*Had I been close to any Bishop in Yorubaland

*Had I been close to any Bishop in Yorubaland , the following would be my advice to him* 

1. Get Priests into studying Sciences, especially Physics. The more time proceeds, the more the relevance of Science and faith shall confluence.

2. Get Catechumen preparing for Confirmation to do Life in the Spirit Seminar as a preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation. No sane person can deny the experience of Life in the Spirit Seminar.

3. Added to Philosophy, Psychology and Theology , the formal study of Leadership and Management should be incorporated into the syllabus for those preparing for Priesthood.

4. As the traditional churches give way to modern English speaking Pentecostalism, the Catholic Church shall with time remain the only Christian champion of Yoruba tradition in our land. And as the world delves openly deeper into hidden knowledge, specialists should be raised among Priests in the study of our culture , especially the deeper ‘forbidden’ aspects of it in order to properly inculturate, guide and guard the numerous who flock these esoteric dangers irrespective of what is being taught on the pulpit.

5. The culture of the individual celebration of Baptismal days should be proactively championed by the Church.

6. In depth research to be made on Maria being a Black Woman. Black Maria. Mary is Black.  Not as a matter of sentiment but as a fact of reality. There should be a culture of installing the Black Maria grotto in Parishes.

7. At least 25% of our Diocesan budget should be invested in the youths. This is the real Sustainability that should be practiced. Catholic children, young and youths should be nurtured and cultured just as one carefully put rare gardening species in nursery and cultivate. Young people are the strength of Africa and the most potent force of the Church and the world. They should be prepared for the leadership position awaiting them in the Church and in the world.

8. I don’t know how it’ll work but I know this present condemnatory attitude of Pentecostalism will not serve the Catholic Church well. Courageous Collaboration must be fostered with other faiths and especially with Pentecostals. Picking what is good of them and condemning lovingly what is bad. The attitude of closed condemnation which is presently the norm will not help us to grow.

9. Our Graveyards should be accorded a proper proactive material and spiritual dedication. Physical maintenance of our gravesites must be a constant norm. Our problems generally as a nation have been compounded because of the neglect of our dead.

10. We should be more radical about the Eucharist. Few people believe and yet It is everything. Its sacrificial  significance should be pointed out more (Mass) since we are sacrifice obsessed in our land. The Eucharist should not be preached only when Jn:6 is read, it should be the focus of everyday preaching at Mass. An Eucharistic culture should be the breathe of every Parish, that is where our renaissance would be found .

The Case for Black Maria

1.    In the first instance the Synod should not be about Amazon, it should be about Africa. To win the Cosmos, your starting point should be Africa. Africa is the Mother!

2.    There are 3 forms of Motherhood: Your land of birth, your Biological mother and your Point of Connection with the Divine. And the origin of all this is the land. Don’t mess with the land. Even though we would all end in Jerusalem, the starting point is Africa!

3.    Science, Religion and History may look at ethics but there is a grand Reason behind Amazon (South America) drifting from Mother Africa (some said it was during the Flood, but I believe in the continental drift theory) and why the land calls back her children with 400 years of Slave trade. Let’s watch how history would unfolds. Seize not in thanking your star you are Black!

4.    In Revelation (Rev:12), we saw a woman clothed with the sun, the moon was under her feet and she was adorned with a crown of 12 stars. Sun, moon, stars: a depiction of the entire cosmos. But where is the earth in this? Because, this woman herself is the Earth!

5.    Why do we think the cult of Black Madonna is coming back strong?

6.    There is a spiritual woman at the heart of creation. Some devotees of the earth find that solace as Pachamama, I have realised that reality as Mary.

7.    Authentic spirituality cannot just explain reality out, it must journey through the darkness of the vague to arrive at clarity. Mother nature is not an allegory, it is a reality.

8.    It may not be Oya, Olokun, Osun or Pachamama, but excuse me, you cannot just ignore this out. Pantheism is coming back with a venom because we dismiss it rather than engage it.

9.    This engagement will be an experiential journey to reality, and many will be lost, die and condemned in the process, but it is the path through which the Church can be purified and where Reality can be discovered.

10.    Ninu ikoko dudu ni eko funfun ti n jade! Ancient gates do not rise with fun. We cannot just throw away the baby of truth away with the water of superstition. The easier bit is to throw Pachamama into River Thebes. The harder part is that she is coming with a venom until we engage. Haha!

CONCLUSION: SUNDAY!

Sunday, the day when we cannot die. ‘My Father and I keep on working’ (Jn 5: 17). The paradigm has shifted. It behoves of Saturday to rest, with Sunday, creation happens perpetually.

Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created…. Sunday is a day for newness, it is ever beginning, ever creating and recreating, ever renewing, ever resurrecting, no dull moment. Christianity is a religion of newness. 

The book of Genesis describes light being created on the first day of creation. ‘Let there be light’. Jesus also describes Himself as ‘the light of the world'.  Christ’s resurrection was a great paradigm.  Behold then, the ‘deathlessness’ of light! Our dry bones shall rise, it shall not rot with Friday. The Lord’s day is the first day.

If Black hole is permitted to consume the Light, it is that Black hole can be redeemed for the children of the Light. 

In The Matrix movie, after Neo had received a kiss from Trinity, the entire army of Sentinels were no more able  to affect a hair of his. Such will be our lots as we rise out of these ordeals.

Our initiation experience has come through the stations of the cross. We are now a new creation, old things have passed, behold all things have become new! (2 Cor 5:17). Let us lose our fears. No weapon fashioned against us can prosper anymore. We have known and seen Truth, not as in afterlife, but here and now!

So let us arise from hence with courage and without fear. Emmanuel. God is with us

ELEVENTH STATION: JESUS IS NAILED TO THE CROSS

This is my body (Lk 22:19). 

When the body suffers, the human natural potential is halted, and without health, our body becomes a victim of the entire force of gravity which implodes and forces us towards the zero volume and infinite density of the Blackhole, the culmination of the physical death of man.

Let us make a pilgrimage to the hospital. There, let us visit the temple of Intensive Care, the altar of Acute Assessment and the shrine of Operating Theatres, there we shall find our reason not to complain about our own prickly headache. Blessed are those who are committed to the alleviation of the sufferings of the sick, indeed they perform a Divine vocation.

You have prepared a body for me (Heb 10:5) and, this is my body (Lk 22: 19).

We shall many times be tested through body illness and sickness. The more gravity lays its claim on us, the more our faith will be tested, and the more we shall be susceptible to denial, anger and depression.

When the body suffers, we can quickly forget the Body given up for us (Lk 22:19) and desperately scramble for alternative cures to alleviate their pains, and here, suicide can be contemplated, voodoos can be consulted, astrology can be practised, fake Prophets and Pastors can be visited.

When one suffers, without the help of grace, it takes an instant to lose one’s head and bridle the voice of conscience, to bargain and give in to the devil, to accept his terms and accept his empty promises. And it is also at this very same point that our entire salvific destiny is defined.

Let us beg God to forgive the instances in which we have lost our head and patience during our bodily suffering. Let us have recourse to the True Body and Blood which is capable of saving us. 

FOURTEENTH STATION: JESUS IS BURIED IN THE TOMB

On the 7th day, God rested from his works of creation; and here on the seventh day, God is buried in the tomb. What else can happen? If God rests, creation stops, nothing exists.

Without Christ, the seventh day, for humankind, becomes a Period (full-stop) for hope, but with Christ it is indeed a period of hope.

Nietzsche concluded that God is dead, the French revolutionaries’ motive was to kill God, Stalin and Lenin perpetuated a grand plot to destroy God. And today, for many who cannot cross the bridge of Sabbath, God may yet be dead.

No amount of rationalisation can get us out of the ordeal of the seventh day, it is through the ability to remain in hope with the Madonna that the meaninglessness of our ‘Friday’ can transform, through Christ, into the meaningfulness of our ’Sunday’.

This period may be tough but Let us keep hope alive and we shall soon arrive at the reasonableness and deathlessness of ‘Sunday’. We shall soon know why, not only in the afterlife, but also here in time, because the journey to Truth is an experience. Freedom is very experiential.

THIRTEENTH STATION: JESUS IS TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS AND GIVEN TO HIS MOTHER

How many deaths we must pass through to be wise, and these little deaths are a subset of the one great death which has already been won over for us on Calvary through our Baptism. The life we live now is hidden with Jesus in Christ (Col 3:3).

We shall have to pass through rivers, cross through seas and navigate through oceans of trials before we can attain our freedom. Let us sail with the Star of the Sea who can guide us from the Inferno of life, through its Purgatorio and unto the bliss of its Paradiso, where our tragedy is changed into a Divine Comedy.

The softest landing we can experience during a deep crisis, is to find ourselves in the arms of the Blessed Virgin, that is why we ask her to aid us now, and at the hour of our death in the Hail Mary. And a sword shall pierce your own soul … (Lk 2:35). Let us have recourse to Mary, the pitiful maiden who receives the dead body of her son from the cross. 

When the Crucifix becomes the Pieta, Easter can already be smelt from afar. The Crucifix and the Pieta should make their space in every home.

Albert Einstein clearly expresses the 13^th Station emotion when he noted that the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are known only to him who has experienced them himself.

Pain may endure to the nights but joy cometh in the morning (Ps 30:5). It cannot get worse, things can henceforth get better. Where many without faith have fallen into despair, here let us keep hope alive. 

TWELFTH STATION: JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS

The spacelessness and timelessness of Blackholes that makes the entire creation shiver

Here, blackhole does not admit by observation, it is amongst us

Terrible it is, the day of the Lord!

The paradox of death and life

As Hawking suggested, Blackhole is not black after all

It is a Good -not Bad- Friday. With Christ, Blackhole is a good hole, Blackhole becomes a Big Bang. What is supposed to be the end is a Beginning

Faith is what is required of us. Trust and obey

Whoever believes in Me, even though he dies shall live, and he who lives and believes in Me shall never die ()

Natural light may not escape the natural Blackhole, but the Light of Christ, engages the Blackhole and transforms it into a Good hole. Death, where is thy sting? ()

The works of creation was completed in 6 days, it all ended on Friday, here works meets a dead point. Christ also finished His works of recreation on Friday. ‘It is finished’(), he cried.

The condemnation of Friday is what Christ has come to break. But without authentic faith, without real awareness, without a depth of life lived in spirit and truth, every effort of man becomes a perambulation in futility, a natural Blackhole. ‘Without me you can do nothing ‘. That is why Good Friday is the fulcrum of the entire history of man.

 ‘O blood and water which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, I trust in You’.

Death is life, even though you die, you live () smell it!

That is the origin of breakthrough from the curse of Friday.

Time, as we know it now, is an illusion,