Dearest Mummy,
By a special design of God our
loving father, and through the practical commitment of Grand Pa Joachim and
Grand Ma Ann to eternal goodness which their Judaistic faith professed, you
emerged blameless, flawless, sinless and spotless into the world in total
willingness and readiness for the difficult but happy task that awaited you as
a Co-redemptorist.
Today, if for the fact of being the U.S.
Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton could wield such powerful influence in the
affairs of the nations of the world, then at this moment of the global crisis
of identity and faith in the world, and as Nigeria battles with the twin evils
of terrorism and corruption, I cease this opportunity of the Solemnity of the Immaculate
Conception (December 8, 2012) to remind
you again of Fatima and to invite you to take your proper place as the
Queen and Patroness of Nigeria.
Since your birth, you have
remained the Virgin and the Immaculate Heart – the burden of childbearing and
the intense ravages of suffering could undo nothing of you.
Your being conceived and your
birth are two decisively significant moments in the history of salvation.
And what is history save the
manifest ideas, events and actions of creation placed under the leadership of
man as it responds to God’s loving invitation to salvation. This is salvation
history.
But then secular history is not
anything different. Simply put, secular history is nothing more than when this
response is expressed, positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously,
in political, economic, social and philosophic-scientific categories of thought
and actions. In all these, humanity is just saying “Yes” or “NO” to God.
And if today, history has got a
lot to do with Records/Documents, it behooves on us all, both Muslims and
Christians, to cherish , appreciate and guard the place you occupy in the
Church’s Liturgical Calendar in reference to today’s feast and others in the
Roman Calendar.
Since God by-passed every
protocol to accord you this honor in human history, it is equally important, to
the point of martyrdoms, to by-pass every protocol in other to appreciate this
honor to you that, in itself, is also a gift to the Church, an unmerited favor
which every Catholic family shares in and at the same time, a miracle of an
extra-ordinary kind.
For those of us from Africa, the
experience and condition of North Africa are increasingly becoming worrisome,
and must be incorporated into the larger question of re-evangelization.
If the missionary compass of the
Church has once again rested on the need for the re-evangelization of Europe and
America, I am strongly believed it also before now rested, perhaps not
immediately perceived, on the superficiality of faith in the Northern African
sub-region. Thanks to God Blessed John Paul II started earlier to respond, even
if tangentially, to the battle-cry in the battle field of faith warning
specifically about the errors and murderous instincts of communist Russia.
Today, more than ever, the Fatima
Message is, therefore – in your own words to me during our discussion at the
grotto of the Queen of the Holy Rosary in front of the Chaplaincy, Catholic
Institute of West Africa (CIWA), Rumuibekwe, Port Harcourt, Rivers State,
Nigeria precisely on May 13, 2012 at 2.30 a.m. – “an inescapable pain on the
neck of the Holy Father and a very disturbing question on the conscience of the
Roman Curia.”
At such historic moments in the
journey through faith to God our loving father when Peter, the Sons of Zebedee
and the doubting Thomas come to cross-roads like as it is happening now in
respect of the clergy sex-abuse, Vatileaks, e.t.c, it would be ridiculous to
accuse ecclesiastical office holders of Pharisaism, or, in the words of Mathew
Fox, “ecclesiolatry”, or to assume that the Vatican has become a vast museum. But then the rebuke of Peter by Our Lord and
Master, the basic re-orientation programme which the Sons of Zebedee were compelled
to undertake during their days at the Apostolic College and the shock received
by the doubting Thomas when confronted with naked truth can never be lost to a
heart and a mind that are eternally committed to fruitful contemplation of
Divine love in the world.
Concerning North Africa, the
person and theology of St Augustine is imperatively recuperative.
From the moment of his
conversion, the whole life of St Augustine was a search for God – that obtrusive
force that pervaded the whole of his being; that reality that presented itself to
him as the greatest question about his life and at the same time the only real
answer to the question about himself as a person and every other reality around
him but yet escaped every attempt at being touched or understood; that truth
which he must discover and without which his entire life was miserable.
At the height of it all, and confronted
with infinitude of God – the highest point human reason can attain in its search
for knowledge of God that is authentic – St Augustine discovered his own
finiteness and the limitations which the human nature imposed on him in his
effort to conceive God. At the River, St Augustine met an angel in the form of
a little boy who told him of the Immanent Trinity -God as he is in himself
cannot be known. He is an unbounded bottomless ocean of Absolute Mystery. But
then the angel beckoned on Augustine to contemplate the Economic Trinity – the small
hole.
In that frustration hidden away
in a naïve and pardonable over-excitement about sin and guilt on the one hand,
and about divine omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience on the other hand,
St Augustine neglected to raise questions about the “hole” dug by the little
boy, dismissing as “something crazy”.
It was impossible for Augustine
to attempt to grasp the whole truth about the Divine Absolute Mystery which God
is. It was equally foolish for the little boy to attempt to empty the entire
contents of the river into a small hole he had dug by the river bank.
The little boy was a small-big
fool as signified by his fruitless venture. But his foolishness was the
foolishness of God, so also Jews and Greeks alike would think, about the
Mystery of the Incarnation.
Every attempt to disable and
eclipse reason is pretentious and as well a crime against progress and an
attack on revelation. But the requisite management of rationality and the
prudent application of the products of reason are a gift which many do not possess
are not in a hurry to acquire even if it is given away as an asset.
But the foolishness of God is
greater than the highest gem of human reason. And unless you become like this
little child, you will not enter the Kingdom.
What was very impossible for man
to achieve and possess through his intelligence– conceiving and grasping the
whole reality of Godself- God gave to him in a miraculous way as “GIFT”.
Man, at his best, is incapable of
knowing God. But that which is considered very impossible – emptying the whole
ocean waters into the small hole dug by a little boy at the bank of the river –
God made possible. He emptied the whole ocean waters into a ten-liter container
already filled with natural water, yet no drop of water, both that of the ocean
waters or that of the natural water, was lost. This is exactly what the Mystery
of the Incarnation is all about.
The infinite absolute mystery was
fully accommodated, without a remainder, and without any confusion, in the
human person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. That Miracle started
with the “FIAT” which you, Mummy uttered today.
It was this miracle – this special
divine innovation, that is, the Economic Trinity not the Immanent Trinity –
that beckoned on St Augustine. Unfortunately, Augustine refused to have
anything with the foolishness of God. By inductive and deductive reason, St
Augustine fashioned out, with great obscurities, the theology which holds the
edifice of the Catholic faith today.
Attempts to remedy this dualism
in Catholic theology by going back to the Capadocean innovation about Substance
have not been successful.
Instead, having to address the
question raised by the theology of Joseph Ratzinger and at the same time come
to terms with the issue of authority wielded by the same personality have bred
dissidents and theological perverts.
Nevertheless theology must hasten
to close the gap between authority and charisma, between the subjective spirit
and the objective spirit.
It is about the localization of
faith or contextualization.
It is about the great
reconciliation between the Trent and Vatican II.
As you know, this thoughts form
part of my proposed book “Proposing A
Post-Vatican II Theology”
Happy Feast day Mother Mary.
Your Son
Fr Ken.
+2348055442607
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