Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: August 2009

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Sr Veronique

Today with deep sorrow and immense grief we mourn the sudden and untimely passing away of Sr Veronique. On Wednesday last week she was admitted to the Tamale Hospital where she was diagnosed to have typhoid, malaria 4+ and a touch of pneumonia. She passed away last night at 9.30. No one expected that it would end in the way it did. The sisters are devastated with the loss of one so young and dynamic. She was only 42.

She had just professed her Final vows last year in September. She belongs to the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of our Lady of Africa. She was the headmistress of one of the schools here and was doing great work in the field of education. She was Spiritual Director to one of our novices.

At times it is hard to fathom the depths of God's mystery. We pray for her family and for her sisters in the community and Congregation. may her gentle soul rest in the loving and welcoming embrace of her God.

I am sure she will be greeted with the words .. well done good and faithful servant! for she worked long and hard, with dedication and commitment in one of the most trying of God's vineyards!

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?”