Reverend Rogers appeals for peace, protection of children in Good Friday sermon

Rector of the St. George Parish Church, Senator Reverend Dr. John Rogers today lamented the trauma being inflicted upon children around the world as he stressed the need for peace this Good Friday.

Delivering the sermon during the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion before a packed congregation, he said the state of Jerusalem leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was “a microcosm of our world in the 21st century.”

He explained that children loved by Jesus and who welcomed him to Jerusalem with shouts of hosanna were days later horrified and traumatized when they witnessed angry leaders demand his brutal death.

Reverend Rogers declared that some leaders today were like those in Jerusalem who do not know the way to peace but instead deprive innocent children of experiencing the joys of living in their Father’s world.

“We deprive them of the basic right to enjoy the beauty that is around them, because of our selfishness, because of our greed, because deep down inside leaders of our world have said I cannot afford to lose, I cannot afford to look soft, I must always look strong, no matter how many children must die, no matter how many people must suffer.

“Like the leaders of Jerusalem, we have chosen that we do not know the way to peace. We have turned our Father’s world that was supposed to be a place of joy and light into a place of darkness.”

Reverend Rogers lamented that more than 4.5 people from Ukraine have been forced to fled their homeland, with 90 per cent being women and children. He also pointed to long standing conflict in Yemen and Syrian which have displaced millions more.

He made clear that children Barbados and rest of the region were not exempt from challenges as he raised concern about the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on their lives.

“We have gone through a long pandemic with shutdowns, working from home, school from home, and the preliminary results of all this are showing that a lot of children had a very traumatic experience through this time, some of them have been victims of abuse.

“In our region, one-third of our girls and one-fifth of boys have experienced sexual abuse before they were 18 years old,” he said, citing reports from Trinidad and Tobago this week where a six-year-old boy was found unconscious in the bathroom of an apartment. An autopsy later confirmed that he died of blunt force trauma.

Reverend Rogers said: “Our children want to shout out hosanna to the Son of David, But many of us who are called to lead them have not known the way that leads to peace.

“Many of our children are having their dreams broken, their hope lost and many have decided it makes no sense living in this world and so depression is rife among our young people  and suicide rates are up. It is incumbent upon us who are called to lead to show the example of our Lord and the way that leads to peace, bring our children close to us , embrace them, so that they experience the joy and the peace of their Father’s world and like the children of Jerusalem in their innocence to be able to live by word and deed  hosanna to the Son of David.”