BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

As Christ­mas draws near, re­li­gious lead­ers call for prayer, a re­turn to fam­i­ly life, an in­crease in faith and sol­i­dar­i­ty among mankind.

Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Burke, of the Shouter Bap­tist, said while the faith would be cel­e­brat­ing both Christ­mas and New Year’s Day with two ser­vices each and ob­serv­ing all COVID-19 pro­to­cols, the ser­vices were not the main con­cern.

Burke, who is al­so a Jus­tice of the Peace, called for the na­tion to pray with­out ceas­ing be­cause of the state of crime in T&T.

She said there was too much crime oc­cur­ring in the coun­try, crimes peo­ple were not even aware ex­ist­ed.

“I don’t think the pub­lic is aware of the amount of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in this land,” Burke lament­ed.

She said evil was stalk­ing the land and if there was ever a time T&T need­ed prayers, that time was now.

“If an an­gel can open a vial and re­deem the land. We have to pray and ask God to spare our land. We have enough min­is­ters of all re­li­gions who can pray. But we have to pray in sea­son and out of sea­son to catch the right sea­son,” said Burke.

Rep­re­sent­ing the Pen­te­costal body, the Ari­ma-based church, Praise, and Wor­ship Cen­tre—an af­fil­i­ate with the Pen­te­costal As­sem­blies of the West In­dies (PAWI), said while var­i­ous church­es af­fil­i­at­ed with PAWI will set their own ser­vices ac­cord­ing­ly, Praise and Wor­ship Cen­tre would not be hav­ing any Christ­mas ser­vice this year.

How­ev­er, it will host a post-Christ­mas ser­vice on De­cem­ber 27, and an Old Year’s night ser­vice on De­cem­ber 31 with all COVID-19 pro­to­cols ob­served.

It said in a pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty in which the world had found it­self dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, it was call­ing on all be­liev­ers to in­crease their faith and take their trust in God to an­oth­er lev­el.

Mean­while, Pun­dit Ram­dath Ma­hase ap­pealed to the pub­lic to take fam­i­ly life se­ri­ous­ly. Ma­hase said last Sun­day a pre-Christ­mas ser­vice and fam­i­ly event was held to mark the sea­son.

He said ser­vices would con­tin­ue every Sun­day with spe­cial ser­vices on Old Year’s night and New Year’s morn­ing.

Ma­hase said the fam­i­ly was im­por­tant and though, the pan­dem­ic brought with it many re­stric­tions, some good came out of it as in many in­stances fam­i­lies were drawn clos­er.

He not­ed this Christ­mas, chil­dren would get the best gift of all—fam­i­ly, as he be­lieves more fam­i­ly mem­bers were now forced to cel­e­brate in­doors as the coun­try con­tin­ued to ob­serve COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

Speak­ing on be­half of the Catholic Church, Fr Mar­tin Sir­ju, vic­ar gen­er­al of the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain and Cathe­dral Ad­min­is­tra­tor, said while the church did not of­fer a col­lec­tive mes­sage, he was cer­tain mes­sages this year would em­pha­sise, keep­ing one’s faith and liv­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with oth­ers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“Sol­i­dar­i­ty does not mean on­ly giv­ing peo­ple ma­te­r­i­al things, but al­so think­ing of their health, be­cause since God be­came a hu­man, he took our flesh­ly po­si­tion and so flesh and blood mat­ter and we have an oblig­a­tion to pro­tect that flesh and blood by re­duc­ing com­mu­ni­ty spread, liv­ing re­spon­si­bly and with sym­pa­thy for oth­ers,” said Sir­ju.

He said for the Christ­mas and Old Year’s ser­vices, they an­tic­i­pate a larg­er than usu­al crowd be­cause there were parish­ioners from west-Trinidad who could not get space in their church­es, as these church­es were ful­ly booked.

Sir­ju ex­plained this was as a re­sult of the sys­tem the var­i­ous parish­es in­cor­po­rat­ed to en­sure all pub­lic health and COVID-19 guide­lines re­mained in­tact.

He said the church took the ini­tia­tive to utilise the cal­end­ly soft­ware, which al­lows all parish­es to do presched­ul­ing of at­ten­dees, to reg­u­late the num­ber of peo­ple at­tend­ing the mass.

For its Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas morn­ing ser­vices, as well as its Old Year’s and New Year’s Day ser­vices, Sir­ju said to en­sure that the pro­to­cols were fol­lowed on these days, more hos­pi­tal­i­ty mem­bers and ush­ers would be utilised to avoid any po­ten­tial crowd­ing. For the parish­es which may ex­pe­ri­ence an over­flow, he said tents and chairs would al­so be set up at their car parks, once the ac­com­mo­da­tion can be made