Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Meet the 2011 Novices

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Meet the 2011 Novices - Belamino Muunga

I am Bonaventure Belamino Muunga, and I was born in 1989 in the Northern part of Zambia. We are eleven children in our family, three girls and eight boys. I started my primary school in 1997 in the central part of Zambia. When I qualified to grade eight, I went to Kapiri basic school until the end of 2005. In 2006 I started secondary school at Ituna High school where I obtained my secondary school certificate.

After completing school I did a certificate in computers. During this period I was in a Vocations Club and already in contact with the Christian Brothers. In August 2009 they invited me for the two months Come and See programme at Moreau House in Mazabuka. The prayer life, pastoral work, community living and other activities at Moreau House deepened my understanding of the Christian Brothers. In January 2010 I started my Pre-Novitiate, and in October 2010 I applied for the Novitiate and I was accepted and assigned to do my Novitiate in Tamale, Ghana. And here I am as a Novice, looking forward to learning more as I am discerning my vocation of being a Christian Brother.

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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?”