As I write this, I’m heading into my final few days at Consolata. I will be leaving the school and Consolata community here in Nairobi and beginning the next stage of my journey in Mombasa with my fellow Maryknoll Lay Missioners there. The next few days will be pretty busy as I prepare to make the transition.
Not that there aren’t animal parks in Mombasa, but on Saturday I took the opportunity to visit yet one more animal park here in Nairobi, within walking distance of the school, before I leave Consolata. I asked Dee if she wanted to accompany me and she accepted. We met up on Langata Road where you turn off to go onto the road where the entrance to the animal park is located. This was a little more than a 20 minute walk for me from Consolata, but Dee had to take two matatus (minibuses) to get there from home. As the traffic here in Nairobi is always problematic, even for matatus that often times pass other vehicles by driving on the wrong side of the road and driving in what passes for the breakdown lane, I ended up making it to the meeting point well before Dee. We passed through security at the entrance to the Stedmak Gardens, the complex of facilities where the animal park is located – everyplace here has security checkpoints – and made our way to the ticket counter to purchase our admission tickets. We both managed to talk our way into getting the Kenya resident admission rate, which as I mentioned previously, is much cheaper than the non-resident/tourist rate, but not quite as cheap as the citizen rate. I manage a few of these small negotiating victories – again, pretty much the price is negotiable for almost everything here, but Dee is much more a master at it. I’m still learning. In any case, as we both now have our work permits approved, we are actually entitled to resident rates. Dee didn’t have her paperwork, but we still successfully made our cases.
The Animal Park at Stedmak is a little different than that other parks I’ve visited. Where I usually prefer seeing mammals, this park was much more geared to birds, snakes, and other reptiles. However, there were a few lions and cheetahs at the park also. I enjoyed our visit a lot and am glad we went. The highlight of the park for me was getting to hold some of the animals – specifically an owl, a few other birds, a few turtles, a chameleon, and a snake! I was surprised to learn afterwards how terrified everyone here is of snakes and how a number of other visitors to the park would not even go near the snakes let alone hold one. I’m not a big fan of snakes, and while seeing a random snake outside (or even worse, in the house) would freak me out, in the controlled environment of the animal park, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
After the park, Dee and I stopped for lunch. She had promised me good choma (BBQ in Kiswahili), but yet again, we were disappointed by the food we were served. We ordered chicken and goat, but both meats we were served were cooked earlier and simply warmed up when we ordered them. Not surprisingly the food was overcooked and dry. I just can’t catch a break here when it comes to food. The few times I do eat out, usually turn out to be a disappointment. To rub salt in the wound, Dee and I visited Rongai yesterday. Rongai is a gritty town on the outskirts of Nairobi that is a short ride from Consolata. Although plagued by traffic jams, poor drainage, garbage and dusty dirt roads, Rongai has numerous roadside shops with decent furniture (built in workshops attached to the shops), clothes, and even electronics at low prices. Rongai also has a number of good places to get choma. The places I saw looked to have delicious choma, but alas being a Friday during Lent, I couldn’t partake. Doubtful I’ll have the opportunity to go back there before I head to Mombasa. I can only hope there are some good places to get choma in Mombasa.
After the choma disaster, I took a matatu with Dee to the coffee shop in Karen that she likes. As we have had coffee there in the past, I knew it was decent, and it gave us an opportunity to salvage part of our dining experience for the day – even if just coffee. Also, as Karen is the halfway point between Consolata and where Dee lives, she only needed to take one matatu home and I only needed to take one to get back to Consolata. After coffee, we parted ways.
On Sunday, I went with Fr. Geoffrey and four seminarians for Mass at a local prison. The Consolata Fathers celebrate Mass there each Sunday morning for the prison staff who either live in housing at the prison or nearby. The chapel is not within the walls of the prison and so Mass there is attended by the staff and their families. The Mass was very well attended and there were also a number of children of the staff at the Mass, which was celebrated in Kiswahili. After Mass, Fr. Geoffrey invited us up to introduce and tell a little bit about ourselves in Kiswahili. I managed to say what I wanted entirely in Kiswahili, but it was actually more difficult for the seminarians, who happen to be from South Sudan, not Kenya. The seminarians from South Sudan don’t speak Kiswahili and are not even studying it at Consolata as all the seminary classes are taught in English. One of the seminarians was able to say a little in Kiswahili before reverting to English, but the others spoke pretty much entirely in English. I felt their pain. I have come to realize that these, I’ll call them “witness talks”, are pretty beneficial. I can see how much the people appreciate the fact that I care enough to be here in Kenya and that I’m making an effort to learn the language.
Yesterday, Friday, after returning to Consolata from Rongai, I attended the Way of the Cross, which started at 5:45 PM local time. During the Way of the Cross, which is celebrated at Consolata every Friday during Lent, all the seminarians, a number of Fathers, Sisters, and a few language school students walk in procession around the Consolata grounds reciting the stations and singing hymns as everyone moves between stations. For the past several years, I’ve attended the Stations in the Street on Good Friday at St. Thomas Moore Church in Narragansett, RI, where I was living, with my sister, Tricia, and sometimes with my sister-in-law Lynn, niece Kaitlyn, and nephew Brandon. While I won’t be able to do the Stations in the Street in Narragansett this year, I was glad to have the opportunity to do the Way of the Cross in a somewhat similar setting here at Consolata.
After the Way of the Cross yesterday, an Italian Consolata Father, who has resided in Kenya for many years and currently lives at the Consolata formation house a short distance away from the seminary, led the entire community in a traditional Passover Seder meal, the Jewish ritual feast, which consists of fifteen ordered procedures and marks the beginning of the Jewish Holiday of Passover. The Seder meal included readings, drinking four cups of wine, eating herbs dipped in saltwater, eating matzah, eating bitter herbs, and singing. Although there was no Jewish Rabi present, several of the Consolata Fathers are biblical scholars who teach at local Catholic Universities in Hebrew. They have been celebrating the Passover Seder meal at Consolata for the past several years. Although I had wanted to attend a Passover Seder meal for a long time, but never did, I was happy to have the opportunity to do it at Consolata. I just find it a bit odd that my first Seder meal took place in a Catholic religious community in Africa! Joining us for the Seder meal were a number of secondary school (high school) students who are visiting Consolata for a few days. The students are from a Catholic secondary school in central Kenya and are spending a few days living at the seminary to learn about seminary life and possibly help them to discern a vocation. It was great to see so much interest from high school students.
Something that I have been thinking a bit about this week is what it means to be a missionary. Not that I hadn’t thought about this a lot when discerning to become a Maryknoll Lay Missioner, but two things that came up this week got me thinking about it again. The first was a dinner conversation that several of the Consolata Fathers were having. The second was an article that I read online this week, or to be more exact, the comments about an article that I read. The meaning of missionary is still an evolving concept for me. Obviously, I’ve come to what I believe is some understanding of what it means, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here in Kenya right now. On the other hand, I expect that my ideas will evolve and hopefully deepen as I continue on in this journey. So I presume that what I say here is a snapshot in time of my current understanding of what it means.
The dinner conversation that got me thinking about mission revolved around an Italian Consolata Father (as I hopefully have previously mentioned, the Consolata Missionaries are a congregation founded by an Italian Catholic priest, Blessed Giuseppe Allamano) who didn’t consider Consolata priests who lived and worked in Italy, and possibly those who lived and worked outside of Africa, to be missionaries. I also understand that this priest’s view was that missionary work was strictly pastoral work and that priests, who perhaps taught in seminaries or who worked with seminarians in their formation, were not missionaries.
While I believe that there is some distinction between someone who is a priest or a lay person who does ministry work in a traditional parish setting, in say the US, and someone who is ministering to people in a war-torn area in Africa, I also believe that the Italian Consolata Father’s definition of missionary misses the mark. As the Church teaches, the Church’s mission, given to her by Christ, is the proclamation of the Good News. Pope Saint Paul VI stated that the Church “exists in order to evangelize, that is to say in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace”. The key points that I take away from this statement from Pope Saint Paul are that the Church exists to evangelize and that we are the Church. The Church is not just the pope or the bishops or your parish priests. The Church is the body of Christ, that is, all of us. Pope Saint John Paul II perhaps more directly puts the responsibility for evangelization squarely on each of our shoulders when he says “No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.” As I will reflect on more fully in a upcoming post, Jesus compels us to be a light to the world. Every baptized person receives from Christ the missionary mandate to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15) So, all of us, by virtue of our Baptism, are missionaries. St. Paul says “If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!” (1 Corinthians 9:16)
You may now be thinking that I’m advocating that every one of us needs to climb the nearest pulpit or stand on the street corner and preach the Gospel with forceful words. In fact, this is exactly what I do not feel my role as a missionary is. Which brings me to the second thing that got me thinking about mission this week. I read an online article by a non Catholic in a secular online publication where he talked about how he tries to live out his Christian faith in today’s culture. I thought the article was good, but what unfortunately struck me more deeply were all the nasty comments that were posted about the article. The comments ranged from being militantly anti-religious to those that quoted bible passages out of context to make Christianity seem absurd to those who attempted to engage in a rational conversation with those who were only interested in putting religion down. Where this ties back to my idea of mission is that I believe we most effectively preach the Gospel and evangelize through the way we live our lives, not by how effectively we can preach or how eloquently we can defend doctrine. I’m not trying to say that preaching or defending doctrine are bad or that they are not needed, but rather that what I believe matters more is how we live out our faith and our witness to our faith lived out in our daily lives. This is summed up in that famous quote, widely accepted to be dubiously attributed to St. Francis, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Our actions do indeed speak louder than our words. I remember a homily on evangelization where the priest conjectured that if Catholics truly lived the Gospel and others were witness to this, our Churches would be overflowing. Speaking for myself, I know that I can’t preach, with words or actions, what I don’t possess.
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.”
Blessed John Henry Newman
However, I don’t believe any what I have just said should not be used as an excuse to not talk about our faith. Jesus tells us “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” ( Matthew 10:32-33). In my opinion, the interpretation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution’s separation of church and state is many time deliberately misinterpreted simply dismiss religion completely from all discourse. However, if we talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk, no one will take us seriously anyways. I view my role as a missionary as one of evangelization and preaching the Gospel, but primarily through my actions, work and how I live my life. But yes, I will use words when necessary.
Pope Francis I believe rightly said, “Solidarity with the poor is at the heart of the Gospel; it has to be seen as an essential element of the Christian life”. There is no question that Jesus not only taught but lived this out. However, as one reflection on this quote which I read commented, “the difference between “the” and “an”, in this case (referring to “an essential element” in Pope Francis’ quote), is the difference between saying, “The purpose of the Church is solidarity with the poor,” and saying, “Solidarity with the poor is an expression and demonstration of the purpose and nature of the Church.” I hold the latter view. The nature of the Church is mission and its core reason to be is evangelization. However, the only way to truly live this out is to live in solidarity with the poor and marginalized.
My brother Michael often asks why I felt the need to go to Africa to do missionary work. In some sense, I believe that deep down, he really grasps the idea that mission is not simply about serving in some far off place. While what he says is certainly true, that there is plenty of missionary work that I could do in the US, my answer is that I feel that what I am currently doing is the best expression of the witness that I want my life to be with the hope that I evangelize through this witness. I guess we often don’t think about or realize the effect that our simplest words and actions have on others. But since being here in Kenya and doing pastoral work, I’m starting to better see how much just the simple gestures – attending Mass and Small Christian Community prayer meetings, trying to speak Kiswahili and stumbling through my “witness talks” – have an impact on people. Even though I may not be doing much, just my presence, effort, and willingness to stand in solidarity with them makes a huge impact on the people I encounter.
Pope Francis I believe sums up what I’m probably inadequately trying to convey when he said “We know there is but one mission of the Church of God, and that every baptized Christian has a vital part in this mission. Your gifts as lay men and women are manifold and your apostolates varied, yet all that you do is meant to advance the Church’s mission by ensuring that the temporal order is permeated and perfected by Christ’s Spirit and ordered to the coming of his Kingdom.” This is how I view my missionary role – to advance the Church’s mission of evangelization and the coming of His Kingdom. My ministry work and hopefully the way I live my life serves as a witness to my belief in the obligation to build the Kingdom of God here on earth as manifested in my solidarity with the poor and those in need.
God is good.
