships that sailed to India bore the “Portuguese Cross” of the Order of Christ, a Catholic order established in 1319. The symbol, closely tied to Portugal’s Age of Discoveries under Prince Henry the Navigator, became an emblem of voyages, alongside other symbols such as the armillary globe and the orb surmounted by a cross, representing Christ’s rule over the world.
Devotion to the cross in Goa spread so much that the sign of the cross became an integral part of the day-to-day etiquettes of its people. It was customary for any Catholic to mark the sign of the cross (or three crosses?) onto their mouth when they yawned. ‘My great grandmother had taught me to follow this practice as a kid, and I still follow the same. Infect my grandchildren have now picked it up from me and they too follow the traditional norm’, says Joyce Aguiar from Colva. Further she mentioned that if there was a fish bone stuck in the throat, the person was often given a glass of water, in which a cross was drawn using a blunt knife. While going to bed it was customary to mark the four corners of one’s bedroom with the sign of the cross, in addition to three crosses (representing the trinity) drawn on the pillow after the recital of one’s night prayers. Before consuming meals (lunch and dinner) one would compulsorily have to bless one’s food with three crosses drawn symbolically onto one’s plate after the family prayed the grace at their oratory. Incase of an injury where there was severe bleeding, a cross made of cotton thread was placed onto the wound with a belief that the excessive bleeding would stop. Purificação Aguiar, from Margão says, ‘Every year when we prepare sweets during the Christmas season, a cross is first made using the flour kneaded for the sweets and is fried before any prepared sweet is tossed into the hot oil’. When leaving home, the young would seek blessings from the elderly by joining hands as they stood in front of them so as to ensure their safe journey as they went out and returned home. The elderly would also mark the sign of the cross, widely stretching out their right arm as the person proceeded and took to his/her journey, either by foot or by a vehicle.
According to tradition, after the foundation stone has been blessed by a priest, the person laying the foundation for a new home places a small gold cross beneath it. This custom would have been the Christianized equivalent of Hindu households placing a gold image of Goddess Laxami beneath the foundation stone.
Post Easter, there was a unique tradition observed throughout the Globe. Houses and homes were blessed by a priest who came from the church to the homes of their respective parishes. The priest on his visit would carry an empty cross which was handed over to a male (a child was preferred) of the family who was asked to stand at their family oratory as the priest chanted his prayers. Several families had their own crosses mounted onto a wooden staff, meant to be used during their annual house blessing after Easter. Unfortunately, in today’s time, probably due to ignorance or convenience, most of the priests carry a regular crucifix instead of an empty cross. Yet another occasion where we see the use of the cross as a symbol is on Ash Wednesday.
Ashes are ceremonially placed on the heads of Christians on Ash Wednesday, by being marked on their foreheads as a visible cross.
During weddings, a cross made of coconut palm leaves was installed in the temporary outdoor kitchen (rossoi/reshi) built so as to prepare meals for big crowds during the occasion.
One may often see crosses built along the roadside or in private properties. These were built in thanksgiving or in memory of the deceased, as community gathering spaces or sometimes as memorials of earlier existing structures in a particular area.
Cemetries in the state were at one time flooded with black wooden crosses, bearing information of the dead, pierced into the ground at the graves, in the direction of the head of the buried. Post Vatican II, the black colour was gradually replaced with brown (the natural color of wood). Today, the practice of using these wooden crosses at graves is fast disappearing in Goa, with the adoption of contemporary sticker-based tombstone labels by most Goan parishes.