Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Funeral For Sr Veronique

Friday, September 4, 2009

Funeral For Sr Veronique

On the 8th August, 2009 Sr.Veronique Hegron was laid to rest. Her image will stay with us in this novitiate since she was the spiritual director for one of the novices.
Indeed this was a sad day for a number of people who knew her. Truly she was loved by many and this was witnessed that day especially when mourners were invited to pay their last respects to her. This was a time when people found it difficult to control their feelings and for a moment just like Jesus wept at the resurrection of Lazarus so did the masses of mourners.

It was a confirmation to them that truly she had answered God’s call and that she had fought the good fight to the end. They allowed tears to trickle down their cheeks freely. I realized that sometimes it is not easy to suppress a feeling especially at the death of someone who lived for others like Sr.Veronique.
The mourners dressed in their mourning regalia of red and black clothes from the word go are already missing the life giving presence of late Sr.Veronique, not forgetting the pupils from Tampe-Kokuo primary school where she was the head teacher. These children professed that already they are like sheep without shepherd!

(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?”