Embrace moral goodness

Roman Catholic Archbishop, Edward Gilbert, has called on each member of society to embrace moral goodness as the only true counter to the scourge of evil. The head of the local Catholic Church was the chief celebrant at Old Year’s Night Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, Harris Promenade, San Fernando, Friday night. Addressing a packed congregation, Gilbert observed that, with the ever-increasing trends of globalisation, “we are all citizens of the world” with its attendant evils and potential for good.

“We must be willing to be an instrument of good to counter the influence of evil,” he said, adding “only moral goodness will make us free.” He said evil was both “a rejection of love and a misuse of liberty” and advised  worshippers that one method of defeating evil was to identify “its face and name.” “Evil always has a name and a face and this is one way of combating its influence, by identifying its ways,” he said. And with the recent tragedy in South Asia clearly in mind, the Archbishop advised the congregartion to explore new ways of meeting the needs of the human family.
 
“We must utilise a new creatitivy in charity and find new ways to help those around us,” he said. Earlier parish priest, Father Clive Harvey urged believers to ‘be honest with our God and ourselves and learn from the mistakes of the past year.” He said 2004 was the year of natural disaster and advised the large congregation to “take the blindness from our eyes and help those less fortunate than ourselves.”