Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: On our 6 days of Reflection

Thursday, December 24, 2009

On our 6 days of Reflection

“It is good sometime to step back and look at the past” said Oscar Romero once.

The six days of reflections at TICCS was a time to step aside and review the past. However, the main focus was on what will happen in the next three months. A long journey begins with a single step so they say. This was amongst the first steps the Novices have made towards the preparation for community pastoral placement.
Haffis once said that three days in prayer is better than three years in university. Within the six days of reflections, I noticed that ones best friend is oneself. The challenge is now to extend this intimacy to the entire world and to bring liberation to the needy.
And Jesus was not wrong when he encouraged his followers to love their neighbours as they loved themselves. As I go out, I expect as well to reach out to the least privileged with them same love.

(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?”