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

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Meet Our 2011 Novices - Septimus Sama

Sama Septimus Paul is my name. I was born in 1981 in Blama, of the Mande tribe, in Sierra Leone.
When I was five years old I was baptized and was given the name Paul. I am the firstborn in a family of six, four boys and two girls. My late father was from Bo District in the southern part of Sierra Leone. My favorite hobbies are soccer, fishing and singing.
The Brothers rendered great support, spiritual, moral and financial, to my family and others during the time we were displaced in the war. The call to follow the way of selfless service and love of others has inspired me to join the Brothers. I look forward to knowing more of the life of Brothers during this time of novitiate.

No comments:

Post a Comment

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?”