Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Looking back at Holy Week

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Looking back at Holy Week

The night before Passion Sunday the community had a meeting on how to celebrate the holy week. Then, questions were raised in my mind on the significance and what it is all about. I think the week is all about love and service to all Christians.

Paying my attention to Good Friday when the church commemorates its origin from Christ, meditate on the Passion of the Lord and to intercede for the salvation of the longing world. I suppose this is time to remember the greatness of God’s Love for his people and creation not to torn and tear ourselves apart. I like how John presents the Passion story in his gospel not leaving us mourning or trembling, but he tries to help us realize that the suffering, crucifixion and burial is the Feast of glorification. Meditating on the crying out of Jesus, “Father into your hands I commend my Spirit” he knew that everything had been taken away except his spirit. ‘The Lord God formed man out of clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life’ (Gen 2:7)
This is the greatest gift God has given me and he wishes that at the end of my life, I should be able to happily say “Father into your hands I commend my Spirit” The only thing the world cannot take away from me - my spirit. My spirit lives forever, the question is to where after death?
(James)

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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?”