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

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Meet Our 2011 Novices - Abazo Kamara

Joseph Abass Kamara is my name, but I am known as Abazo. I have three sisters and four brothers, all of whom presently are living in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It was there I was born on September 24th, 1982. I was later taken to the northern town of Lunsar by my parents to be raised there. I completed my primary schooling and began my secondary education there, but due to the death of my father I was transferred to Freetown. After completing my secondary school, I decided to return to Lunsar where I started to teach in a school. Even though I was untrained and unqualified, I was in charge of religious studies. Finding that I loved teaching, I enrolled in Teacher Training College completed my teacher’s certificate in 2009. I really love teaching as a profession and my heart has been longing to engage in it. Here in Tamale, I have been happy to be assigned in teaching ministry.

I came in contact with the Christian Brothers through reading the life of Blessed Edmund Rice, a man who was moved by the Holy Spirit to open his whole heart to Christ Jesus present and appealing to him in the poor. I was encouraged to enter the life of the Christian Brothers by Br. Joseph Ture, who is now working in Yengema in Sierra Leone, and by Br. Peter Kabia, who is also working in Freetown.

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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?”