Priest: Too much anger and control

ROMAN Catholic Priest Father Clyde Harvey said yesterday that society was filled with so much anger and control.  He urged members of his congregation and by extension the citizens of the nation to pave their lives according to the Holy Scriptures. Fr Harvey delivered the homily at the Palm Sunday service at the Lady of Perpetual Help Church on Harris Street, San Fernando. Palm Sunday begins Holy Week celebrations across the world. Father Harvey said that while people can write the text of others, they can also shape their own text, “It is a horrid thing when people who are filled with anger and control write the text of others”.

Harvey made reference to the recent poison incident last Wednesday in which Raymond Anthony, 33 of Quarry Village, Siparia, forced his six-year-old son, Ray Shawn, to drink a deadly poison.  Anthony subsequently took a gulp of the poison. The father and son both died two days later at the San Fernando General Hospital leaving behind a grieving, Shiveron Joseph-Anthony, mother of Ray Shawn. It was reported that Anthony attempted to reconcile his two-week estranged relationship with his married wife for ten years, Shiveron. Upon her refusal, he took his son to a lonely road in Quarry Village, Siparia where he forced him to drink the poison and then consumed the remainder of it.

Father Harvey requested of his congregation to pray for Shiveron in her time of distress, “A man in anger wrote the text of his young child’s life when he forced him to drink gramoxone, we clearly see that he did this in such a way that the mother would never forget what happened, but we must pray for her, pray for God to heal her wound. “While we are praying for her we must also look into our own hearts.  When we are writing our own texts and others we must write it parallel to how Jesus lived and what he instructed of us in the scriptures - with much love, care and forgiveness,” Father Harvey added.

Yesterday, hundreds of devout Roman Catholics, in commemoration of the  Lord Jesus Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem one week before his crucifix, turned up at the mid morning Palm Sunday mass at the Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, Harris Promenade, San Fernando. Father Harvey blessed the palms which were distributed to the congregants.  However, the routine procession of the waving of palms was withheld this year due to the repair/renovation work ongoing at the church’s building. The mass was held in the Bishop Mendes Auditorium.