You, too, can be a hero
NO ONE can deny the fact that we have all been the recipients of gifts. No one is self-sufficient, as St Paul reminds us: “What have you that you have not received? And if you have received it, why boast as if you have not received it?” [I Cor. 7]. “The greatest sin is that of ingratitude,” said the great Latin American liberator, Simón Bolívar. Christ, too, in the Gospel, expresses disappointment that nine of the 10 lepers proved ungrateful. He says, “Were not all 10 healed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God but this alien?” (Luke 17: 17-18). Could we also be in that category of being ungrateful for all that we have received from God, either directly or indirectly? Ingratitude is rooted in inordinate selfcentredness to the extent that we act as if we are reinventing ourselves from scratch. This gives birth to relativism, whereby the individual person is the measure of all things without any consideration of others. Thanksgiving is not in such a person’s vocabulary!
Celebrating Heritage Week, we must pause from the usual activities to give thanks to Almighty God for our Jamaican heritage, one that is made possible by the invaluable contributions of those who struggled and gave their sweat, blood and lives that we can now enjoy the freedom, culture and democracy that is ours. We would be ungrateful or ‘sinning’ were we not to give thanks to all that has been so that we might continue shaping our destiny here and now, that will hopefully evolve into a better tomorrow.
TREMENDOUS SACRIFICES
Consider the tremendous sacrifices made by our ancestors in the face of inhumane treatment and the indignity dished out to them by slavers and colonisers! Their lives remind us of the resilience we must possess as we, too, must continue to shape a more humane and civilised country where everyone is respected and treated with dignity as a child of God. Our heroes: the Rt Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey championed black pride and dignity; the Right Excellencies Paul Bogle, George William Gordon, Sam Sharpe, and Nanny were great courageous freedom fighters; the Right Excellencies Norman Manley and Sir Alexander Bustamante, both champions of the working class, were visionaries and shapers of our present-day Jamaica. All these heroes and heroine were raised by God to sound the clarion call to genuine freedom and democracy, not to mention the many unsung heroes and heroines of whom we are all beneficiaries. The words of Sirach are very applicable:
Let us now glorify illustrious men, the ancestors of our people ... All were highly respected in their days and honoured by the people. The names of some lived on, and people still praise them today; others are not remembered and have disappeared as if they never existed. But now consider the godly men (and women) whose good deeds have not been forgotten. Those who came after them benefited from the rich legacy they left. (Sirach 44:1,7-9a, 10-11).
Indeed, it is good to give praise and thanks! But, can we ever give adequate thanks? Never! We are forever indebted both to God and to those who have gone before us, and who have paved the way for a better tomorrow (our ‘today’) that is ever evolving into something more humane and worthy of our humanity fashioned in the image of God. We have but to stand on the broad shoulders of our courageous ancestors to view the horizon ahead and be equally bold to form that future that we are to hand down to those who follow in our footsteps.
No one will deny the fact that we have come a long way, and a bloody and cruel way, at that! But one wonders if we have followed faithfully in the footsteps of our ancestors. We observe the selfishness that has blanketed the