Abstract: It is extremely important to properly situate the significance of that event in 1521 in the whole context of the history of our country. Rather than what is popularly called the First Mass, that event is quite properly the first recorded act of evangelization of the Philippines. The First Mass and the planting of the cross signaled the planting of the seed of Christianity in our archipelago, the impact of which, for better or for worse, has shaped the bedrock of our social values, our cultural heritage, and even our political situation.

It need not be a Mass; it could be another act, but what is important is that it be recorded either in a document, or in the memory of the pioneering missionaries or the community of believers, and popularly understood as such. As what Fr. Martin J. Noone’s (1982, 66) The islands saw it: The discovery and conquest of the Philippines 1521-1581 says about our First Mass, it was “an event as momentous in the history of the Filipino people as Augustine’s landing in Kent to the British, or Patrick’s lighting of the Easter fire at Slane to the Irish, or Boniface’s meeting with the pagan Frisian priests to the Germanic peoples.”

What is the historical significance of this primal evangelical act that transcends similar earlier events in Asia?

It must be recalled that the earliest known extent of the outreach of Christianity in Asia was the presence of the Syro-Malabar Christians at the western coastline of India in the first century of the Christian Era, respectively in 54 AD (henceforth to be referenced as 0 CE for Common Era) when…