Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Novices on Retreat

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Novices on Retreat

"Come, follow me to the edge, into the deeper and wider dimensions of LIving that you may discover the God who awaits you. I will walk with you in places of the heart beyond your wildest imaginings. Dare be my disciples. In you I am doing something new!"

Today we travel down to Kumasi for our 6 day retreat. Kumasi, known as the Garden city of Ghana is an ideal place to spend some time by ourselves before we make the decision to profess our first vows.

We will be making our retreat at the Centre for Christian Renewal. We ask you to remember us in our prayers. You can be sure that we will remember you in ours.

We are driving down this morning. It is a five and half hour drive on fairly good roads. We will be back in Tamale on the 12th evening.

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”