Importance of religious festivities

Last Friday, Gambian Christians joined millions of their colleagues across the world to celebrate a very important part of the world’s religious calendar. August the 15th of every year marks the ascension of the Immaculate Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Christ, to heaven.

Like many other religious days, the significance of this day that the Christian community calls Saint Mary’s Day (Sang Mary) lies not only on what it means to them as Christians, but also what it means to the whole of humanity. Here we are talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ; Jesus himself being a revered ‘prophet’ in the eyes of the world’s Muslims. In essence, these two iconic figures represent just as much to Christians as they do to the Muslims.

If anything, this is the unifying aspect of today’s world, given the proportion of Christians to Muslims in the world, and also given the charged nature of world peace, a situation caused by misunderstanding, in some quarters, and ignorance in other quarters.
  
But the fact that these two people represent so much to two of the world’s most important religions is not the point; the point here is what they actually represent for us in reality.

In other words, if only humanity could reflect a bit and replicate the times and lives of these divinely guided, exemplary personalities, our world would have been saved from the excesses of this increasingly unfriendly situation we find ourselves in. This is just the teaching you can find in both scriptures: the Holy Qur’an and the Holy Bible. 

Human beings ought to learn that religious festivities are supposed to be reminders of the good deeds of the people we so revere, and that they are supposed to afford us the opportunity to imitate these perfectly guided people. It is unfortunate, however, that the young people, especially, seem inclined to embrace teachings that go contrary to those of their religions.

Talking about this, the Ramadan is fast approaching. It is a well known fact that we spend a whole month praying and thanksgiving, only to revert to old habits of blatant disobedience at the end of these activities. This, we do not need a religious genius to tell us, makes us no more better than those we largely consider as ‘unbelievers’.  And, most importantly, it has a great bearing on our lives in this world. Until we change our attitudes towards our faiths, our lives would hardly take a change for the better.