Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Comings and Goings

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Comings and Goings

Recently we have had a lot of activity by way of comings and goings. We had a visit from Richard Walsh, our Province Leader from the 18th to the 22nd of May. It was wonderful having him around and catching up on news. After visiting us he proceeded to Liberia and from there on to Sierra Leone.

On the 22nd Br Frank Keane arrived in Tamale. He had visited us a couple of years back. We welcome him in our midst. He will be with us until the first week of September. While here with us he will be taking callses on Edmund Rice and the Gospel of Mark.

Vivek left for USA on the 23rd. He will spend a few days in New York before going to Chicago on the 30th where he will be doing a month long course at the Institute for Sexuality Studies at the CTU. He returns on the 2nd of July.

There will be quite a bit of movement in the next few months. We are bracing ourselves!

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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?”