Living a 3 Priority from Nigeria

LIVING A LIFE THAT IS COMMITTED 

TO JUSTICE, PEACE AND INTEGRITY OF CREATION

IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

For us here in the Delegation of Africa, living this 3^rd priority like the other priorities continues to be a continuous call and challenge. The beautiful thing is that, we are all making little but steady efforts in living it out. The numerous needs in this area cannot discourage us. Each community, every year commits herself in living it out in the little ways they can.

As we wait for other communities to send in their reports on how they are doing this, I will go ahead to share with you about Lagos which I am more aware of.

Already at the Delegation level, we had drawn out and committed ourselves to how we are going to live this priority. One of the ways was to form ourselves in the Catholic Social Teachings and Sr. Encarna Viarnes, the Superior of the Delegation continues to encourage, animates and provide materials to help us to advance in this aspect of our option. I remember in one of her recommendations after her last year’s visitation in Lagos; she encouraged us to continue in the formation on the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC) and to be involve in a JPIC group or association.

For us here in Lagos, with the awareness of the fact that before a farmer goes out to work in his farm, he sharpens his tools, and so we began by getting a formation on self-awareness in order to help us to improve our relationship among ourselves and with our collaborators or people we interact with. We invited a Holy Rosary Sister (Sr. Bernadette Nyam from Enugu state). She is specialized in Psychology and Spirituality and has helped many congregations in this aspect and continues to work with many formation houses and formators. This awareness helped us to get in touch with our past, accept ourselves with all our past histories, humbles us to accept others and accept our differences and to promote better and right relationships. We discovered the result of this formation as we evaluated the community after one year. This was necessary because, for the message of peace to be accepted and understood, its carriers or promoters must be people of peace and peace makers. The journey continues with all its ups and downs reality. It makes us even more human.

With this desire to live out right relationships with God, with others and with the creation, we opted as a community to live lives that speak of peace and justices, avoiding non-violence in our words, attitudes and action and the ways we treat or relate with others. Dialogue has been a means for us. It takes a lot of patience and waiting to achieve this, but it continues to be the best way for us. It is a technique that is learnt with time and experience, we also discovered.

Our use of electricity, water and other goods is done with more attention and care after we engaged ourselves in the reading and reflection of “ Laudato Si”. We felt called to work harder to protect, preserve and to cater for the Mother Earth by the consumption choices we make. I remember too how the Sisters unanimously decided to work in the garden after one of the reflections.

...Continue Tomorrow...

Linda Abicha rjm for Lagos community Nigeria.