Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Novitiate formation Teams Meeting in Lusaka

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Novitiate formation Teams Meeting in Lusaka

Facilitated by Michael Burke, the four novitiate teams met in Lusaka for a week long meeting at the end of April to share our stories and experiences. We were joined by members of our leadership team in Africa, Michael Colasuonno who had recently conducted a review of all the novitiates in Africa, and Francis Hall from the C LT.

The experience gave us the opportunity to look at our best practices, tweak a few of the structures and firm up others. But most importantly it was the sharing of brotherhood and the feeling of being supported in our work that stays with me the most.

The novitiate formation team in Greenpoint, South Africa (Brs Hugh Maloney, John Buckingham, John Holden, Christopher Mapulanga)

The novitiate formation team in Stellenbosch, South Africa (Brs Paul Luseni, Eamonn MacLochlainn, Clement Sindazi)

The formation team at the International spirituality Centre , Lusaka, Zambia (Br Michael Burke, Sr Sue McGregor, Br Joe Mosely)

The novitiate team at Tamale, Ghana (Brs Henry McGann, Prince Bai Tarawalie, Vivek da Silva)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Dear Br Noonan,

Greetings! My name is Joydeep Choudhury and I am writing this from India. I was a student of Br Henry McGann at St Edmund's School, Shillong, India, way back in the early 1980s. My friends and I remember him as not just a brilliant teacher of English but as a wonderful human being - easily the finest teacher to have ever taught me. Sadly, I have never been in touch with him after school. I see him in some of the photos on your blog. So, I am taking the liberty of writing to you. I would be grateful if you could please send me Br McGann's e-mailing address so that I can gt in touch with him. If not for anything else, just to tell him what a great teacher he had been to me and my friends when we were teenagers in school.

Shall be grateful if you could please send his mailing details at my e-mail joychoudhury1968@gmail.com.

Thanks & Regards
Joydeep Choudhury; September 3, 2011 at 1:42 AM
Anonymous said...: Please respond and help me. I very well could be getting my heart strings pulled. I have been talking at great length with a young boy named Mahama Muktar, he is now in Tamale with a person named Mr. Rashid halik. The boy wants to be adopted by me. This man said he can get him here and it would cost 4000.00 and if I could please help with 1500.00. the boy is convinced the man will help him. Me I am cautious of that level of money which he will not accept when he gets the boy to the USA on Nov 14th. The man could very well be helping, i don't know. Can I send the boy to your church tomorrow for help? I will help him, but need to know if everything is on the up and up. Please help me.; October 28, 2011 at 5:55 AM

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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?”