Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: A week of revelations

Monday, July 27, 2009

A week of revelations

In classes during June, I discovered new ideas about things I have never known before. Just to mention a few. I noticed that that there is a big connectivity between the Old and the New Testament. I realized that that the Hebrews used the Old Testament. This came across when I came to understand that Hanna the mother of Samuel sang the magnificat when presenting her child to the temple (1 Sam 2: 1-11).
Mary the mother of Christ therefore borrowed a leaf from Hannah’s book and sang her song of praise during the visitation (Luke 1:46-55). The visitation story at the same time captured my attention on the recollection day which was wonderfully facilitated by Br. Frank Keane. The theme I drew from it was service. Mary showed a good example of service when she went to help her cousin Elizabeth.
It dawned on me that the visitation was probably the time she acquired her popular title that has been mentioned over the ages, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”. I came to understand how tradition is always passed on from age to age.

In the history of the Christian brothers, some concrete statements made by the Founder have also remained. The living example is when the Brothers encountered financial problems at the initial years. When Edmund was asked how to go about it, his answer was “Providence will be our inheritance”. All this brought into my conviction that experiences are also connected. My special gratitude therefore goes to all the formation team who are helping me to see things in a more different and mature way.
(Otieno)

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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?”