Archbishop Gordon: Gospel more infectious than coronavirus

ARCHBISHOP Jason Gordon said the decision to suspend services was the most difficult one he has had to make as a Bishop.

This Lent, the most significant season on the Christian calendar both the Catholic and Anglican churches have suspended services, effective last Sunday, as the country records four cases of covid19.

In a televised mass on Sunday Gordon said suspending religious services was extremely difficult. He said they would meet with the authorities on Monday to see how best they could minister to the faithful in this time of dryness and desolation.

“This is a wonderful time and this is a terrible time.

“It was the most difficult time I have every made as a Bishop to say to this church we cannot congregate for mass. It was terrible and it was difficult and I made it because I believe this is the decision God asked of me to make.”

He said this is a time for families to come together and strengthen the home church.

He said the country is now in exile and in the olden times when the people went into exile the house church became stronger.

“That’s where we are now. My prayer is that the house church will become very strong in what every length of time we have to be away from public gathering.”

“I ask of you as a church that we use this time not to pull away in our way of frivolity but to push back into our families into our households and into our prayer. Let us make family prayers what we do in these days of desolation."

He reminded church goes of the Rosary.

"Remember we had this thing of the family rosary, let us pull out the family rosary again, gather and pray the rosary, let us open the scriptures and pray the scriptures.

“Let us prayer together as a family and in this realm where we are so thirsty, God will satisfy our thirst and he will give us living water that will throw us into eternal life,” he said as he preached the sermon of the woman Jesus met at the well.

Quoting scientific research that a single infected person will infect about 2.2 others on an average, Gordon said he believed, “The gospel of Jesus Christ is more infectious than the coronavirus.

“I believe that if every person who has taken the gospel of Jesus Christ to their heart brings that gospel to 2.2 people and those bring it to 2.2 more people, we would do better than the woman at the well because she converted a whole village and that is a very infectious spread of Jesus Christ.

“In these days of desolation, in these days of fasting like we never fasted before, in these days of yearning for the Eucharist, in these days where we cannot participate as we usually would, let us see in this blessed time a fast, a sacrifice that would deepen, cleanse and purify our faith in Jesus Christ. That we will come out of this purified like gold and silver, but even more pure than that.”