Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Novices setting out for Community Pastoral Experience

Monday, January 4, 2010

Novices setting out for Community Pastoral Experience

This morning the novices transported their belongings and necessities to the houses that they will be going to this evening following the missioning ceremony and the celebratory dinner.

The pictures might

suggest that our novices going out are a far cry from "Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick." But they sure are close enough to "Abram took his wife Sarai, his brother's son Lot,

all the possessions that they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan."

We hope that during their three month experience they may risk the sacred journey and ...

"Choose life…

only that and always, and at whatever risk.
For to let life leak out,

to let it wear away by the mere passage of time
to withhold giving it and spreading it

is to choose nothing."

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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?”