Barbadians are being urged to embrace peace particularly in their family life.
The challenge came from Roman Catholic Bishop Neil Scantlebury yesterday during a mass held for the closing of Jubilee Year 2025, held at St Patrick’s Cathedral on Jemmotts Lane, St Michael.
In his sermon titled Peace In The Family As Pilgrims Of Hope, he told the congregation there were three ways for families to walk forward as pilgrims of hope and peace.
“The first one is to pray together, even briefly. We know that little saying, ‘The family that prays together, stays together’, and so a family that prays, even for one or two minutes a day together, invites Christ to be the centre. Peace grows when God’s voice is welcomed in the home,” he said.
Scantlebury declared that the second way was to forgive quickly, as forgiveness was the oxygen of peace.
Blame game
“Families cannot avoid hurting each other. You’re bound to step on somebody’s corns somewhere along the line. As St Paul would say, ‘forgive people before the quarrel begins’. Joseph and Mary could have blamed each other – and you know how we love to play the blame game – but no, they did not. They resisted and they did not blame others or argue about their fears or their anxieties of what if. They supported each other and they helped each other along the way. Forgiveness keeps the heart free and the home peaceful, and we should practise it.”
The third method, the Bishop pointed out, was to protect the vulnerable – to defend life from the moment of conception in the womb to natural death.
“We are called to protect life in all its stages, and we are called to defend life and care for those who are fragile. Every womb has someone who needs understanding, someone who needs gentleness, someone who needs mercy. Peace grows when we take care of one another with tenderness. As this jubilee year ends, the mission continues: we are called to walk the road of hope with the Holy Family as our companions. They remind us that peace is possible,” he said.
Scantlebury urged his listeners not to abandon the theme of the jubilee as it came to an end, but to carry it forward. He said being a pilgrim of hope meant moving forward, not staying stuck in old patterns, and believing that God could create something new in marriages, parenting, relationships and family life.
“Pope Francis has said, ‘Hope is bold; it can look beyond personal discouragements and offer peace’. If we want peace in the world, we must live in hope in the family. St Francis of Assisi prayed, ‘Lord, make me an instrument of your peace’, and we should truly add on ‘and let it begin with me’.
“May each of us – today, in our homes – become instruments of peace and as pilgrims of hope, may we carry that peace into our parish, into our community, into our country Barbados, into our Caribbean lands and into our world. Let us, my brothers and sisters, be instruments of peace so that we can bring hope to our burdened world. True peace in our families,” he said.
(CA)
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