Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Farewell to Br Bob Aron

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Farewell to Br Bob Aron

Tomorrow, the 27th of June 2008 marks the end of Bob's long stay in Ghana. Following his time in the novitiate he was Director of the ICF in Cape Coast. He spent almost 7 and half years here in Ghana!

Br Bob Aron along with Br Paul Noonan were instrumental in establishing our novitiate here in Tamale. The following is an excerpt from our house annals...

"In July 1999 Paul and Bob met with the Lusaka Novitiate Team and then set off on a safari that took them to Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda in the search for a possible site. By good luck, the Missionaries of Africa were moving out of their formation house in Tamale to shift to Kumasi. The formation house, built only two years ago, was seen to be in good order, so it became our first recommendation for the site to open the new novitiate.... So at the Pan African leaders meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, in February 2000, the recommendation to opt for Tamale was adopted."

Bob was appointed as the community leader on that first Novitiate Team in Tamale which had Tim Lockwood as Novice Director, with Dan Healy and Emmanuel Marrah completing the Team.

Bob, Tim and Dan arrived Tamale on 15th December 2000 to become the first Christian Brother foundation in Ghana. Bob served with great dedication and committment on the Novitiate Team until December 2003. He left Tamale in January 2004. Following a sabatical he served as Director of the Institute for Continuing Formation in Cape Coast.

We take this opportunity to express our gratitude for all that Bob did for the brothers here in Tamale. He sowed the seed that today bear fruit.

Thanks Bob for all you did for us here and we wish you well as you travel back to Australia. May God continue to walk with you and may your committment and dedication continue to influence and serve many more people.

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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?”