Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

“Come, my peo­ple, en­ter your cham­bers, and shut your doors be­hind you; hide your­selves for a lit­tle while un­til the fury has passed by.”

This was the scrip­ture Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley shared with the na­tion yes­ter­day be­fore pro­ceed­ing to read the req­ui­site les­son from the Lec­tionary for the Fifth Sun­day of Lent for the Ro­man Catholic church.

“Per­mit me be­fore I read the les­son to share with you a con­stant thought of mine for the last how many hours, how many days,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said the prophet­ic scrip­ture came from Isa­iah 26:20 in the Holy Bible.

He made the state­ments dur­ing the Na­tion­al Day of Prayer held at the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence at La Fan­tasie Road in St Anns, yes­ter­day.

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don said the na­tion should use this time when we are called to stay at home to mend fam­i­ly bonds.

“Let us al­low this mo­ment where we are put in our cham­bers, let us al­low this mo­ment to be a mo­ment of re­build­ing, of restora­tion first of the fam­i­ly and if we do that when­ev­er this COVID-19 is over we will al­so see the restora­tion of our na­tion,” Gor­don said.

“The prime min­is­ter had a word from Isa­iah that word was get in­to your cham­bers and lock your doors, and be­gin­ning of this restora­tion be­gins by obe­di­ence this is not a time when the ram­shackle democ­ra­cy that we have been tak­ing li­cense and free­dom and car­ry­ing it every­where can con­tin­ue, and the be­gin­ning of the restora­tion it be­gins with obe­di­ence. Get in­to your house, lock your doors, safe­guard your­self un­til this fury pass­es,” Gor­don said.

“But while you are there in your cham­bers and lock­ing your doors pray as a fam­i­ly, reach out to each oth­er and re­build the qual­i­ty of your re­la­tion­ships and then we will see that God will take us out of graves and this na­tion will be a stranger na­tion un­der God, he said.

Yes­ter­day’s les­son ac­cord­ing to the lec­tionary was Ezekiel 37: 12-14.

In that scrip­ture Ezekiel, an ex­iled prophet, preach­es the Word of God to dry bones and they come to life.

Gor­don said the les­son tells of new life and hope in the face of death.

He said this was ap­plic­a­ble in the “un­usu­al day”, that T&T is now fac­ing.

“There is a death that has hap­pened but God would not al­low that death to be the fi­nal word, death will give way to life,” he said.

“If there are peo­ple in your fam­i­ly you need to for­give, now is a won­der­ful time to do it be­cause that house too small to hold un­for­give­ness on top of every­thing else,” he said.

He said the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion has been a hum­bling one

“This ex­pe­ri­ence we are hav­ing re­minds us that we are not in con­trol we are not as big and bad and won­der­ful as we think we are in fact we are be­ing hum­bled in fact we have recog­nised that we are not in con­trol at all,” he said.

“Let us hum­ble our­selves let us re­al­ly hum­ble our­selves and use these two weeks to re­flect on the per­son that God wants you to be,” Gor­don said.

He called on peo­ple to pray and read their holy texts every day.

The Na­tion­al Day of Prayer start­ed around 8.30 a.m. and was chaired by An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley.

Pun­dit Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram the spir­i­tu­al head of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha said he knows T&T will over­come this chal­lenge.

“We have been chal­lenged be­fore and we have over­come every chal­lenge with which we have been faced so I am con­fi­dent that with our col­lec­tive prayers and with our col­lec­tive wis­dom by unit­ing to­geth­er for right and prop­er ac­tion we will be able to over­come this chal­lenge as we have over­come every chal­lenge in the past,” Paras­ram said.

Lead­ers from the many re­li­gious per­sua­sions op­er­at­ing in T&T prayed dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

Be­cause of so­cial dis­tanc­ing to help bat­tle the spread of COVID-19 the lead­ers en­tered the chapel to per­form their part in the cer­e­mo­ny and left af­ter­ward.

On­ly Row­ley, his wife Sharon, Gor­don, Berkley and cou­ple me­dia per­son­nel from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­mained in the room.