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!
