Fellow citizens,
I extend warm greetings to Roman Catholics across Trinidad and Tobago, and to all citizens who pause today, in a spirit of reverence and peace, to reflect on and to observe the occasion of Corpus Christi.
For Catholics, this solemn feast honours the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. In bread broken and shared, and in the cup received in faith, the Church contemplates a mystery at once humble and profound: that God draws near as presence, sustenance and gift.
Corpus Christi asks for more than mere remembrance. It calls the faithful to allow worship to shape character; to let reverence become service; and to make the sacred visible in mercy, restraint and self-giving. A table of communion cannot leave us content with division. A sacrament of gift cannot leave us at ease with indifference. And so, what the faithful receive, they are called to reflect in the world: a life that nourishes, rather than diminishes the life of others.
Although Corpus Christi belongs in a special way to the Catholic tradition, Trinidad and Tobago understands that the lessons of our country’s many faiths speak across the lines that differentiate us. Our national calendar carries the sacred memories of many communities—Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Orisha, Spiritual Baptist and others. It reminds us that differences do not weaken belonging, and that a central lesson of all of our respective devotions, is that our devotions must bear fruit in our conduct.
At this time in our country’s public life, our nation needs that lesson. We do not serve Trinidad and Tobago when we choose suspicion over fairness, noise over truth, or contempt over disagreement. Our Republic asks no citizen to surrender conviction. It asks only that conviction keep faith with decency, and that the offices and institutions we share be treated with the care due to their common inheritance.
May Corpus Christi renew in us the discipline of unity: not sameness, but shared purpose; not silence, but speech worthy of a free people; not private devotion alone, but public virtue. May it move us from concern to duty, from distance to neighbourliness, and from division to the patient work of national renewal.
I wish the Roman Catholic community, and all the people of Trinidad and Tobago, a blessed and peaceful Corpus Christi. May this holy day leave us less eager to wound, more ready to serve, and more worthy of the Republic we hold in trust.
