Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: To make my experiment

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

To make my experiment

As Christ died he experienced his life as a total failure.
"My God why have you abandoned me?"
He had lived his life to the full, absolutely and sincerely, he had made his honest experiment.
On the Cross his Vision deserted him.
But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection.

We all must do what Christ did.
We must make our experiment.
We must make mistakes.
We must live our own individual life.
And there will be error.
If you avoid error you do not live; in a sense even it may be said that every life is a mistake, for no one has found the truth.
When we live like this we know Christ as a Brother, and God indeed becomes a human person.

(Carl Jung)

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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?”