Senior Reporter
Roman Catholic Archbishop Jason Gordon yesterday warned against putting God on a to-do list. Instead, make God the number one priority he said in his Ash Wednesday sermon marking the start of Lent at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in San Fernando.
He told members of the congregation if God is no longer first in their lives, by extension the world will become dispassionate and unloving. The problem is not that people don’t believe in God, but that God is no longer the number one priority in their life, Gordon said.
“I think we have lost a sense of what a priority really is because we make everything such a big priority that when it comes to the number one priority, God, God is just one among ten other things we trying to juggle in our day. God can’t be one of many, God can’t be one of our priorities among every other priority. Lent is here for us to recognise, seek He first the Kingdom of God and then all these other things will be added,” the Archbishop added.
Declaring that the truth is that people have shifted their eyes and gaze from God, he said God has been “crowded out” by everything thing else in their lives. He explained that EGO means Edging God Out and when that happens people become dispassionate and unloving.
“So anytime God is not first it’s because EGO is filling that space and when EGO is not filling that space, brothers and sisters, we don’t become a more compassionate world. We become a more hard world, a more hardened people, a people who are not loving and kind to each other.
“Just look and see what you see around and ask is God first because that’s what is core and centre of Lent,” Gordon said
The Archbishop encouraged Roman Catholics to pray, fast and give alms during Lent, explaining that those spiritual works will help them to recognise that God is first.
“God is not one item on our to-do list. God is, and the whole list is then oriented by God and that’s how we get back the time that we need to do the things that we need to do,” he said
Instead of spending time on social media, useless phone calls and gossiping, Gordon suggested using that time to put God first.
“The best gift we can give to our family, to our church community and our nation is to spend these 40 days of training and observe them faithfully. For the 40 days, keeping God to the forefront of our life and keeping God first in everything that we do and if we were to do that with these 40 days, we would be a better human being. It will impact our families. It will impact our nation,” he said
Gordon encouraged Roman Catholics to re-orient their mind to putting God first in their lives.
“If we all put God first, what a beautiful place this will do what a wonderful place this will be,” he said.
