Archbishop urges worshippers to reflect on peace in times of violence

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

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Amid on­go­ing glob­al con­flicts, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don says the same choice be­tween war and peace wit­nessed in the Pas­sion of Je­sus Christ con­tin­ues to con­front peo­ple to­day, with voic­es call­ing for peace over­shad­owed by vi­o­lence in the Mid­dle East and oth­er re­gions.

De­liv­er­ing his Palm Sun­day ser­mon at the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, ahead of the Holy Week, he said he usu­al­ly asked wor­ship­pers to fo­cus on one bib­li­cal char­ac­ter from the events lead­ing to Je­sus’ cru­ci­fix­ion and jour­ney with him or her for the week.

He asked wor­ship­pers to turn their at­ten­tion to Barab­bas.

“I want us to think about Barab­bas for a lit­tle bit be­cause when we look at him, Pi­late is say­ing to the crowd on this day. ‘I will re­lease a pris­on­er who you want me to re­lease? This man Je­sus called the Christ or Barrabas and the crowd shout­ed out, free Barab­bas. ‘From then un­til now the crowd has led us astray.’”

He not­ed that Je­sus could have called out to God to send le­gions of an­gels, but he didn’t be­cause he knew the scrip­ture had to be ful­filled.

“When we read the pas­sion of Christ, we have to read it in the light of the Old Tes­ta­ment be­cause this is ful­fill­ing a prophe­cy of the Old Tes­ta­ment, so Barab­bas is set free, and Je­sus is con­demned. The man of war is set free. The man of peace is con­demned.”

Re­flect­ing on what was hap­pen­ing in the re­gion with Cu­ba and Haiti and in the Mid­dle East, the Arch­bish­op said, “When we see what is hap­pen­ing around our world, the man of war seems to be the dom­i­nant cry of our time and civil­i­sa­tion, and the call for peace seems to be voice that is not be­ing lis­tened or heard any­more and this too is at the very heart of the Pas­sion of Je­sus Christ. But in his case, he was clear, how else is the scrip­ture to be ful­filled that he un­der­took the pas­sion be­cause it ful­filled the scrip­ture, and even when the Jews would say his blood be on me, on us and on our chil­dren, they were the first one to take the blood on to them­selves.”

How­ev­er, he said while “we plead on the blood con­stant­ly,” he ques­tioned whether peo­ple were choos­ing the way of peace or the way of war.

Be­fore the mass, Arch­bish­op Gor­don blessed the palms which were dis­trib­uted to wor­ship­pers who fol­lowed in a pro­ces­sion from the com­pound in­to the church.