Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don says T&T has lost its way and the on­ly way for so­ci­ety to find its way back is through ser­vice.

Gor­don made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing his homi­ly dur­ing Holy Thurs­day Mass, where he washed the feet of 12 parish­ioners at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in down­town Port-of-Spain.

The head of the Ro­man Catholic church de­liv­ered a sting­ing analy­sis of the state of T&T.

He said, “The great­est among you must be the least of all and the ser­vant of all. This is the place where we, Je­sus and the gospel have gone in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions.

“Maybe it’s our colo­nial past, maybe its slav­ery, maybe it’s in­den­ture­ship, maybe it’s just we have poor egos, maybe we just haven’t found our­selves as a peo­ple, but what is re­al­ly com­mon right through the so­ci­ety is that every­body wants to make their au­thor­i­ty felt.

“From the lit­tlest per­son in an or­gan­i­sa­tion want to man­ners you when you come in. The re­cep­tion­ist be­hind the desk, if they are on the phone talk­ing to some­body and you try to in­ter­rupt them, they man­ners­ing you. It is a na­tion­al scourge, from cap­tain to cook.”

The Arch­bish­op added, “We have be­come a so­ci­ety that has lost its way, and the first re­cov­ery Je­sus tells us is that we must show the depth of our love and we must do that by hum­ble ser­vice. We must not be like that. Je­sus showed us the depth of his love, and it is ser­vice.”

Gor­don said while the wash­ing of the feet is a mere metaphor, it is some­thing so­ci­ety is called to do every day. He chal­lenged the na­tion to ask them­selves, “Who am I called to serve and how can I call them bet­ter?”

Mean­while, hun­dreds of Chris­t­ian faith­ful took part in Good Fri­day pro­ces­sions across the coun­try yes­ter­day. One of the ma­jor pro­ces­sions was the Mount St Bene­dict reen­act­ment. It start­ed at 5 am and was com­plet­ed by 6.15 am, be­fore those in the pro­ces­sion were in­vit­ed to join the monks for morn­ing prayers.

For an­oth­er year, An­tho­ny Sama­roo played the role of Je­sus Christ. The usu­al thick crowd fol­lowed Sama­roo as the sol­diers whipped him and nailed him to a cross.

Af­ter the pro­ces­sion, Sama­roo told Guardian Me­dia he hopes this East­er sea­son trans­forms the way po­lit­i­cal par­ties com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and how they cam­paign in the last week to­ward the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

He said, “I pray that both par­ties come to­geth­er with love and can­vas with love. No more bick­er­ing. No more who is bad and who is good. Every­body is good try­ing to pro­mote the best for T&T. I would al­so like the coun­try to take away hate and pro­mote more love and love your neigh­bour like you love your­self.”

Af­ter the Ro­man Catholic pro­ces­sion was com­plet­ed, a small group of Venezue­lan mi­grants gath­ered at the first Sta­tion of the Cross to be­gin their pro­ces­sion. They were led by Venezue­lan priest, Fa­ther Jorge Amundarain Ro­driguez, who prac­tices in this coun­try.