The Consolata Fathers celebrate Mass at various places during the week and on Sunday, in addition to the daily Masses for the seminarians in the Seminary Chapel, where I often attend Sunday Mass, and the Father’s Chapel, where I attend daily Mass. This includes celebrating Mass at the Flora Hostel Chapel on the grounds of the regional headquarters of the Consolata Sisters, Kenya High School, a local prison, and at the University of Nairobi. The Fathers have a rotating schedule of Mass duties. Wanting to experience something different and seeing that Fr. Samuel was scheduled to celebrate Mass at Kenya high school, I asked him after breakfast on Saturday if I could join him. He said no problem, but told me that he was doing parochial work on Sunday and not celebrating Mass at the high school, but that I was welcome to join him. I now am aware that the Fathers are many times asked to help out in parishes and, if needed, ask another Father to fill in for them for their previously assigned Mass duty. I enthusiastically told Fr. Samuel that I definitely wanted to join him.
Putting this in the category of be careful what you ask for, Fr. Samuel then proceeded to tell me to meet him at 6 AM to leave Consolata and that he was celebrating two Masses that day, not just one. By then there was no turning back, but it was all good. It ended up being a very rewarding day and am so glad that I asked Fr. Samuel to join him.
First stop on Sunday morning was the Kahawa-Soweto settlement, which is a slum in northern Nairobi. Although I have been doing pastoral work with the seminarian in Kibera while at Consolata, I have not had the opportunity to attend Mass at any of the parishes in Kibera. Our pastoral work has revolved around Small Christian Community meetings where we pray, read the Gospel and reflect, but without the Eucharist. The chapel at which Fr. Samuel was celebrating Mass was quite a ways into the Soweto slum, but he drove all the way up to the chapel along the narrow, dirt roads within the settlement and parked the car right outside the chapel. Driving within Kibera is not possible and when we do pastoral work there, we have to walk quite a ways within Kibera to meet with the Small Christian Communities.
The chapel, like the other structures in Soweto, as well as in Kibera, is in reality a tin shack with a dirt floor. The chapel contains unattached wooden benches – enough to seat I’m guessing about 2oo people. To my surprise, the chapel not only has lights, but also microphones, which the priest and lectors use, as well as two decent size flat screen monitors where the words to songs, readings and prayer responses are displayed during the Mass! The chapel was packed for the 7 AM Mass and people were dressed nicely.
Fr. Samuel did a great job with the Mass. He had the congregation very involved, especially during his homily. As Fr. Samuel usually speaks at a fast pace in English, in Kiswahili he seemed, at least to me, to speak at a blistering pace. It was nearly impossible for me to keep up. However, it appears that the congregation kept up fine. At the end of Mass, Fr. Samuel called me up so that I could say a few words about myself and what I’m doing in Kenya. I talked a little in Kiswahili and some in English – the way most Kenyans speak anyway.
Unfortunately, besides the one photo above, which I found on the web, I’m not sharing any other pictures from Soweto with this post. On the one hand, I wish that I were including more photos so that you can get a better sense of what the places and things I talk about, like the chapel, actually look like. On the other hand, I’m hesitant to take or post pictures of the pastoral work in which I’m involved. I certainly don’t want exploit the situation for a photo opportunity. As it just does not feel right to me at this point in time to include photos, I hope my descriptions suffice. This may change as I feel more at home in some of the places I visit.
The experience of visiting and helping with pastoral work in the slums is stlll hard for me to process, let alone describe. The living conditions are horrid with residents lacking the most basic necessities, but the people, especially in their faith life, appear genuinely happy. There are about 2.5 million people living in approximately 200 informal settlements in Nairobi. This represents 60% of the population of Nairobi, but the residents living in these slums occupy only 6% of the land area that makes up Nairobi. I understand that there have been many ideas floating around as to how to address this issue, but so far nothing has seemed to have been done.
As hopefully comes through in my blog posts, Kenya appears, at least to me, to be a land filled with contradictions – honesty and hard work juxtaposed with corruption, wealth with poverty, natural beauty with filthy conditions. There are affluent neighborhoods bordering slums and large houses in fairly close proximity to tin shacks. In some areas, the affluent and impoverished seem to work together – with the less fortunate providing cheap labor, as an example. In other areas, the relationship is very confrontational. I don’t know they dynamics of the slum and faith community in Soweto where I attended Mass, but there appears to be some support for them from wealthier parishes at least in the form of equipment like microphones and monitors for the chapel.
After Mass, Fr. Samuel and I headed to St. Joseph Mukasa Catholic Parish, Kahawa West, a local parish staffed by Consolata Fathers, for some breakfast. My understanding is that the St. Francis of Assisi Sowetto chapel, where we just attended Mass, is an outstation of St. Joseph Mukasa Catholic Parish. The parish has a beautiful Church and parish center, which I am told was the original Church before the current church structure was constructed.
The second Mass that Fr. Samuel celebrated and I attended was in a parish in a new development under construction. There are no paved roads once you turn off the main road into the area under development. However, once you are on the dirt road, you see massive homes under construction. Again, the contrast. Not that this sort of disparity doesn’t exist in the US, it just appears to me to be in higher relief here in Kenya. The parish does not have a church building yet. It is still in the planning stages. While there is house for the Fathers on the property, the Mass is currently celebrated in a huge tent structure with an altar at the far end and filled with hundreds of plastic chairs. There had to be at least 500 chairs set up for Mass and they were pretty much all full for the Mass. After the Mass, there were at least 20 minutes of announcements, with different leaders or groups going up to talk about the latest news regarding their ministries. This included three young catechists who talked about youth religious education with a lot of energy and passion, which was great to see. This seemed to be a very vibrant parish, although still under development, with lots of involvement from the parishioners. After the announcements, as I now knew he would, Fr. Samuel introduced me and called me up to say a few words. Gratefully, as things were running late, he told me to just speak in English (as most of the ministry leaders did anyway, although the Mass itself was in Kiswahili). I just gave them a little personal background, told them why I was in Kenya, and what I hoped for in my ministry in Mombasa.
After Mass, we headed back to the Fathers’ house at St. Joseph Mukasa for lunch. Before we ate lunch, I had an opportunity to walk around and see the church grounds. A Mass had just finished. I waited for people to stream out of the church and then took a few pictures of the church, which as I mentioned, was very beautiful.
As Fr. Samuel was going to stay at St. Joseph Mukasa for a while longer, I caught a ride back to the Consolata Seminary with another Consolata Father and three seminarians who were heading back that way. I arrived back at Consolata around 3:30 PM. It was a great day.
The thing that stuck most with me during this past week was a Lenten reflection I read on Wednesday.
‘It’s so hard to be good!’ And so we have to practice. It is hard to become a concert pianist. It is hard to become an expert surgeon. It is hard to become an outstanding ballerina. We have to practice and practice and practice. If this is true of the worldly arts, it is more true of the art of spiritual fidelity.
Mother Mary Francis P.C.C. from A Time of Renewal: Daily Reflections for the Lenten Season
This made me immediately think of St. Paul’s words in his Letter to the Romans, which speaking for only myself, seems to aptly describe many of the things I seem to do.
What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.
Romans 7:15
So, I keep telling myself, as with all things at which I want to be good – practice, practice, practice.
When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, his son, Fr. Paul Scalia, a priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia gave the homily at the Funeral Mass celebrated in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. In his homily, Fr. Scalia said the following about his father.
He tried to love God and neighbor but, like the rest of us, did so imperfectly. He was a practicing Catholic—practicing in the sense that he hadn’t perfected it yet. Or, rather, that Christ was not yet perfected in him. And only those in whom Christ is brought to perfection can enter Heaven. We are here then, to lend our prayers to that perfecting, to that final work of God’s grace, in freeing Dad from every encumbrance of sin.
Fr. Paul Scalia, from the funeral homily for his father, Justice Antonin Scalia
How much I can relate to what Fr. Paul said about practicing in that sense that I haven’t perfected it yet. All of this can seem rather daunting, but I trust that the final work of God’s grace that Fr. Paul talks about will be accomplished in me through the grace of God. God made us for eternal happiness with Him. We just need to allow Him to work through us to accomplish this. Let us pray that we all obtain the perfection that God desires for each and every one of us.
This past Wednesday’s Mass reading has, what is for me, one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. I know that God is always there for me waiting to bestow His gifts upon me, even though a lot of times I don’t deserve them. But fortunately, God gives out of love, not according to what we deserve. In fact, He gives even more to those who are in the most need. I am confident in the fact that God never forgets me and is there for me at all time.
Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.
Is 49:15
God is good.
It sounds like the experience is having the intended effect, and then some! I can relate to much of what you write, though obviously I have very different life circumstances at present. I hope when you settle down in Mombasa you’ll have access to a good spiritual director. You sound ripe to work with someone who can accompany you along this incredible path you’re following.