An­na-Lisa Paul

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris is ap­peal­ing to the na­tion to once again adopt the val­ues es­poused by Je­sus Christ. He made the call yes­ter­day dur­ing the 2015 Cor­pus Christi Cel­e­bra­tion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, as he warned that the con­tin­ued dis­re­spect of the Eu­charist will on­ly lead T&T "down the path of de­struc­tion."

De­liv­er­ing the sen­ti­ments dur­ing the homi­ly at the cel­e­bra­tion, which was host­ed by the north­ern vic­ari­ate of Port-of-Spain, Fr Har­ris once again in­vit­ed in­di­vid­u­als to re­turn to the church, say­ing he was con­fi­dent that "it would re­pair the evils of Trinidad and To­ba­go and heal all of us."

Ad­dress­ing the packed Grand Stand, the Arch­bish­op pro­claimed the solem­ni­ty of the body and blood of the Lord in what he re­ferred to as "ex­treme­ly try­ing times" for T&T. He said it was a time in which spir­i­tu­al in­ter­ven­tion had be­come nec­es­sary "if we are to avoid the wrath of God."

Fr Har­ris added that al­though God was mer­ci­ful, he had gift­ed each per­son with free will and the abil­i­ty to choose.

His words res­onat­ed through­out the sa­van­nah as he warned, "If we con­tin­ue to dis­re­spect the pres­ence of God, of which the Eu­charist is meant to re­mind us, we will of our own ac­cord march down the path of de­struc­tion.

"The lack of re­spect for life, shown in the too many mur­ders; the lack of re­spect for the hu­man per­son shown in the abuse; do­mes­tic, sex­u­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal, the char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion with­out re­gard for the vic­tim's spouse, chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, the con­tin­u­ing ru­mours and al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, all tell us that the mes­sage and the val­ues of Je­sus are be­ing ig­nored or have been for­got­ten."

He said this was more than enough rea­son for parish­ioners to re­new their mis­sion­ary spir­it and strength­en their zeal to teach by word and ex­am­ple all that the Lord has com­mand­ed.

To this end, Arch­bish­op Har­ris is­sued a spe­cial call for all parish priests and parish ad­min­is­tra­tors "to make ado­ra­tion of the Blessed Sacra­ment part of the nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ties which take place in these wor­ship cen­tres."

He par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­gled out fam­i­lies and in­di­vid­u­als "who do not yet do so, to build the prac­tice of week­ly or dai­ly Eu­charis­tic ado­ra­tion," as­sur­ing that on­ly good could come from such prac­tices.

God al­ways present

Just be­fore he con­clud­ed the homi­ly, Fr Har­ris re­lat­ed an ear­li­er con­ver­sa­tion with a teacher of a pri­ma­ry school which he did not name - as he said the teacher in­di­cat­ed they would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year's mass and march to the Cathe­dral of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion, In­de­pen­dence Square, be­cause of the old talk, chat­ter and jokes that of­ten oc­cur amongst those gath­ered.

De­liv­er­ing a mes­sage to the dis­grun­tled teacher, the Arch­bish­op said, "I know at times that the sys­tem may not have been the best, but if you are not with­in hear­ing, you can say the rosary or a prayer in­stead of sim­ply go­ing in­to idle con­ver­sa­tion."

Con­sis­tent­ly cel­e­brat­ed in T&T for more than 231 years, Cor­pus Christi was de­scribed as a trib­ute to faith passed down by an­ces­tors who would have lived through some very tu­mul­tuous times.

Re­mind­ing those present that God is every­where, Fr Har­ris said, "God is in fact present to us at all times, the prob­lem is that we are of­ten not present to God."