Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Our New Congregation Leadership Team (CLT)

Friday, March 21, 2008

Our New Congregation Leadership Team (CLT)

Congratulations to our Brothers who have accepted the responsibilty of guiding the Congregation over the next 6 years. For the first time in our history we have an African brother on the CLT.

The new CLT has Br Philip Pinto (Congregation Leader), Br Jack Mostyn (Deputy Congregation Leader), Br Francis Hall, Br Victor Dean Kamara and Br Peter Dowling.

I found the song by Joyce Johnson Rouse used to accompany the video on the CLT website very appropriate so here they are along with our message of active and prayerful support to our Leadership Team ...

"I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me.
I am stronger for their courage; I am wiser for their words.
I am lifted by their longing; for a fair and brighter future.
I am grateful for their vision; for their toiling on this earth.

We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us.
They are saints and they are humans;
they are angels, they are friends.
We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge;
When we know that by our efforts things will be better in the end.

They lift me higher than I could ever fly.
Carrying my burdens away.
I imagine our world if they hadn’t tried.
We wouldn’t be here celebrating today.

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me.
I am honoured by their passion; for our liberty.
I will stand a little taller; I will work a little longer
and my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me."

No comments:

Post a Comment

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?”