Yvonne Webb

As he de­liv­ered his first Ash Wednes­day homi­ly in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris spoke of the scourge of cor­rup­tion which has in­vad­ed the land.He called on Catholic par­ents to make their homes schools of au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship if they hoped to lessen this scourge.

Ad­dress­ing a packed con­gre­ga­tion at Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help RC Church dur­ing a mid­day Mass to mark the start of the 40-day Lenten sea­son, Har­ris, as­sist­ed by Ms­gr Chris­t­ian Pereira, said fam­i­lies are not do­ing the jobs they should be do­ing.He re­mind­ed parish­ioners, in­clud­ing pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents who came to get their ash­es, that if fam­i­lies, which were the bedrock of so­ci­ety, were not well, then the so­ci­ety could not be well.

"Cor­rupt lead­ers do not just drop from the sky...They nor­mal­ly come from cor­rupt so­ci­eties," he said.He urged Catholic and Chris­t­ian lead­ers in busi­ness, labour and po­lit­i­cal spheres, to re­mem­ber they were role mod­els and every­thing they did and said came un­der care­ful scruti­ny.

"If the Catholic role mod­els are not giv­ing a wit­ness of au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship, then some­thing is wrong," he said.Spelling out that au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship in­volved three char­ac­ter­is­tics–in­te­ri­or­i­ty or deep prayer, con­cern for com­mu­ni­ty and will­ing­ness to give up pow­er for a sim­ple life–Har­ris said in this re­gard Pope Bene­dict XVI must be seen as an ex­am­ple of a per­son striv­ing to live au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship.

"In his sim­ple state­ment of res­ig­na­tion, the Pope speaks of a de­ci­sion made af­ter long and con­tin­u­ous prayer to the Fa­ther (in­te­ri­or­i­ty), a de­ci­sion en­tered in­to be­cause he could no longer ren­der ad­e­quate ser­vice to the Church (con­cern for the com­mu­ni­ty), a will­ing­ness to give up the trap­pings of pow­er (pu­ri­ty of in­ten­tions)," he said.

"That, my dear friends, is the stuff of which au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship is built," he said, lament­ing, "Un­for­tu­nate­ly these char­ac­ter­is­tics tend to be so ab­sent in our land, even at times among those who call them­selves dis­ci­ples of Je­sus Christ."Har­ris said Lent was not sim­ply about mor­ti­fy­ing the flesh, or mak­ing res­o­lu­tions, but about build­ing or re­in­forc­ing the habits and prac­tices which de­fine au­then­tic dis­ci­ples of Je­sus Christ.

He said that was a life­long com­mit­ment which did not per­mit hol­i­days or breaks in its ful­fil­ment.There­fore, he said, "We can­not dis­re­spect our­selves by lewd and dis­gust­ing dress and be­hav­iour on Car­ni­val days and then run to re­ceive ash­es on Ash Wednes­day and be­lieve that we can then pick up be­ing au­then­tic dis­ci­ples again."Au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship says to us that there are Chris­t­ian ways of do­ing every­thing, even play­ing mas," he said.

"Au­then­tic dis­ci­ple­ship means that we ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing am­bas­sadors for Christ, car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Christ Je­sus and rep­re­sent­ing the King­dom of God, in every sphere of na­tion­al life."