ON THE EUCHARIST & SUFFERING

The dimension of our humanity and of our earthly existence is of such that, to achieve enlightenment - to 'see', to be wise, to know- it is necessary to suffer, toil, face hardships and to labour and face ordeals. 'Oju eni ma a la a ri'yonu'. I suppose this  is a consequence of the 'fall', of gravity, and as long as we are subject to the law of nature, we need to thread the 'road less travelled' to be free.

If like me, you twitch at the idea of suffering and ordeal and yet passionately desire to be wise, see and arrive at truth, the one remedy at mitigating the hazard of the journey is to labour, trust and believe in the Holy Eucharist, this occurs in active, regular and intense participation and devotion at Mass, with constant communion. Hear  it from the horse's mouth , Christ says:'labour not for the meat that perish, but that which endures to eternal life'. 

This does not mean that the trials of life are eliminated, but they are lessened ,in comparison to the truth one is aware of .

When you live in God and God lives in you, you are guided to realize what is necessary to avoid and what is important to be done, and you are assisted to do them and avoid them. The whole of creation happens as it were, as a reference to you. This struggle and revolt from one who does not know Christ or who receives Him amiss is what causes death. The war Christ would wage against evil when we believe Him starts within us and is easier dealt with with the Eucharist . Hear Him again: 'Come to Me all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest'. That is truth.

Human testimony is great and the scripture is marvelous, but when you begin to eat, trust and live the Word of God made flesh and bread constantly, regularly, faithfully and trustfully, you arrive at such intense truth and enlightenment far deeper than the most intense ordeal or penance could have acquired on its own.

Heaven ! (Part 3)

(Extract from the book: "The End of the Present World and The Mysteries of The Future Life" By Father Charles Arminjon)

Man will see God face to face, but how will this vision take place? It is certain that we shall not see Him partially and dimly like distant objects, of which we cannot discern all the features, but which we see only imperfectly and on certain sides.

God is not in any place, but all spheres and places are in Him. He does not live in any time , but His eternity consists of an indivisible instant, in which all time is contained. So we shall see Him as He is in His simplicity,in His threefold personality, and in the same way as we see the face of a man in this world.

This vision will operate by an immediate impression of the divine essence in the soul with the aid of a supernatural light called the light of glory: a created quality and a supernatural virtue of the intellect, infused into the soul, which will give it the aptitude and the power to see God. This light of glory will transform man, it will deify him by imprinting in him the seal and likeness of celestial beauty, and make him the image of the Father; it will expand and augment the soul's capacity for knowledge to such an extent that it will become able to apprehend immense and boundless good.

Just as, by means of the light of the sun, the eye can see the variety of tangible things and, so to speak, comprehend the whole extent of the universe; just as, aided by the light of reason, it knows the reason for its own existence, and the intellectual truths, so immersed in the light of glory, it will have infinity as its domain, and in a sense, will comprehend God Himself.

Scripture teaches us that the light of glory is the light of God Himself.By it , our souls will be so immersed in the light of the divine presence that we may say with St Augustine, that in a sense, they will no longer know through their own knowledge, but from the very knowledge of God, and that they will no longer see with their so weak and limited eyes, but with the very eyes of God.

The transports that the divine vision will arouse in the elect will make their hearts super abound in the most unutterable joys, it will be a flood of delight and raptures, life in its inexhaustible richness and the very source of all good and all life. It will be ,as St Augustine goes on to say, like a gift from God of His own Heart, so that we may love and rejoice with all the energy of the love and joys of God Himself.

Eternal life, says St Paul, is like a weight, like being overwhelmed with all delights, all exhilaration and all transports: "an eternal weight of glory", a weight that, by reviving man, rather than annihilating him, will inexhaustibly renew his youth and vigor.  It is a source forever fertile, where the soul will drink substance and life in abundance. It is a marriage in which the soul will clasp its Creator in an eternal embrace without ever  feeling any diminution of the rapture it felt on that day when, for the first time it was united to Him and pressed Him to its bosom.

Even so, the elect who see God will not comprehend Him. God is incomprehensible to all created things.We shall see God as He is, some more, others less, according to our disposition and merits. God is in infinite, and all that can be said is that the creature sees Him; sees Him as He is, entire, and yet does not see Him, in the sense that what he succeeds in discovering of His perfections is nothing compared with what the eternal Being Himself contemplates, in the splendor of His word and in union with the Holy Spirit.

We would say that,, in comparison with God, the elect are like a traveler standing on the banks of the ocean. The traveler knows that it is the ocean, he sees with his own eyes the ocean, which stretches out and unfolds in the immensity, and he says, " I have seen the ocean". Nevertheless there are reefs and distant island she does not discern, and his gaze has not encompassed all the riverbanks and all the contours of the ocean.

Accordingly, contemplation of the ocean will not mean immobility but  above all, activity,an ever ascending progression, where movement and repose will be bound together in ineffable harmony.

But infinity has no limits, no bottom or shore. The happy mariners of that fortunate abode will never cry, like Christopher Columbus: land!land! They will say God, God always. God yet more.... Forever there will be new perfections they will seek to gain: forever more pure and more intoxicating delights aspire to taste. The infinite God has no limits, the desire which He arouses is immeasurable.

Nevertheless, the sight of the divine essence will not absorb the saints so much as to make them forget the external marvels of the visible world, or prevent their relationship with the other elect. The spirits of the elects enter into contact with the world of the spirits, they see the beauty of the blessed souls, illuminated by the divine likeness, adorned with charity and its attendant virtues, as with a nuptial robe.

Heaven is the repose of man's intellect, the repose of his will and affections.Yet what often frightens us in this life, what makes us reject heaven with a sort of repugnance, is that we imagine that in that abode, all the natural attachments of our hearts will be, as it were,annihilated and invisibly extinguished by the conquering exuberance of the love in which we shall be inflamed for the Creator.Oh! The whole of Christianity protests against this error.

What we teach as certain is that in heaven we shall see and recognize each other, and in heaven we shall love one another.

All the objects and causes that captivate our hearts and arouse love in this world will act with an intensity a thousand times greater, and without encountering any obstacle on the hearts of the elect.

In this life, love is still the consequence of gratitude, and our hearts glow at the memory of benefits and services rendered. It is only in heaven that we shall recognize the extent and the cost of the graces of every kind that our benefactors have showered on us.

Then the child will read all the treasures of grace, solicitude and tenderness enclosed in the earth of his mother. He will know that , next to God, it was the tears,prayers and sighs of that mother which brought about his salvation. O mother, now, i love you a thousand times more tenderly because of the eternal life that i have received  and without which the first would have been a fatal gift, a source of calamity and torture for me.

Then, Christian fathers  your sacrifices  courage and heroic constancy in strengthening your sons by profitable examples, and in rearing them by noble, laborious training, will no longer be unknown. We shall redeem the debt of our hearts in eternal thanksgiving.

How much greater will be our fascination, as we sit at the great hearth of our Heavenly Father,listening while our brothers tell us the story of their seductive and manifold temptations and of the assaults waged by hell over which they triumphed. We shall not tire of hearing about those victories won in the sight of God alone, more glorious than those of conquerors; those battles waged in silence against the failings of the flesh and the turmoils of one's own thoughts. We shall admire their efforts and their heroic generosity. We shall know about the twist and turns and uncertainties whereby the grace of the Spirit of God, through a strong but gentle impulse, led them to the harbor of repose, and turned even their deviations and falls to account, in the edification of their incorruptible crowns. Ah! These will be inexhaustible subjects of conversation, which will never loose their interest and charm.

It is true that the glory and happiness of the elect will be apportioned according to their merits, and that they will differ in beauty and greatness as the stars in the sky are themselves different in size and brightness. Nevertheless, union, peace and harmony will not reign any less in this countless array, in which the lesser ranks cooperate with the highest in the repose and harmony of all.

Each will be rich in the richness of all; each will trill in the happiness of all. Just as the creation of a new sun would double the fires that burn the air, so each new sun in the City of God will increase the measure of our own bliss, with all its happiness and glory.

There will no longer be any place for rivalry or envy. Each of the elect will receive the complement of his personal good from the good of his brethren.  We shall read their souls as clearly as our own. On this point St Augustine exclaims: " O happy heaven where there will be as many paradises as citizens, where glory will come to us by as many channels as there are hearts to show us their concerns and affection, where we shall possess as many kingdoms as there are monarchs sharing in our rewards.

In heaven , sin is forever excluded. The elect are no longer capable of committing the least shadow of a fault or imperfection.

For this reason the saints felt a kind of anxiety and unease amidst prosperity. They knew that , in this life, the most honourable pleasures and the sweetest and most lawful joys have always something debilitating and corrupting for the Christian soul.

However, in heaven, the bliss of glory, far from rendering souls more human, elevates them and makes them more spiritual.

Surprisingly , heaven is somehow the opposite of earth!Here below, man is restored and bathed anew in dignity and moral value through suffering and sacrifice. In heaven it is the reverse: he is perfected and deified by the flood of delight wherein he is immersed.

In heaven, happiness is stable, since the elect,confirmed in glory, are beyond all fear, the soul says : " Nothing is finished yet; i reign today  today i am in possession of my happiness, and i shall possess it as long as God remains God- forever and ever!

Illuminated by infinite clarity of the Word of God, they see the events that will be accomplished in a thousand years as clearly as those that were fulfilled a thousand centuries ago. Every moment, says St Augustine, they experience, as it were , a feeling of infinite joy. Every moment, as far as it is permitted to create beings, they absorb the power of divine virtue. Every moment, eternity makes them feel the accumulated weight of its intoxication,  its delights, and its glories.

Ah! We love power and glory; we would like to be present and give orders everywhere. Why , then , turn away from the nobility of our destiny and abandon the immortal empire God prepares for us? We love pleasures and joy; we recognize that life is unbearable if affection and joys do not mitigate its misfortunes and bitterness. Why, then, spurn the only real happiness, and desire that the source of all pleasure and joy dry up along with the present life?

Earthly goods, measured against the bliss above, no longer seem an advantage, but rather a burden and a painful tyranny. Temporal life, in comparison with eternal life, deserves not  to be called life but death. On the other had, to live in  the heavenly city, mingled with the choirs of angels, to be surrounded by a light that is not itself circumscribed, and to possess a spiritual, incorruptible flesh, is not infirmity, but royalty and abundance of life.

Let us remember that great rewards are acquired by great combats and no one shall be crowned who has not fought the good fight.

Already countless tribes, legions of apostles, prophets, martyrs and virgins, just men of every state and rank, have crossed the court of your domain. How desirable their fate is,,for they are freed from our temptations, our troubles, and our miseries!

Everything that is not Jerusalem is unfit for us. Let us ask only for the goods and peace it contains. Let us think only of heaven, let us seek only heaven, let us store up only for heaven, and let us live only for heaven.
A few moments longer, and all that must end will be no more; a few more efforts, and we shall be at the close; a few more combats, and we shall attain the crown; a few more sacrifices, and we shall be in Jerusalem, where love is always new,and where there will be no other sacrifice but praise and joy. Amen.

Heaven ! ( Part 2)

(Extract from the book: "The End of the Present World and The Mysteries of The Future Life" By Father Charles Arminjon)

Let us observe that the Holy Scripture calls heaven requies, a rest. Furthermore, we are told that there are two kinds of inhabitants in this abode: first of all God, of whom heaven is the temple and throne; then the angels and men, called to be united with God and to share His supreme happiness, His beatitude.

Heaven is not the ideal of a human intellect,  it is the repose of the divine intellect,  the ideal and masterpiece of God, whose power fecundates the void.

O inspired prophet (John), when you tell us that eternal life is the collection of all the attractions of the world, of all the beauties portrayed in the Sacred Books.When you describe the elect in heaven as being subtle, immortal, impassible, and clothed in a sweet light or, rather, in a divine glory that dwells in them and penetrates them more subtly than the sun penetrates the purest crystals, you are not being deceived by some illusion. Heaven is that too; it is our subtleties, our lights, and our glory, but infinitely more than these.

Lastly , when you compare the future bliss to the sweetest and most intoxicating transports of the soul, to a joy ever new, freed from all disquiet and passion and maintaining its intensity and strength through all eternity, you do not feed us with false hopes; for heaven is our transports and all our joys, but raised beyond all measures, expression and comparison.

Heaven is a kingdom of such beauty, a bliss so transcendent  that God has made it the sole object of His thoughts . To this creation,, the only one truly worthy of His glory, He directs the universality of His works; the destiny and succession of empires, the Catholic Church, with her dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy  are ordered towards the consummation of this heavenly life. In the words of St Paul: "The gift of God is eternal life"

Heaven is God's ideal, the repose of His intellect. Let us add: It is the repose of His heart. The heart goes further than the mind. It has aspirations and impulses, unknown to genius, which go beyond all the bounds of inspiration and thought  Thus , a mother sees her son rich and honored,  the most brilliant crowns glitter on his head; the mother cannot conceive of any fortunes or new empires for her child. Her reason says, "Enough!" Yet her heart calls out , "More! The happiness of my child is greater than all the dreams in which my mind can indulge.

As no mother ever loved her dearest son, so the Lord loves His predestinate. He is jealous of His dignity and could not permit Himself to be outdone by His creature on the score of fidelity and generosity.

"...I must unite myself to them in an eternal face-to-face, so that my glory illuminates them, exudes and radiates through all the pores of their being, so that, 'knowing me as i know them, they may become like Gods themselves" . May they be engulfed and loose themselves in the ocean of Your splendours; may they desire, possess, enjoy, and then desire again; may they be plunged into the bosom of Your beatitude, and may it be as if nothing remained of their personality except the knowledge and experience of their happiness"

Is the created being capable of uniting itself so closely to God that it sees Him face-to-face? What will this mode of vision be? When we see God as He is , shall we know Him in His integrity and without restriction? These are three important questions that must be resolved

If we consider things from the narrow compass of our reason, God cannot be seen by any creature. In order that an object may be known, says St Thomas authoritatively, it must be contained in the mind of the person who knows; and it can be contained therein only in accordance with the forms and capacity for knowledge which that mind possesses. Thus we cannot see and know a stone, except in so far  as the image of this stone , transmitted by our senses, is made present and, as it were, contained in our understanding. Hence the axiom: "Nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses"

To take the angels: they are endowed with a nature more perfect than ours; they have no need of the aid of tangible things in order to rise to the perception of intellectual truths; they are an admirable likeness of the divinity, and need only contemplate their own being and nature in order to rise to the knowledge of the existence of God and of His attributes. This mode of knowledge always occurs by representation.  For man, it is external and material creatures that act as a mirror. For the angels, it is their cogitative nature, and although pure spirits, they do not have the power to rise to the knowledge of God directly, and without intermediary.
That is why no one has ever seen God. God "dwells in an unapproachable light: whom no human being has ever seen or can see" God is at an infinite distance from men and angels, and is invisible in Himself.

Nevertheless, it is of faith that man will one day see God, as He is , in the brigtness of His essence.

"Every soul free from sin" says the council of Florence " is immediately admitted to heaven and sees God in His Trinity, as He is , according to the degree of his merit, one in a more perfect, another in a less perfect manner. The vision of God in no way comes from the forces of nature". It does not correspond to any desire or any necessity of our hearts. Outside of revelation, the human mind could not have conceived the slightest suspicion of it - "nor , has it so much as dawned on man". The Incarnate Word has planted the seed and the root in the center of our humanity by the power of the Holy Spirit  and so that we may attain eternal life, God had to imprint a new form in our minds, and superimpose a new faculty.

Let us add in passing that, as the vision of God is not connatural to man, its deprivation does not necessarily bring about sensory pain and pain of fire. Thus children who die without Baptism will not be admitted to the vision of God. nevertheless, they will enjoy God to a certain extent ; they will know Him with the aid of the light of their reason, and they will love Him tenderly, as the author of their being and the dispenser of all good.The reason for this doctrine stems from the great principle that man, considered in himself and in the state of pure nature, differs from the man degraded by sin as much as he who is naked differs from him who has been stripped of his honours and prerogatives by a deserved punishment and degradation. Consequently, every man with the use of understanding and freedom is predestined to eternal life , and possess  by this fact, the capacities and means needed to reach this sublime reward. If he does not obtain it, he will feel immense grief, having through his own fault, lost the good that should have been his lot and crown.

But children who die without baptism do not possess the seed of glory; they have never been able to apprehend its price; their minds, unenlightened  by baptism, do not possess any disposition or aptitude preparing them for the vision of supernatural things. These children who have died without baptism Will not be separated from God completely; they will be united to Him in the sense that they will attain their natural end, and will see God,as far as it is possible to see Him, through the medium of eternal beings, to the extent that He manifests Himself in the marvels and harmonies of creation.

On Bad Dreams

One thing is that, no matter how horrific a dream is, one must not succumb to the temptation of falling prey into believing that they would come true, the devil would then have succeeded in lurking you into fear. Just pray the Divine Mercy, sing psalms, do good works and have confidence. If these things are revealed, it is for you to do what you can to rectify the situation and leave the rest to Christ in prayers, not to mortgage your life to fear. Bad dream for a christian is full of mercy.He normally would shield you and yours with His mighty and holy Arms.

A fool normally would wake up from a bad dream, be gracious it was all a dream, and go back to sleep. A wise person would wake up, pray, with much trust and without fear pick up d story and ponder on what lessons to be learnt from the dream.

Dreams act like this: they pick up occurrences and thoughts from reality, bring them up from the memory bank and knit them into seemingly coherent acts during sleep. A christian would pick up lessons proportional to his depth of thoughts and clarity of opinion in real life, and would, without emotions,be able to separate the tares of the horror from the wheat of the lesson. He would pick up salient lessons while discarding the junks and dreads which occurred during the dream into the ocean of His Mercy.

Bad dreams can be dangerous when you believe more in them than you trust and confide in God.Your bad dream, experienced in purity, aided with prayer and borne in trust is really a form of exorcism. Rather than harming anybody, it purifies you and yours.

Heaven! (Part 1)

(Extract from the book: "The End of the Present World and The Mysteries of The Future Life" By Father Charles Arminjon)


Theology starts from the principle that, after ressurection, the elements and material nature will be adapted to the circumstances of the glorious bodies.




The first prerogative that the resssurected bodies of the elect will enjoy will be that of subtility. Just as the risen Lord passed through a tomb that was sealed, and ,the following day, appeared suddenly before His disciples in a room where the doors were closed, so our bodies, when they are no longer composed of an inert and gross substance, but are vivified and penetrated at every point by the spirit -corpus spirituale- will pass through space like a ray of sunshine , and no corporeal object will have the capacity to hold them back.



The second property of the glorious bodies will be agility. They will dart about like the sparks through stubble. They will have the ability to move with the swiftness of thought itself, and wherever the mind wishes, the body will convey itself immediately.



Lastly , the ressurected elect will possess brightness. They will encompass with such splendour that they will appear like so many suns...In fact, this brightness will be distributed in different degrees among the elect, according to the inequality of their merits; for the brightness of the sun is one thing, that of the moon is another, and that of the stars yet another. The stars themselves differ from one another in brightness.



The brightness with which the elect will be adorned will unceasingly cast out new reflections, increasing every moment: the glorified saints will eternally communicate to each other the goods they possess,and they will reflect upon one another the streams of splendour that illuminate them.



Jesus Christ in the Eucharist gives us an image and likeness of what the glorious bodies will be like one day. Without leaving heaven, He is substantially present every day on earth in a thousand places. He is entire , without reduction or diminution, in each particle of the host and in each drop of the chalice.



St Thomas teaches us that heaven is destined to serve as the abode and principal habitation of the glorified saints, but they will not on that account be motionless and restricted within a fixed place. Each of the elect will have his throne, and they will occupy higher abodes according to their meriits, but observes St Thomas,the word place (locum), is to be understood rather as excellence of rank, order of primacy, than as the eminence of the place that will be assigned.



They will be free to explore the heavenly bodies, reappear on this earth, and pass again over the places where they lived and prayed, places that were the scenes of their labours and immolations. This view concurs with the texts of the Sacred Books, where they tell us that there are many mansions in our heavenly Father's house, that the saints will shine like the stars in perpetual eternities, and that , wherever the body- that is, the sacred humanity of Christ- shall be, there also will the eagles be gathered.



There was a fairly general belief among the doctors of old that superior intellects were assigned to govern the celestial bodies. It is reasonable to think that beings capable of praising and blessing God fill all space , as they fill all time; thus , there is no infidelity to Catholic tradition in linking the material existence of the stars to the existence of free, intelligient beings like ourselves.



The Church even gives us to understand that they were the scene of the first act in the providential drama of that great struggle among the higher spirits which St John describes in his Revelation, a struggle of which our earthly strife is the continuation. It was in the most luminous part of heaven , above the most brilliant stars, says Isaiah, that Lucifer tried to set up a throne for himself, from which he was cast down; it was to the summit of this heaven of heavens, says the psalmist, that Jesus Christ ascended.



However if these views are only theological opinions, what must be held certain and as an article of faith is that all the stars and suns were reborn in the divine blood and have shared in the grace of the Redemption. The church affirms it in one of her solemn hymns : " Land, sea, and stars are washed by this stream "



What practical and moral lessons are to be drawn from these teachings, for the guidance of our lives and the rule of our actions?



The first is this: that it is the height of human folly to become attached to the perishable and corruptible things of this life.



The second of these consequences is that suffering in this life is only a relative evil: There are cases of profound sorrow, of intolerable raw bruises, and heart-rending, indescribable seperations on this earth. Yet all this heartbreak and suffering are but a laboratory and a crucible, into which divine goodness has cast our nature, in order that, like coal, black and base, it may emerge in the form of a precious sparkling diamond.



The third consequence of our doctrine is that we must not allow ourselves to be pertubed by the noise of our social strife and the convulsion of our revolutions. All this is but a prelude. It is the chaos that precedes harmony; it is motion seeking rest, twilight on the move towards day. The city of God is being built, invisibly but surely, amidst these shocks and heartbreaking convulsions.



Children of men, how long will your hearts be burdened, how long will you seek your sustenance in lies and shadows? When will you cease imagining death as a curse, and cease imagining it as the abyss of darkness and destuction? Let us try today to understand that it is not the obstacle, but the means ; it is the paschal transition that leads from the kingdom of shadows to that of reality, from the life of movement to the life of immutability and indefectability. It is the good sister, whose hand will one day cast off the clouds and idle phantoms, to lead us into the holy of holies of certitude and incomparable beauty!

Love of the cross and Faith in Ressurection

When John leaned on Christ at the behest of Peter to ask Him who it was who would betray Him, Christ showed him the source of His betrayal and he, not Peter, was able to enter into the mystery of the cross , and though Peter determined to do the same, was not granted the grace and he denied Christ 3ce. It was only John who experienced to the full the mystery of love, up to Christ's death on Calvary .
On the day of Ressurection a kind of contrast also happened. Though John had ran faster than Peter to the tomb, for some reasons he couldn't enter in until Peter arrived and went in first; and it was given to Peter first to understand the mystery the empty tomb and faith in the Ressurection . This experience finds its root at Peter's confession and the promise of Christ on him that upon him and his confession He would build His church, for we are justified by faith, faith in the Ressurection of our Lord Jesus.
May we be granted the grace to experience the power of His Ressurection and the fellowship of His sufferings .
St Peter and St John: Pray for us

On The Pope's Resignation

I feel this action of the Pope should not be taken 'as usual’; after all, this has not happened in the years of our great great great grandparents, how much more our lives. Those who would deal with such things, beginning from the cardinals down to the laity would also have to refer through long history gone.

The ultimate exhaustion of perpetual rule: when the Pope resigns.

The demystification of positions and the ultimate affirmation of human communion: the Pope resigns.

An escape from the deadly attack of secularism or a painful decision for d good of d church?

Those who glory in hierarchism, authoritarianism and beaureucracy, learn from the Pope and let go!

Oba ko le pe meji l'aafin', a’sipa owe, we gonna have 2 Popes at the Vatican. Na wa o. Impossibilities are happening in these our days.

Real faith does not reflect as such in much talks and holy writings, but in action. Benedict xvi exemplified this in the summary of his homilies about the ongoing year of faith and the conclusion of his encyclical on faith through his resignation. That is faith.

We can only walk through a gesture as great as this through faith. I can see a parallel between this gesture and the crucifixion of Christ, which up till now is a cause for the rising and falling of many. It is a reality that this action would give credence to the arguments of those who would want to escape from the obligation of marriage, those who through laziness would give weakness of mind and body as an excuse for not seeing a project through, or, leaving out the grace of God and succumbing to our emotional sentiments and idiosyncratic decisions . 

On the other hand, the Pope's gesture could be taken as a great act of humility and this would rather influence those who would not let go of power to do so. It is an action which inspires us to take a bold and courageous leap of faith and act on issues which calls for progress without succumbing to outdated norms which have little relevance towards the life we live today, it helps in gestures which demystifies positions, destroys bureaucracy and makes us see our common human struggles as God's handmaids. The final stronghold of power could have been destroyed by this action, we are all a society of sinners.

So, you see, this action has the potential of having both positive and negative influence on people, and Christ himself has no excuse for that, He only says 'blessed is he who is not scandalized by me'. In America, the democratic installation of a black man has inspired many to rise beyond racial and tribalistic prejudices. Even in our own circle, the resignation of our dear Bishop, Babatunde Adelakun has inspired others to do thesame. Letting go is the greatest gesture of faith that I know of.