Reflections at Easter 2020 in Santa Rosa 

 Mrs. Florence Campbell and daughter. Photo: Sonia Campbell 

Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday are all solemn days where Catholics go to pray and participate in ceremonies commemorating the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord. Catholics look forward to these solemn observations and celebrations during Holy Week and Easter, as they engage in them every year. At Santa Rosa like elsewhere in the world, Easter celebrations were different for all Morucans in 2020. The chapel was closed to avoid the faithful congregating and running the risk of contracting the coronavirus currently spreading across the world.

In Moruca, although there is access to the internet by using data plans, following Mass livestreamed from Georgetown or elsewhere is very expensive, as video uses considerable amounts of data.

I was in contact with a family in Moruca. The head of the household is Mrs. Florence Campbell, a widow. Her family is comprised of her sister, daughter and mother. They are traditional Catholics and regular churchgoers.

I asked Mrs. Campbell how she felt during Holy Week and Easter since she couldn´t attend church since it was closed. Her response was “I felt sad and I wanted to cry. I felt like something was missing from me. It was a feeling of grief. The feeling of sadness and grief was because we could not go and worship at the chapel at Santa Rosa. I believe since the church´s existence in Santa Rosa for 200 years, I never experienced the chapel closed for big religious seasons like Easter”.

Mrs. Campbell said “most Catholics in the interior considered chapels as their third home apart from the other two institutions, the home and the school in the community. We go to them to pray, listen to the world of God and to receive the Holy Eucharist etc. But, besides these activities of worshiping, socially, chapels also serve as a place to meet and mingle with neighbours and friends on Sunday and big feast days”.

However, for her and others, these activities came to a sudden pause this year in Moruca with the closure of the chapel as elsewhere. I asked again her, Since the chapel was closed what did you and your family do to celebrate Holy Week and Easter this year? Her responses were: “when I think it over, I realized the chapel is just the building. It´s we the people who are the Church. Christians were there before there were buildings. So we should be practicing the faith at home and the same time practice social distancing. For the Holy Week and Easter, we read the Bible and reflected on the death and resurrection of Our Lord. We prayed the rosary for the world. We prayed for the doctors and scientists; that God may soon give them the wisdom to discover the vaccine that cures the coronavirus. I also observed that during this time, praying at home provided a stronger family bonding and offered us the opportunity to re-cultivate the faith at home”.

Mrs Campbell also narrated that, “during this time the children are at home with their parents and they should be included in our prayers. This is also a good opportunity for parents to utilise this time with their children to educate them properly. Besides, the academic lessons they should be taught to be good Christians when they grow up. We also made intercessory prayers for those families that suffer from domestic violence during this time. For the conflicts to be resolved peacefully among husbands and wives and for the children not to suffer too much”. She continued. “I think most Catholics are doing this in Moruca these days, at least this what I heard people saying”.

Did you visit the chapel recently? “Yes, me and my sister passed by to pray a little in the chapel with the priests permission, couple days ago. We also took the opportunity to visit him but keeping social distance. I would like to say that even though the chapel is closed this time; it is good to hear the Angelus ringing at 6am and 6pm daily. Listening to the bell in the silence of the mornings would make me stop and pray, then remember that God is reminding us that even though there are no Masses at the chapel we have to remember him in daily prayers.”

Mrs. Campbell mentioned that a lot of prayers are needed in this time of the Coronavirus pandemic. “We must pray for divine intervention because I want to believe that it´s mankind who brought this virus on himself by over exploiting nature and replaced the creator with power and greed so it backfired, a sign of a wakeup call. As Catholics, we must pray harder to cast it away so that life can return to normal, including attending Holy Mass to worship as a big community”.