Last Sunday, I went went back to the Kibera slum with Francis, the Consolata seminarian, to meet with the Small Christian Community (SCC) with which we have been worshiping on Sunday afternoons. Small Christian Communities are much more prevalent in Africa, where the Catholic Church is undergoing tremendous growth, than in the US. In rapidly growing environment of Africa, SCCs have become an integral part of the pastoral structure of the Church. SCCs are groups of about fifteen people who come together in a family like setting for prayer, scripture reading, catechesis, and to discuss topics relevant to the Church or the daily lives of the community members. SCCs form a community of communities within the parish and remain in communion with the parish to which they belong. At Kibera there are several dozen Catholic SCCs, each organized into subgroups of centers, which come together once a month as a larger group. In addition to the monthly gatherings in the centers, the SCCs meet weekly in the home of one of the members within Kibera. SCCs form a faith sharing, inclusive community for the members to pray, reflect, share, care for and serve one another.
I first became interested in SCCs during my orientation program, which I completed at Maryknoll in Ossining, NY from September to December of last year, prior too coming to Kenya. Fr. Joe Healey, a Maryknoll Father, who lives and works here in Nairobi, came to the US and did a one day session on SCCs as part of the orientation. Fr. Joe, who has written several books on SCCs, gave the orientation class a great introduction to SCCs and how they promote evangelization within the Church. I was very excited to meet Fr. Joe in NY as I am interested in the topic, having been a catechist in my parish for a number of years, but also because I was going to be living and doing ministry work in Kenya, where Fr. Joe lives and works. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up with Fr. Joe at the Maryknoll Father’s house in Nairobi a few times since arriving in Kenya. According to recent research that Fr. Joe has published, there are over 180,000 SCCs in East Africa and over 45,000 of these in Kenya alone. SCCs are a big part of the Church here.
When SCCs meet, they pray together and reflect on the Bible, usually the Gospel of the following Sunday, trying to connect it back to their daily lives. At the SCC with which Francis and I meet, we typically say the Rosary together, then Francis reads the Gospel and gives a reflection of about ten minutes on that passage, then each individual will talk about things that they want to discuss and pray over with the community – all in Kiswahili (although they try to accommodate me by letting me speak in English with Francis translating as necessary). Since starting this pastoral work with Francis, I’ve been so impressed with his reflections. Not that I can understand much of them, as he does his reflection in Kiswahili, but I can see the way he delivers the reflection and the way the community members are drawn into and react to it. The communities in Kibera have wanted me to read the Gospel from the first time I visited, but I didn’t feel capable of doing it. However, now the time had come to go for it and read the Gospel in Kiswahili. Not only that, but I agreed to give the reflection, albeit in English, with Francis translating. So during the preceding week I practiced reading the Gospel in Kiswahili to myself, even though I didn’t really understand and was not familiar with every word in the text. Luckily Kiswahili is easy to pronounce (the jury is still out on how easy it is to learn to speak and understand) and everything sounds just like it is written. The problem for me is the way the language is structured, as a number of prefixes and suffixes are added to words, particularly verbs, to convey the person, tense, mood and objects of the action, and so each word is in a sense a unique combination of these. The Gospel I read included words like ‘Watakuchukua’, which translates to ‘they will take you’. In retrospect, this is not a hard word to pronounce. I’ve certainly come across words a lot more complex. In any event, although not perfect, I think I read the Gospel well enough for everyone to understand me.
The Gospel that I read, which as I mentioned is for the following Sunday, is St. Luke’s account of Jesus being tempted by the devil after having fasted for forty days in the desert. In my reflection I tied the temptations, which are principally concerned with the pursuit of wealth, power, honor, or self gratification, back to the Beatitudes – Jesus’ great prescription on how to be happy that I reflected on in previous blog posts. Each of the temptations that Jesus undergoes in the Gospel reading are temptations that relate to things that we experience in our own lives and which directly undermine the happiness that Jesus wants for us as spelled out in the Beatitudes. In my talk, I reflected on each of the temptations that Jesus underwent and the role of temptation in our own lives. I talked about the fact that temptations are only empty promises and will not ultimately make us happy, the reasons why we give into temptations, using the apt words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans as a guide – “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.”, and why I believe God allows us to undergo temptations. Jesus was tempted, why should we expect anything different in our own lives. The good news is that having been fully human and tempted in all things as we are, Jesus can completely sympathize with our weaknesses and stands in full solidarity with us. Ultimately, I believe that temptations help to transform us by shining a light on areas of our lives that need attention. I ended with a discussion of the fact we are all tempted in different ways and have different imperfections that need to be addressed. It is easy to look at someone else and say I would never do anything that bad. However, you may not be tempted in that way, so the fact that you have not done what the other person has done may be just a result of the fact that it is not something to which you are susceptible. We all have our own weaknesses, temptations and failures. Jesus directs us to look inwardly when he said “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?” After I was done with my reflection, one of the community members asked us to pray for her as she said she experiences a lot of temptations in her life. My response was that we all do and that we all need to pray for each other. The Gospel confirms this need for ongoing vigilance in the face of temptation as it ends with the line “Having exhausted every way of putting him (Jesus) to the test, the devil left him, until the opportune [emphasis added] moment.”
Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and I attended Mass in the morning in the Seminary chapel. As always, I enjoyed sharing in the celebration of the Mass with the seminarians, given the energy and love of God that comes through in their worship and music. I also like attending Mass at Consolata in general, whether in the seminary chapel or the Father’s chapel, where daily Mass is celebrated, as there are almost always multiple priests concelebrating the Mass. Some Masses, even daily Masses, will have four or five Consolata Fathers concelebrating. For me, this somehow makes the Masses even more special. Fr. Deo, one of the Fathers responsible for formation of the seminarians, was the principal celebrant and homilist for the Ash Wednesday Mass. In his homily, Fr. Deo touched on several Lenten themes, but the one that stuck most with me was the need for humility. Fr. Deo used the words that are used when the ashes are applied – “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” – to launch into the need for us to be humble. However, while Fr. Deo was preaching, another bible verse, from that day’s Responsorial Psalm that was read at the Mass prior to the Gospel, popped into my head. The verse is “For I know my transgressions; and my sin is always before me.” from Psalm 51. I’m guessing the reason that my mind made this association is that the line “my sin is always before me” is one that I often hear Fr. Wanyonyi, another Consolata Father who teaches and is the head of bible studies at a Catholic university here in Nairobi close to Consolata, say when he enters the dining room. Having heard Fr. Wanyonyi say this many times, I have reflected on it quite a bit. However, I don’t approach this verse from the standpoint of being a miserable sinner, which I am,, but from the viewpoint of the humility that Fr. Deo was touching on in his Ash Wednesday homily. After all, as St. Therese said “Everything is Grace” with the full quote being “Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love—difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs – everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness – Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events—to the heart that loves, all is well.” To me these words from St. Therese pulls together perfectly the thoughts expressed in both the reflection on temptation that I did at Kibera (difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs) and Fr. Deo’s call to humility (because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness) in his homily on Ash Wednesday. However, as stated at the conclusion of the quote, do not worry as for the heart that loves and is humble, all is well.
God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. / Mungu ni mwema kila wakati. Kila wakati, Mungu ni mwema.
This is wonderful and very thought-provoking!