Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Our Experience of the Ocean

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Our Experience of the Ocean

The recent trip to Cape Coast was enriching experience in more ways than one. One of them was the experience of the wide open sea… and for some of us it was our first time by the raging waters of the mighty sea.
We experienced the power of water as we swam against the current of rising tides. We also experienced what it meant to take a risk.

The risk we took was to leave the shore…go forward and swim in the face of rising tides. Though the tides made it fearful, the waters would carry us back every time we moved further, as if they were warning us not to move an inch further… What a risk!
This gave rise to feelings of fear in some of us! But what kept us going

forward from land was the courage and support we were getting from one another, and the confidence that the amazing grandeur of God was with us. The more we were advancing the more we would feel frail. The more we were running the risk of being carried away by the tides, which were becoming more and more powerful. But wisdom got the better of valour and we waded closer to the safety of the shore.

There it was easy to recall Peter’s courage when he wanted to walk on the water like Jesus. And our experience of God came that evening through our powerlessness, or rather, our limitations. Even here in the tossing waters it was clear to me that with the support of my brothers in community we can overcome fear.

Casimir François E. N.

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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?”