Ken­isha Matas

The sound of prayer, the rhythm of an­cient chants, and the qui­et sym­bol­ism of rit­u­al marked a sa­cred time for mem­bers of the Ethiopi­an Or­tho­dox Tewa­he­do Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as they ob­served Holy Week with cer­e­monies steeped in cen­turies-old tra­di­tion.

At the Holy Trin­i­ty Parish in Beetham Gar­dens, con­gre­gants gath­ered on April 5 to cel­e­brate Hosan­nah—Palm Sun­day—com­mem­o­rat­ing the tri­umphant en­try of Je­sus Christ in­to Jerusalem. Days lat­er, on April 9, the solemn Wash­ing of Feet and Hands cer­e­mo­ny un­fold­ed at the Med­hane Alem Parish in Arou­ca, reen­act­ing Christ’s act of hu­mil­i­ty and ser­vice to His dis­ci­ples.

While many Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go fol­low the Gre­go­ri­an cal­en­dar, the Ethiopi­an Or­tho­dox Tewa­he­do Church ad­heres to the an­cient Ethiopi­an cal­en­dar, a sys­tem com­pris­ing 13 months and root­ed in ear­ly bib­li­cal time­keep­ing. This dis­tinc­tion means that ma­jor ob­ser­vances such as Palm Sun­day and East­er of­ten fall lat­er than in West­ern tra­di­tions, re­flect­ing a con­ti­nu­ity of prac­tices pre­served over cen­turies.

For parish­ioners, these ob­ser­vances are not mere­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al—they are an im­mer­sion in­to one of the old­est un­in­ter­rupt­ed Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions in the world.

Chris­tian­i­ty in Ethiopia traces its ori­gins to as ear­ly as 34 AD, fol­low­ing the bib­li­cal ac­count of the Ethiopi­an eu­nuch’s bap­tism by the Apos­tle Philip. By 332 AD, it had be­come the of­fi­cial re­li­gion of the Ethiopi­an king­dom, mak­ing the na­tion one of the ear­li­est Chris­t­ian civil­i­sa­tions. The Ethiopi­an Or­tho­dox Tewa­he­do Church, part of the Ori­en­tal Or­tho­dox fam­i­ly, con­tin­ues to up­hold doc­trines and litur­gi­cal prac­tices passed down through gen­er­a­tions, ground­ed in both Holy Scrip­ture and Sa­cred Tra­di­tion.

Cen­tral to its the­ol­o­gy is the mys­tery of the Holy Trin­i­ty—God the Fa­ther, God the Son, and God the Holy Spir­it—un­der­stood as One in Three and Three in One, co-equal and co-eter­nal. This be­lief forms the foun­da­tion of the Church’s wor­ship and spir­i­tu­al life, ex­pressed through rich litur­gy, fast­ing, prayer, and sym­bol­ic acts such as the Holy Week rit­u­als ob­served lo­cal­ly.

The pres­ence of this an­cient faith in Trinidad and To­ba­go is it­self a re­mark­able sto­ry of vi­sion and per­se­ver­ance.

In 1952, a 26-year-old Trinida­di­an, Ce­cil Gar­net Springer, trav­elled to Ethiopia dri­ven by a de­sire to es­tab­lish the Church in the Caribbean and to re­con­nect de­scen­dants of en­slaved Africans with a his­toric ex­pres­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty. His jour­ney led him to meet Pa­tri­arch Abuna Basil­ios and Em­per­or Haile Se­lassie I, to whom he pre­sent­ed this as­pi­ra­tion.

The re­sponse was swift and sig­nif­i­cant. In De­cem­ber 1952, two rep­re­sen­ta­tives—Memher Ge­breYe­sus Meshe­sha and Ato Abera Jem­bere—were sent to Trinidad. With­in months, bap­tisms be­gan, and by June 1953, the first group of be­liev­ers had for­mal­ly en­tered the Church, lay­ing the ground­work for its growth in the re­gion.

That foun­da­tion was fur­ther strength­ened in 1972 with the ar­rival of Arch­bish­op Abuna Thad­daeus, whose lead­er­ship helped ex­pand the Church’s reach be­yond Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the wider Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, while pre­serv­ing its sa­cred tra­di­tions.

To­day, more than sev­en decades since its es­tab­lish­ment, the Ethiopi­an Or­tho­dox Tewa­he­do Church con­tin­ues to thrive across the coun­try. With nine parish­es span­ning Arou­ca, Beetham, San Fer­nan­do, San­gre Grande, Ma­yaro, Point Fortin, Clax­ton Bay, Siparia, and Scar­bor­ough in To­ba­go, it stands as a liv­ing tes­ta­ment to a faith that bridges con­ti­nents and cen­turies.

For those who gath­ered in Beetham Gar­dens and Arou­ca this Holy Week, the rit­u­als were not on­ly acts of de­vo­tion but af­fir­ma­tions of iden­ti­ty—link­ing a mod­ern Caribbean con­gre­ga­tion to an an­cient spir­i­tu­al lin­eage that has en­dured, un­bro­ken, for near­ly two mil­len­nia.