Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Celebrating life!

Monday, July 27, 2009

Celebrating life!

On Saturday the 4th of July, 2009 we had the opportunity of celebrating the birthday of Auntie Kay Braby in our Novitiate community.
It was all in all a blessing to celebrate the life of an elderly woman who has dedicated a year of her life to Africa & Ghana [Tamale] to work as a volunteer at the age of 80. Auntie Kay is a Canadian retired Social Worker and she has decided to come to Ghana to help and live with the orphans and vulnerable children at Anfaani’s Children homes.

On that day we also celebrated belatedly the birthday of the Novice director who is now half of Kay’s age. It was incredible day of questions for Novices as we felt challenged and at the same time enthused by her story. In the prayer session we listened to Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” which calls all of us to make the world a better place for you and for me.
It was a pleasure and a blessing to have her stay with us again recently for three days. For all of us it was an inspiring experience.
(Jordaan)

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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?”