Santa Rosa Festival Celebrates 240 Years Of Faith And Heritage
For 240 years, the Feast of Santa Rosa de Lima has remained an important part of Arima’s cultural and religious heritage.
This year’s celebrations brought together parishioners and members of the Santa Rosa First Peoples community with a Mass and procession through the Borough.
During the celebrations, Monsignor Martin Sirju used the occasion to reflect on the responsibility that comes with power and the importance of using it in service to others.
He said the keys entrusted to humanity by God should be used to build God’s kingdom and not merely to exercise power.
« Keys have been entrusted to you; the question is, are you using those keys like if it is one key – sole authority in your family, in your parish, in your school, in your department – or are you using a variety of keys so as to build up the kingdom of God not only in Arima Parish but throughout this historic town of Arima? »
Monsignor Sirju also reflected on changes within the Catholic Church, acknowledging that its history has included periods of rigid authority and separation.
He pointed to the Second Vatican Council as a turning point that helped open the Church to greater dialogue and relationships with other Christian denominations and religions.
« There might be people sitting here in the congregation old enough to remember when a Catholic could not get married to an Anglican, when a Catholic could not go to an Anglican school; you remember those old days. Pope John XXIII, through the Second Vatican Council, got a key we had lost, and he opened the door to ecumenicism, and then we also operated with a sense that outside the church there is no salvation and everybody else is going to hell, and then the Pope took another key, and he opened that door, Nostra aetate, on the Church’s declaration on non-Christian religion. »
Led by Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez, members of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community joined parishioners for the traditional procession through the Borough of Arima.
Parishioners journeyed through the Borough with the decorated statue of Santa Rosa in appreciation of her faithful life and in gratitude for all she did to help the people of her time.
For the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community and parishioners, the 240th Festival is more than a commemoration of the past.
It is also an opportunity to reaffirm the values of faith, service, reconciliation and community that continue to shape the tradition.
