Archbishop worried about T&T’s selfish nature

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

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Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don is call­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go to un­der­go a trans­for­ma­tion of the heart, urg­ing cit­i­zens to move be­yond ma­te­ri­al­ism, self­ish­ness and di­vi­sion.

De­liv­er­ing his Cor­pus Christi mes­sage at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port-of-Spain, be­fore the an­nu­al Cor­pus Christi pro­ces­sion through the cap­i­tal yes­ter­day, Arch­bish­op Gor­don re­flect­ed on the na­tion’s so­cial chal­lenges and the need for greater care and con­cern for one an­oth­er.

He lament­ed what he de­scribed as a cul­ture of self-in­ter­est and greed, say­ing too many peo­ple were fo­cused on ac­cu­mu­lat­ing wealth while oth­ers were left strug­gling.

“Every­body try­ing to eat a food and by try­ing to eat a food, stor­ing up more for them­selves than they ab­solute­ly need, leav­ing many, many, many in want and in des­ti­tu­tion,” he said.

Draw­ing par­al­lels with the bib­li­cal jour­ney of the Is­raelites through the desert, Gor­don sug­gest­ed that the hard­ships fac­ing the coun­try are an op­por­tu­ni­ty for spir­i­tu­al re­new­al.

“They had to walk be­cause God had to change their heart. And we have to jour­ney through the tra­vails that we are go­ing through be­cause God needs to change the heart of this peo­ple, the heart of this na­tion,” he said.

The Arch­bish­op warned that T&T has be­come over­ly fo­cused on ma­te­r­i­al pos­ses­sions and su­per­fi­cial pur­suits, while fail­ing to use its abun­dant re­sources for the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens.

“Man does not live by bread alone and broth­ers and sis­ters, we have be­come a na­tion that has want­ed on­ly the ma­te­r­i­al stuff, want­ed on­ly to feed off of the sen­sa­tion­al stuff, want­ed on­ly what is glam­orous,” Gor­don said.

He ar­gued that the coun­try’s wealth and nat­ur­al re­sources should be used to up­lift all peo­ple rather than en­rich a se­lect few.

Through­out his homi­ly, Gor­don em­pha­sised the Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ple of sol­i­dar­i­ty, re­mind­ing wor­ship­pers that faith re­quires re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to­ward oth­ers.

Re­fer­ring to the bib­li­cal ques­tion, “Am I my broth­er’s keep­er?”, the Arch­bish­op told con­gre­gants the an­swer re­mains clear.

“The an­swer to the ques­tion is yes. I am my broth­er’s keep­er. I am my sis­ter’s keep­er. That’s who I am,” he de­clared.

Gor­don said the cel­e­bra­tion of Cor­pus Christi is not on­ly about de­vo­tion to the Eu­charist but al­so about recog­nis­ing the pres­ence of Christ in one an­oth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the poor and vul­ner­a­ble.

He point­ed to the ex­am­ple of Moth­er Tere­sa, who com­bined prayer be­fore the Eu­charist with ser­vice to the poor­est mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

The Arch­bish­op al­so en­cour­aged Catholics to recog­nise their God-giv­en po­ten­tial and re­ject a mind­set of mere­ly sur­viv­ing.

“Raise your eyes and see that God has blessed us as a peo­ple be­yond all mea­sure with tal­ent, with cre­ativ­i­ty, with beau­ty, with art, with cul­ture,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the faith­ful at the con­clu­sion of his mes­sage, Gor­don urged Catholics to em­brace their call­ing as mem­bers of the body of Christ and to seek the grace to be­come the peo­ple they are meant to be.

“We are much, much more than we’re al­low­ing our­selves to be,” he said.

“Ask him for the grace to be­come who we al­ready are.”

The Cor­pus Christi cel­e­bra­tions con­tin­ued with the tra­di­tion­al pro­ces­sion through the streets of down­town Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing the Mass.