Archbishop calls for end to culture of negativity

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

Ro­man Catholic arch­bish­op, Ja­son Gor­don, has chal­lenged cit­i­zens to live clos­er to the res­ur­rec­tion light. His state­ment came as the head of the Catholic Church in this coun­try de­liv­ered his East­er homi­ly yes­ter­day at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in down­town Port-of-Spain.

Gor­don stat­ed be­fore a packed con­gre­ga­tion be­fore him, “We live in a beau­ti­ful coun­try, and in this beau­ti­ful coun­try we know that there is so much beau­ty, so much won­der­ful gift and grace that we have. We know that in this beau­ti­ful coun­try that there is so many ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple who do things that are ex­tra­or­di­nary on an or­di­nary day. But we al­so know in this beau­ti­ful coun­try we live, we live clos­er to graves and the tombs than we live to the res­ur­rec­tion light?”

Gor­don, who com­plet­ed the East­er Trid­dum at the Cathe­dral ques­tioned, “How of­ten do we re­peat the neg­a­tiv­i­ty? How of­ten do we pass on the neg­a­tiv­i­ty? How of­ten do we com­plain and quar­rel and de­spair over the coun­try? How of­ten do we add to all the neg­a­tiv­i­ty that is go­ing around? Pass­ing it along on Face­book and What­sApp. How of­ten do we do that, as op­posed to say­ing he is not in the tomb any­more, he is alive, and I will not be a crea­ture of neg­a­tiv­i­ty any­more.”

He said do­ing the right thing be­cause it is right is syn­ony­mous to join­ing one­self to the risen Christ. Gor­don chal­lenged his con­gre­ga­tion to stop “play­ing to the gallery here on earth and pleas­ing peo­ple here on earth.” He added, how­ev­er, that the “res­ur­rec­tion says to us there is some­thing far more pow­er­ful, pro­found, beau­ti­ful than any­thing we will ever ex­pe­ri­ence here on earth. The res­ur­rec­tion light tells us that there is a life af­ter this life. Christ has died; Christ has risen. Christ will come again.”

He fur­ther added, “To live in the res­ur­rec­tion light is to see that where there is dark­ness, light will pre­vail, and where there is death, life will pre­vail. In the ar­eas of your life right now that seem like an old tomb where there is death, de­struc­tion and de­cay in­side of you, if you would bring that to the light of the res­ur­rec­tion, Christ will be raised in­side of you.”

He said cit­i­zens must not be afraid to do the right thing. He ad­vised par­ents not to give in to their chil­dren pres­sur­ing them to do what they know is wrong. East­er is con­sid­ered one of the most im­por­tant days on the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar, cel­e­brat­ing the be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus Christ three days af­ter his cru­ci­fix­ion. It com­mem­o­rates vic­to­ry over death, of­fer­ing hope, for­give­ness, and new life, mark­ing the end of Lent, a 40-day pe­ri­od of fast­ing and re­flec­tion. Gor­don ac­com­pa­nied ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion, Mon­sign­or Mar­tin Sir­ju, on Good Fri­day on a pro­ces­sion on Cal­vary Hill in east Port-of-Spain.

He al­so led East­er Vig­il Mass on Sat­ur­day night at the Ro­man Catholic Cathe­dral.