The Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, His Grace, Most Reverend Dr. Ignatius Kaigama on Sunday, paid a pastoral visit to the Church of The Assumption, Asokoro where he admonished Christians to unite for the propagation of the faith and the promotion of peace in Nigeria. NewsQuest brings the excerpts:
Reason for visit
I have visited here a few times, but it was always to do a requiem mass. Thank God, we are not doing any requiem mass today. We are only praising the Lord, thanking the Lord, and also bringing to the Lord our needs, our desires, and our intentions. And with the Holy Mass I am presiding over, I am asking the Lord to grant each and every one of you present here, the good desires of your hearts.
My visit today is called a pastoral visit and a pastoral visit, is a way of putting the Chief Shepherd in contact with the flocks, with his people. Every Sunday, I go somewhere. In the last years, I have concentrated more on the new places we have created. We call them pastoral areas. That is parishes that will soon be made. And there are 66 of them. So, you can see, that in the short period, we have created 66 and that is quite a lot. That has taken a lot of my time, because I have to be there to see them, to ensure that they are managing well with all the problems that they are facing. Many of them. I just sent them. I say, Go, no land, no church, no Father’s house, nothing. I just say, go, there are people there. Just wear your Cassock and go. You will find people. We did that some three years ago and today, by the grace of God, we can tell that from nothing, we have gone to something.
If you don’t get up, if you don’t wake up and do something, nothing will happen. If you are afraid of all the problems and difficulties and challenges, nothing will happen. When I came and saw that in this Abuja, Abuja is big, but outside, in the periphery, the rural areas, there are many people who don’t come to church again. They don’t have a church. They don’t know what is going on. So, I said no, we must take the Gospel to them. Even though it has not been easy for the Priests, they have to go because there is nothing, no house, nothing, nothing. But they still work. I beg them to go, that is the work of the Apostles, and they went. Today, we are happy that these places are developing and are growing. Some of them are able to, on their own, do a little church. Some are able to do a little Father’s house. The Priests are renting in some cases, and in some cases, they are living in somebody’s house. So, gradually, you will see that they will blossom, and these 66 pastoral areas will become like Church of Assumption.
God must be number one
When I come here to visit you, it is to see how you are doing, to see how you are doing in the spirit. Because, we need guidance, we need to be reminded that this journey to Heaven is a very serious one. Sometimes, you can be distracted and you divert in it. Sometimes, you can be distracted and you forget. Sometimes, you can become so busy that you do not remember the God who is the Author of what you have and who you are. I think that was why Donald Trump, with all his very powerful disposition, in everything he does, he talks tough, and talks very seriously. But, he still remembers one thing, that God is God. That time when they shot the bullet from the gun and the bullet just very narrowly missed him, he knew that he would have been dead, completely dead. But he said there must be a God, the God that just made him to turn this way, and the bullet passed. You see how this God is so wonderful. And I think that is why one of his first duties was to do a national prayer service to thank God after the inauguration.
So, we must not joke with God. No matter how busy we are, you must give God number one. The Italian call him ‘numero uno’- number one. If you give him number two, there will come a time when you will be stranded. So I am happy to see you, and that is my duty to come here to encourage you to do more. Like I said the last time I came here, it was all about praying for the dead. But today we are talking about our faith, about you as parishioners of the Church of Assumption and the role you play to make this parish going, to keep it going. And I have to say, thank you for all that you have been doing. Some will not be seen. Some will be seen. But you know that God sees everything. Whatever you do, no matter how small, God knows, no matter how big, God knows, and He has a way of recording.
You don’t say, I will not do it because, somebody is not looking at me or the Priest has not even commended me. No, if you have something to do for the church, do it. Don’t wait for anybody. Don’t look left, don’t look right. Do it. And God, who sees, knows what to do for you. And this is one of those things that come to tell you, come together. If not because of the lack of time, a pastoral visit, according to canon law, the law of the church, the Bishop is to spend at least three days to do a pastoral visit. He will come on Friday, and then he will ask to sit with maybe some committees, Pastoral Council and some group in the parish. He will sit with them, one on one. He may even decide that there are some senior Catholics here. There are some people here who have been Catholics for many years, some for over 60 years, some for 70 years. The Bishop may decide to sit with them, just share with them, and also pray with them.
If they are congregations in the parish, you may even ask to go and see the sisters. If there are schools like Divine Mercy, the bishop may even wish to go and see for himself the different groups he would like to see. So from Friday, Saturday, he will spend time going around, looking around, talking to people, engaging and even visiting families. But it is because the work is so much that we can not do that. We cannot fulfill that condition of three days of pastoral visit. Imagine that there are many places I have not been to, and there are people longing to see the Bishop. So, the visit of the Bishop is not only for the sacrament of confirmation. Each time the Bishop is visiting, people think it is because he has come to give confirmation. That is one aspect of the pastoral visit. The Bishop’s visit is for you all, to pray with you, to pray for you. And if there are sacraments to be celebrated, like the Eucharist, like confirmation, like even marriage, he does it with you and for you. So, it’s not just about confirmation. If we had a space here, in fact, the visit of the Bishop should be collapsed into one mass whereby, everybody is here. Because, you may have two, three or four masses here, and every Sunday you have these masses, but it will happen that those who come to first mass, second mass may never meet you who come to the second or third mass.
That means you are going in parallel lines. Those in first mass come and go, you don’t know them. You in the second mass, you come and go, they don’t know you. So, for years and years, you will be coming to the same church and in the same parish, but then, you don’t know each other. So, the visit of the Bishop usually is about bringing people together. If there was space, even outside, we could have an outdoor mass where everybody is present from the beginning, from the smallest to the biggest, and from the first mass, second mass, and third mass. All the same, it is still not a bad idea when the Bishop is visiting that you get the people who attend the first mass, second mass, and the evening mass, get some representative so that they are part of the mass. By this way, they can also tell that, yes, they prayed with the Bishop, and they heard from the Bishop. It is very important for you that are here, very lucky, that we can pray and we can share together. So I urge you to keep the ball rolling.
Read the Bible
This work is not my own alone. It is also yours, including the children. Today is the Sunday of the Word of God. Where is my Bible? Where is the Bible? I brought my Bible to show you that today is the Sunday of the Word of God. We have to embrace the Bible. The is my Bible and every Catholic should have a Bible. At least, Catholics who can read and who can afford it, should have a Bible. Every family should have a family bible, so that from time to time, you open the Bible and you read something from it and share among you. Nowadays, our children are very educated. Even a two year old child can read from the Bible. Let them read, and tell them to explain or to say what they know about what they have read. It is very important. The Pope has instituted the year of the Bible or the Sunday of the Bible, and you must have your own, please. If you don’t have one as the family, have one. If you don’t have one as an individual in your room, you should have your Bible. When something strikes you in the night, you can’t sleep, you cannot concentrate, take your Bible and ask for God to talk to you through the word of God.
It is very important to have a Bible. They accuse us, Catholics of not reading the Bible. I told them that is not true. We actually love the Bible, and we are encouraging our people to read the Bible. And every word we say in the mass, the Eucharistic prayer, even the Rosary and other things are from the Bible. They don’t know that the Bible is number one. When we are reading the Word of God, the reader says, The Lord, be with you, and you answer, what? And with your spirit. A reading from the holy Gospel, according to Mathew, what do you do? So, you say, Glory be to you, Lord. It is a blessing. It is a blessing to your mind, to your brain that retains Him, then your heart that does good, and then your lips that you proclaim Him. This is so important. We must take note that we don’t neglect the Bible. Other churches tell us we don’t read it. This is just because we don’t carry it around like everybody. But, I think it is important that we make good use of the Bible. It is the vitamin for our souls, and it is so helpful. Today, also we have the Holy Childhood Association. The importance is that the children should be involved in mission work. It is being held throughout the world. It is not just here in Abuja.
Every year, we have this. Children are being taught to be missionaries. Children are being taught to be sensitive to the needs of other children. So, we have it in our Archdiocese today, and it is important that our children are introduced into missionary works, right from the beginning.
I ask the Priest if you have the Holy Childhood Association in Asokoro Parish, he said not yet. I told him, please make sure you have it. It is an association that is found in nearly all the parishes of the world. We teach these children to be able to give. I know that you give them the money to come and drop in the church, but they are also teaching them that it is their duty to look after the church. It is their duty to look after those who are poor, those who are sick, especially children.
The Holy Childhood Association collection was what the missionaries used in those days, maybe 100 years ago. They used that money to build schools for us, many of the schools that we built as church where schools built from the collection of children. If you go to Germany, children during Christmas, go from house to house, dancing and singing, and they collect a lot of money, which they send to children elsewhere who are suffering. So, we are encouraged to help our children to be involved in mission, even from the very early stages.
Christians must unite
Today also, we are marking the end of the prayer for Christian unity week. You know, for the past one week, we have been moving from church to church, all the five blocks of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), that is, Catholic, ECWA, Pentecostal, Methodist, and all of them. Even including those that when you go to their church, you have to remove your shoes. Do you know them? We were there yesterday. I was there. And so, they said you must remove your shoes. I removed my shoes, and it didn’t cost me anything. We are Christians. We have been going around. Today, we are having the last session somewhere in Christ, Apostolic Church.We are going there again, I am encouraging them to come together.
As Christians, we have spent a lot of time abusing, attacking and ridiculing one another. If you go through the social media, you will hear one Christian Pastor speak against the others. It is so terrible. The others are talking against us and we Christians, again, are talking against ourselves and doing so many terrible things. So, today marks the end of that programme, and we praying that Christians will be united, as Saint Paul has told us in the second reading from 1st Corinthians. He tells us that there is no room for division, no room for division. And so, Christians must seek unity. We will seek unity.
The Homily
In the Gospel, Jesus read from the Prophet Isaiah, and that famous reading- the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring a good news to the poor, bring liberation to the captives and so on and so forth. That was his own mission, and he did it so well. He carried it out so well, but he didn’t finish everything. He left the rest of the mission for you and me.
So, that is why we are gathered here to carry on with this mission. After over 2000 years, we are still expected to carry on with that mission. Yet in our days today, there is still so much poverty, homelessness, injustice and so on. Therefore, Jesus is asking you as an individual to do something about this. Do something about it. Don’t say I am a nobody. You are a somebody. If in the school, you see a student maltreating another student, you can do something about it. A student is punishing unjustly another student, you can do something about it, speak against it. In Nigeria, we leave everything to the government. Every small thing, government, government. We forget about our individual responsibilities. You are responsible. You are baptized, you have called to a mission. There is a lot of injustice, a lot of poverty, a lot of corruption, a lot of many things. You as a baptized Christian, you can do something. Don’t leave it for others. Jesus has given you that mission. So, as we reflect on this readings today, I want you to understand that you have a primary mission of bringing hope, bringing liberation and bringing healing to those around us who are wounded, who are poor, who are hungry, who are sick. You have a mission.
Don’t be thinking that others will do it. Like some people will say they see a person begging or a sick person, they say, no, go to Saint Vincent The Paul. What about yourself? You can do something for that person. So, let us concentrate on the Word of God. The Word of God will always lead us to do the right thing. And Saint Jerome has told us that if we don’t read the Word of God, it means we shall become ignorant of Christ. And when we read the Word of God, we will be led to do the right thing. We will be led to do things that will bring transformation in the society. Imagine all of us this Sunday, talking about holy things and the Muslims I’m trying to talking about whole eating. The Christians bring their own eating, and the Muslims bring their holy things that we put together, this country will be a paradise. But we come together and pray, and talk, and sing, and dance, and then, we go back home and do things that don’t resemble who we are as Muslims or as Christians.
So, for us today, the church is saying, we must take the word of God seriously. And then, if we read Deuteronomy 6:4-7, it says, Listen, oh Israel, I’m saying to you, listen, oh people of Church of Assumption Asokoro, the Lord our God is one God, and so, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. Engrave on your heart the words that I command you today, repeat them over and over to your children. Speak of them when you are at home and when you travel, when you lie down and when you rise. And if possible, I am asking you to enthrone this word of God in your home in a visible place. Some of you have an altar in the home. Keep the Bible there, even if possible, you open, so that the word of God will be exuding from that Bible into the different corners of your house.
Bible as vitamin for the soul
Let us remember once again, Saint Jerome says, ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. So, my dear brother, my dear friends, let us not be ignorant of Christ. Let us embrace the Bible, learn from the Bible. The Bible, the Word of God, is the vitamin for our souls. If you don’t read the Bible and you don’t learn from the Bible, you are likely to grow dry. You are likely to suffer from what we call anemia, anemia, lack of blood. So, the Bible is a vitamin for our soul. Bring it home, use it and read it, and may God allow the Word of God to flow from the Bible into your heart and make your home a much, much better place in the name of Jesus, Christ, our Lord.
