Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: The Day of Closure

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Day of Closure

On the 19th of November

we formally brought the curtain down on the Novitiate experience for 2007-2008. The whole day led us through a process of remembering and letting go, of celebrating and thanking, of holding and closing.

We began the day by walking through our property and house recollecting and sharing memories of the various places. It was a moving experience to recall and share, to remember with joy and some degree of sadness, to laugh and shed a tear, to speak and to listen!

This took us a long time but the time went by quickly as each accessed scenes from our memory and brought them before the eyes of the community with such vividity that it all seemed so real all over again.

We spent the afternoon clearing the clutter from rooms. That evening we had a bon fire to burn all that we no longer needed. With it we were burning not only the remnants and the rags, the waste and the garbage from our rooms but also from our minds. It was a moment of cleansing and purifying. Were we burning our boats on these shores to travel light and fresh on new shores??

In the evening we gathered around the fountain to bring the novitiate experience to a close. We had shared so much now it was just time to sit in silence and listen as scripture spoke to us of Kingdom and seed, of sower and growth, of planting and nurturing. The seed was planted, nurtured, watered and now it was growing.

We finished the evening with planting the saplings that we had been tending and nurturing since our environment week. Just as we nurtured the saplings into healthy little plants that will one day provide shade to and beauty for another to appreciate, we leave with the sense that our lives will do the same for those that will follow!!

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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?”