Of Memory, Ancestors and the Liberation of the Land.

My primal sin: I take things for granted. 

What if my grandfather had not decided to be a Christian, or had not invested in my Dad’s formal education? What if my Dad had not valued education, and had not trained me to the university level? Surely, I could still have made it, but it would have been at a greater toil and in a lengthier time. 

Only God knows what important choices my Great-grandfather had taken to get me here, good or bad. 

Do I think at all? Am I grateful for these or do I take things for granted? And what choices will I make for my children to keep up this progress? This is the capital sin: Idagunla, aibikita. 

Memory, the bane of our society. We lack history, we treat death as another ‘spanner loss’, we ignore the lives of our ancestors, that is why wise elders are lacking, why dynamic leaders are short and why we have mediocre as followers. Don’t look too far: Mea culpa. 

In the scripture, upon satisfying the first goal to freedom, which is morality, Christ told the rich young man to apply the second step: ‘letting-go. He said: ‘Go, sell all what you have and give the money to the poor’. The virtue of a leader who desires freedom is about letting go. ‘Agba maa n gba ni’.

But, there was another proposal which came into play after ‘letting-go’; Christ said: ‘Then, follow Me’. This following is the stage of memory. ‘Follow me’ means, keep me in focus. It is the arrival at ‘Eldership’, the mystical age. The 24 elders described in the book of Revelations, who were always by the throne of the Lord, are those who have mastered this science of memory.

It is saddening that we practice faiths that tend to kill memory. How shall there then be growth? Even Christ cannot affect much without memory. A society whose followers are obedient and grateful, whose leaders let go, and whose elders practice memory and teach others its method will move at light speed. After morality and letting go, the next big qualitative virtue is memory. 

Look at yonder, how do they get on? They lack faith in God, they are immoral, they are aggressively secular and atheistic, but they value history, they have a reading and writing culture, they think and reminiscence, they do not forget, and they believe in and leave legacies for posterity.

The land cannot gain freedom if its inhabitants do not master the art of the memory of those which constitute the land: they are called ‘Alaales’ in Yorubaland.  ‘Alaales’ constitute our dead, buried but living ancestors. And the more that the memories of these ancestors are purified by centring them on Christ, the more liberated the land would truly become. This is truth, and it is because we believe this in a shallow way, or because we do not believe this at all, that evil still reigns supreme in the land.

Regarding the very matters of the afterlife, Christ said: ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me’. When we remember anyone, who dies in Christ - the least of the brethren-, we give Christ greater means of conquering the land. A damning belief is that which teaches us to forget the dead. A society or household that fails to constantly remember its dead is itself dead!

A soul in love cannot stand still. Movement is love, love happens for freedom and peace. When we remember our loved ones, we help them quite alright, but we benefit a lot more from them. We gain vision, progress and love. Blessed are those who mourn out of love, for they shall be comforted.

All Souls Day tend to portend sorrow, and the concept of Purgatory has a load of bad press, so much that we think of it little less than anathema. We look at our beloved dead as being helpless, and having no more contact whatsoever with our lives here on earth, and we spare little thoughts for them, if at all, only on All Souls Day. A considerable number of Christian faiths would not even do this at all. 

But, do we really need to be sad for our departed brethren? Perhaps yes, because they are no more around with us physically, but on the contrary, they feel a greater sorrow for us, because we are more to be pitied.  Any positive pain we feel at their remembrance is for our good. Sorrow helps the soul. Work, pain, labour, sorrow; these become positive over there. 

Christ’s reply to the man who wondered whether only a few people would be saved was astounding. Rather than looking outward, Christ told him to look inward. He told him that, rather than him to be concerned about the numbers of those who would make it, he should mind his own business and try his hardest to be saved, for many would try and would not succeed.

The opus magnum of ensuring the salvation of our beloved ancestors and of our posterity, is our own efforts at conversion and salvation. This conversion involves a radical approach of looking at reality, of unlearning and relearning of letting go and not judging. To save ourselves and our loved ones, we must judge not so that we are not judged; we must be merciful to all so that He would be merciful to us.

When we regard pains, labours, works, etc as evil, we should have a rethink. Think how, for instance, the Little Flower would want to spend her heaven doing good on earth. Or, what if we consider how the Blessed Virgin is still in labour of childbirth. Or, how St Paul would desire to be condemned on behalf of his Jewish brethren. Are these people stupid, or are we ignorant? 

Only when we learn to love and not hate, do we know the reason why. It is He who has not come to condemn, but who has come to save that which is lost, who causes this experience. What is purgatory, for those who live the beatitudes? Hell melts away at the sight of the love of one who has mastered the art of abasing and abounding.

It is because bad people seem to believe more in devils, than good people trust in God, that is why it seems easier for humanity to destroy than to build. But evil is a lie and lie would not survive because it does not exist, even if it appears so, that appearance does not last.

It is the devil’s motive to make us – for whatever reasons- forget the dead who have hold on the land. Freedom is all about the liberation of the land. Who owns the land? Who are these ancestors, the true ‘Alaales’? They are the whole human race who are departed, but this gets disintegrated and narrowed down, the more we enter individual cultures and languages, and they are powerful according to the passion which they initially displayed in life, good or bad.

The eternal legacy a man can achieve is the true acquisition of the land, and one can only acquire this land when it is truly liberated. But it is only through one man, that the land can be truly liberated and won, only He who has opened the seal: The Christ. Our Saviour!

Christ has won the land for us. How? When we realise that man goes back to dust; that, a man in Christ has become ‘Oro’ (word), and that this ‘Oro’ has become ‘Ile’ (land) (‘The Word became flesh…’; ‘Thou art dust…’); and that, it is through this ‘Oro’ that ‘Ile’ gains its freedom and liberation. 

Without destroying its concept, the time immemorial dynamics of ‘Alaale’ has taken a radical different dimension with the introduction of Christ. The continual disintegration of the land, through languages and cultures, has – and is being- reversed into a unifying integration of the land through the language of love and the culture of God by the factor of Christ. Thus, the real question of who owns the land has been redefined.

Christ’s ultimate legacy is: ‘Do this in memory of Me’. The more that all are brought into the mystery of the Eucharist, the more that this cult of memory would be continual and widespread. We shall continue to succumb to the devil’s illusions without the cultivation of this memory in Christ. The verb of his great power over the earth is this ‘memory’ of the Church through which the land is liberated.

Our lives, knowingly or unknowingly, are truly a battle for the land, and it is through letting go and memory that we gain the wisdom of conquest. We are the word, but we are also the world. It is up to us to decide if we would perpetuate this concept and make it a reality in Christ and in Mary, or not. The dead are alive. More so, those who are dead in Christ are the living ones. They keep liberating the land, they are awaiting the perpetuation of His true legacy!

When He is come He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement: Of sin, because they believe not on Him; of righteousness because He goes to His Father, and we see Him no more; Of judgement because the prince of this world is already judged - Jn16:8-11.

The real fact of the many languages spoken during Pentecost is not for the novelty of ‘speaking in tongues’, but deeply speaking, it is that of a deep and divine understanding of the respective cultures of the languages spoken, which had been hitherto foreign to the disciples, because these needed to be entered into before the land can be conquered and brought into unity through Christ, in Christ, with Christ and for Christ.

Language is deeply engrained in culture and culture is deeply engrained in language, and without this Inculturation by the local word of God, or that of circumscribing the culture by a foreign word of God, the land cannot be liberated. The source of this word is the Eucharist and the scripture.

Asides the natural love fostered within the family, there is also this tribal and national language which is manifested in culture and tradition, and which only he who is born, bred and dies in the land can be adept at. This language, ultimately, is the Word of God, which is love and which every one of us shall become. The divine Logos.

This Logos must cut through the waft and weft of the illusions of every culture, it must consume every fake word and lies, exist, causing the entire land of humanity to be unified and liberated. The more that this Word is active, the more that our lands are unified and liberated, and the more that there shall be prosperity, for, the liberation of the land has a very close tie with the liberation of its people.

Even though, the land ultimately is -and shall be- one, and everything shall operate within its unifying essence, but what operates more in the heart of many now is the diversity of the land, that is why there are varied nations, cultures and languages, and it is within this imperfect manner that Christ wishes to act to create a true unifying nation of heaven, culture of God and language of love.

It is a form of laziness to seek to circumscribe inculturation by not labouring with Christ by engaging to refine the culture and language of the land through the mastery of memory. This sloth eventually creates more toil and lingers one’s freedom.

No matter our cries to Him for liberation, within this time and space, Christ would tell us:

‘Wait, I am busy with Israel and Palestine’.

And when we tell Him:

‘but won’t you come to Nigeria?’, He shall reply:

‘You have Tansi and all the numerous dead in my name to deliver your land’.

And we shall reply:

‘Tansi, we do not really know, the others: they are not saints, they are imperfect’, and they are not you.

And we shall rattle the faults and imperfections of our deceased to Him; and He shall reply:

‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me. Remember them, thus you remember Me, for they are in me. Ibi ori da ‘ni si l’aa gbe.  I rule from Israel, but I am present everywhere through my vicarages. Even Peter is not here in Israel, he is manning My site in Rome. My mother also is not here, she is in Ephesus, so also is my beloved disciple, John.

We avoid memory because we dread idolatry, but the fact is, Christ takes glory in the glorification of His members who have died and have been perfected in Him. What is sin and imperfection in the presence of love? When we believe that the dead in Christ are not saved, we are gradually commencing the process of our own condemnation.

The real war is on and has been won at the same time. The actual war is inside us and in our capacity to see and realize this work in love. Liberation of the land can only take effect through the memory of our ancestors, and our most liberating ancestors are those who have died in Christ. He who has mastered the utility of memory wins. On the other hand, evil thrives when we do not cultivate memory.

If Christ had not envisioned the attainment of the unity and universality of the church, though a loving and authentic confrontation with the world’s culture, respecting its autonomy while refining and purifying its assumptions, the disciples would probably have spoken only Hebrew on Pentecost.

Cultural changes are tough and challenging. Every ‘Alaale’ loathes evolution; but without evolution, revolution takes charge, and this is often worse, and it steals the land off its rightful labourers.

Even with the glorious event at Pentecost, it took persecutions to move the apostles from their comfort zones. Pentecost thrusted the Apostles out into an encounter with cultures that was not theirs. They spoke the gentiles’ languages, they knew, by grace, the waft and weft of dwelling in the respective lands.

That which was gained by the Apostles through divine grace is what we have been given naturally by our language. They know the power of using the Word to win the land. That was why the essence of memory through the Eucharistic dynamics was paramount in the early times.

We need to wake up, and wake up the dead in Christ through memory. They have the natural ability to speak our languages, in fact, they have become our languages, and that is a plus for our land. They are the real words, but they are powerless without us bringing about their memory.

Christ Himself would be powerless without us exercising His memory. But this, the Holy Spirit shall not permit. He still rules more from Jerusalem than in any other place because it was from there that He gave His life, He is still busy in Palestine because it was from there He came to earth, and He shall conquer in the Middle East, and when He does, He shall rule the world, but then He shall have to ask us, how have you assisted me to conquer the land that destiny has placed you?

Some ancestors have won over their traditions, cultures to truth or to falsehood. For instance, Latin has so much been conquered that it has become the language of the church, and how the devil trembles when it is spoken. Aramaic and Hebrew are also deep. Power also dwell in Arabic, Hindu, English, Greek and Yoruba, albeit positively or negatively.

There is a mystery that I have realised in my name that has shown me the lingering dichotomy of faith and culture. Named ‘Niyi’ and Baptized ‘Francis’, but notwithstanding the widespread popularity of ‘Francis’ as to my nomenclature, ‘Niyi’ seem to have a greater depth and pull on me, which has often made me wondered whether God has a greater preference for culture, or if it is my faith that is still shallow.

I know, He does not intend to kill one for the other. I have a strong feeling I would be called ‘Niyi’ before ‘Francis’ when I get to Him because it goes more intimate. I have a ‘Niyi’ that has been ingrained in my gene and it is impossible to extract, despite the affluence of ‘Francis’. I have become an advocate of a merger of Christening and naming ceremonies, so that such perceived dichotomies may be averted in others.

Home is the most natural place to build the passion of love, that which lasts till eternity. We should do everything to preserve the natural love of the home. ‘Bi ile o ba dun, bi igbe ni ilu n ri’. If we miss the love from home, we shall labour more to get it elsewhere, and the vastness of our destiny shall most probably be curtailed.

Thus, I have cultivated the memory of St Francis, my patron Saint to build the love in my home. He blesses me and blesses my family, but he has carried the remaining blessings to Assisi, for he could not speak Yoruba to effect much further, my culture was alien to him such that he finds it far easier at being an Assisi than a Yoruba. He would have to effect greater works at breaking through my genes and archetype despite we are close pals.

Another interesting factor is the confluence I found within my varied family’s ancestral culture and of the church’s culture which we poise, not to abolish the former, but to purify and complete them. Even, the Church’s culture – God’s culture on earth- must walk within our earthly culture, because they cannot be stamped out as an illusion; but while it walks within this culture, it seeks to pick the good and drop the bad in them.

Francis also does this walk, which is work, such that within the confines of my space, time and gene, it would become easier for him to work in and through Assisi, as an authentic Logos which he has been transformed.

Francis is more an ‘Alaale’ of Assisi than of ‘Yorubaland’ which I represent, even if we both confluence in the earthly culture of the Church as it becomes purified within my household. His strategy towards making me better and blessed is to send as emissary my Dad who is better acquainted with the cause and source of the hindering factors to my liberation.

After all, said and done, what shall I do then to liberate myself, and thus, my land? I must learn and practice the science and art of memory, bringing back alive my ancestors who are dead in Christ, for they love to dwell with us, they hold the true language that can liberate our land, and it is through them that there shall be prosperity, progress and true liberation of the land!

O blessed are the dead who have those that really matter to remember them, that is, the church, holy people, simple souls; and also blessed the living who have saintly dead to remember. Reciprocals of this bring liberation of the land!