KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Call­ing on T&T to “hang in there” de­spite life’s fail­ures and wounds, Ro­man Catholic priest Fr Matthew D’Here­aux used his East­er Sun­day mes­sage to re­mind be­liev­ers yes­ter­day that even those who fal­ter are still called to fol­low Christ.

De­liv­er­ing his homi­ly dur­ing Res­ur­rec­tion Sun­day Mass at the Pro Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help in San Fer­nan­do, Fr D’Here­aux ground­ed his mes­sage in the lived re­al­i­ty of hu­man weak­ness, draw­ing on the con­trast­ing jour­neys of two of Je­sus Christ’s apos­tles, Ju­das and Pe­ter. Both men, he said, knew Christ, walked with Him and an­swered His call, yet both be­trayed Him.

“They knew Christ. They came to Christ. They were called by Christ. They an­swered the call, and they were fol­low­ers of Christ,” he said.

“But as life hap­pens, some­times you and I mess up like Ju­das and Pe­ter did. And they messed up big time.”

Ref­er­enc­ing ac­counts from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Fr D’Here­aux re­called how Ju­das agreed to hand Je­sus over to the au­thor­i­ties, iden­ti­fy­ing Him with a kiss in the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane for 30 pieces of sil­ver. Pe­ter, on the oth­er hand, de­nied know­ing Je­sus three times dur­ing His tri­al be­fore the roost­er crowed.

Yet, while both men stum­bled, their re­spons­es split sharply.

D’Here­aux said the essence of the East­er mes­sage lies not in the fail­ure it­self, but in what fol­lows.

“Scrip­ture shows that vary­ing re­spons­es to mess­ing up,” he said, not­ing that Ju­das, over­whelmed by the grav­i­ty of his be­tray­al, even­tu­al­ly took his own life, while Pe­ter sought re­pen­tance and re­demp­tion.

“Af­ter that time of de­nial, af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion, Je­sus gave Pe­ter an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he told the con­gre­ga­tion.

That op­por­tu­ni­ty, D’Here­aux ex­plained, is ex­tend­ed to all be­liev­ers.

D’Here­aux not­ed that thou­sands of peo­ple across the world were bap­tised on Sat­ur­day night in­to the Catholic Church and oth­er Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions, em­brac­ing a new spir­i­tu­al life and recog­nis­ing Je­sus as the way, the truth and the light. With­in his own parish, ten in­di­vid­u­als were bap­tised. How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that the jour­ney of faith does not in­su­late be­liev­ers from hard­ship.

“Life hap­pens,” he said, warn­ing that many who be­gin their spir­i­tu­al walk re­newed in Christ can be shak­en by the in­evitable “rough and tum­ble” of life. It is in those mo­ments, he stressed, that be­liev­ers must re­sist the urge to walk away.

“San Fer­nan­do, hang in there. Trinidad and To­ba­go, hang in there.”

D’Here­aux said Chris­tians of­ten car­ry wounds, born of weak­ness, faults, strug­gles and per­son­al chal­lenges, even as they strive to re­main on a spir­i­tu­al path. He point­ed to the res­ur­rec­tion it­self as a pow­er­ful sym­bol, not­ing that even af­ter ris­ing from the dead, Je­sus bore the marks of His cru­ci­fix­ion.

“Nowhere in the four Gospels do we have ev­i­dence that those wounds dis­ap­peared.”

For Fr D’Here­aux, that re­al­i­ty of­fers both com­fort and in­struc­tion. Wounds, he ex­plained, are not signs of fail­ure or dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, but re­minders of en­durance and trans­for­ma­tion.

He warned against the mis­con­cep­tion that the church is re­served for the per­fect, de­scrib­ing it in­stead as a space for those nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of life while striv­ing to fol­low Christ.

“We live with the false im­pres­sion that the church is for the per­fect,” he said.

“It is not a place for the squeaky clean, but a place where we fol­low Je­sus amidst the dra­mas of life.”

He added that grace al­lows be­liev­ers to con­front their wounds dif­fer­ent­ly, with­out shame or fear of their past.

“None of us is squeaky clean. All of us are bro­ken, but we are still called to fol­low and not throw in the tow­el. Wound­ed peo­ple still fol­low Christ Je­sus,” Fr D’Here­aux said.

He said the pow­er of the res­ur­rec­tion ul­ti­mate­ly af­firms that wounds do not have the fi­nal say. Just as Christ over­came death, Fr D’Here­aux said, be­liev­ers too can rise above their strug­gles through faith, per­se­ver­ance and grace.