Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There were mixed emo­tions for parish­ioners in St Joseph dur­ing Fri­day's Sta­tions of the Cross pro­ces­sion, ac­cord­ing to Fa­ther Mikhail Woodruffe.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the pro­ces­sion at St Ce­celia’s Church, Mara­cas St. Joseph, Fa­ther Woodruffe said this year’s event was the first time parish­ioners took to the streets with such mag­ni­tude since the pan­dem­ic be­gan in 2020. While it was a wel­come achieve­ment, there were no­tice­ably a few faces miss­ing.

“There’s the sad­ness of re­al­is­ing there are peo­ple who would have nor­mal­ly been here, who passed in the last three years who would not be here and there is al­so the joy of be­ing able to get to­geth­er as Church fam­i­ly and to wit­ness to the pub­lic and al­so to jour­ney to­geth­er as a faith com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Parish­ioner and mem­ber of the St Michael’s RC Church’s Sun­day choir, Wendy Ram­paul de­scribed yes­ter­day’s pro­ces­sion as “fan­tas­tic.”

“It took more of a per­son­al ap­proach this time around. We have been do­ing this for a num­ber of years but this time, I must say, I went in­to it...more than the oth­er years. The prayers, the sim­plic­i­ty of the walk and it re­mind­ed me of the years gone by,” she said.

“Though we ap­pre­ci­ate and we ap­pre­ci­at­ed the re-en­act­ment all the years, this was good and I think we need­ed to start back this way on the road to be on a per­son­al lev­el.”

The Mara­cas St Joseph parish con­sists of St Michael’s RC Church, St Ce­cil­ia’s Church in La Sei­va, and St Therese Chapel in Acono. Litur­gi­cal co­or­di­na­tor, Di­ane Nar­ine, said they were sat­is­fied with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mem­bers from each arm at yes­ter­day’s event.

“It was a di­verse num­ber of peo­ple com­ing from each area com­ing out...and they par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dif­fer­ent por­tray­als as well as the pray­ing of the sta­tions of the cross it­self,” she said.

Fa­ther Woodruffe re­mind­ed the coun­try that “Je­sus is the light of the world.”

“Je­sus is not a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure on­ly to think of in the past, but that the hope and the light that Je­sus promis­es is there for all of us so hap­py East­er and God’s bless­ings to every­one,” he said.

Yes­ter­day’s pro­ces­sion be­gan at St Michael’s RC Church and made its way down to St Ce­cil­ia’s church.