Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: 15th August 2008

Thursday, August 28, 2008

15th August 2008

On this day we celebrated the Feast of the Assumption, the Bicentenary of Blessed Edmund and his companions professing First Vows, the Independence day of India and we celebrated the Final Profession of Br Prince Bai Tarawalie. As you can see we had much to celebrate.

We gathered that evening in our chapel for a reflection on our vowed life. Using the Four elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water we reflected on our call to Evangelical Poverty, Obedience and Chastity. We drew inspiration for our Eucharistic prayer from a recent reflection that Br Peter Dowling had sent to all Brothers, and from our recent Chapter document. It was a reflective prayer where we shared the Word, the bread and the wine with our fellow Presentation Brothers, the FIC Brothers, the FMM sisters, a Spiritan priest and other friends.

The bread broken and wine poured was surely a sign of our companionship and our community, our oneness with Jesus and with one another and this was further reflected and celebrated in the meal that followed.

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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?”