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

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Meet Our 2011 Novices - Daniel Phiri

My name is Daniel Phiri, and I was born in 1983. We are 12 in my family and I am the seventh-born of eleven boys and one girl. I am a Zambian by nationality and Chewa by tribe, from the eastern part of Zambia. I did my primary education at Chifwani Basic School from 1995 to 1999, and my secondary education at St.Francis High School from 2001 to 2003. I also obtained a Diploma in Social Work at the University of Zambia between 2005 and 2008.

I came into contact with the Christian Brothers in 2008, attended the Come and See program in 2009 and did my postulancy in 2010. I am now in Tamale, Ghana as a novice. It is my prayer to continue discerning my call to become a Christian Brother and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and blessed Edmund Rice.

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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?”