PROUD TO BE SALVATORIAN
(Deogratias
ASSANI OKONGA)
Content
II) What
Do I Have to Tell You
C- Have
Faith in the Divine Providence
As I have finished my theological
formation at the Salvatorian Institute of Philosophy
and Theology in Morogoro/Tanzania, I thought of
taking a look behind and see where am I from and, if ever I have to tell
something to my young brothers in formation from my experience to help them
find their way in religious life, share with you what I call “my Salvatorian Heritage.” This is the richness that the
SDS has given me and which will remain the treasure of my life and which no one
would ever take away from me. Because of this assurance of mine, I am free to
share it with you my brothers in formation to stimulate you find your Salvatorian treasure too. Before I tell you what I want to
share with you out of my ten years among the Salvatorians,
let me stress first my family and religious background.
Born in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) in a catholic family, I am the second of the eight living children
of my parents who are both alive in my country. I grew up in the faith of my
parents and I learned from them to be responsible with my commitments. After my
secondary school, I worked in the DRC National Rail Ways Society for four years
and then joined religious life in 1994. I completed my philosophical
baccalaureate formation in 1999 at scholasticat Jean
XXIII in Kolwezi (DRC), a Franciscan major seminary.
Then I went for a year in parochial pastoral at Notre Dame de Fatima (Kolwezi/Manika). It was only after this pastoral training
that I was proposed to come here in
My parents reared me in their catholic
faith. I was then formed from my childhood to be serious with my faith. In
fact, having only enough to make ends meet, our family did not lack anything
necessary to live on like human beings. This was the fruit of that fervent
faith I saw in my parents who would not despair for nothing in the world when
they wanted something from God in their prayers. With regard to my relation
with God, I have learned from my father to be afraid of sin. In fact, when I
was child, my father used to punish me when I would do something wrong. This
enforced in me the idea that I would try to avoid doing wrong so that I would
not be punished. Then when during my catechism I came to learn that God is our
Father who do not let our sins unpunished, it was for me easy to understand
that I have to fear evil if I do not want to be punished. Thence I grew up in
that fear of punishment from God, which should be very harsh, terrible and rude
than my biological father’s. Truly it was not the fear of sin at all, but
fear of being punished by God. Yes it was a childlike faith, but this childlike
faith has helped me grow in my Christian life in the future.
Always our parents used to tell us that
we should keep our faith in God who is our Loving Father and not in our poor
parents. And this as worked wonders for most of my brothers and sisters as well
as for me. A simple example is that I studied in a well renowned boarding
secondary school without paying a single cent, and if I would have to pay, my
exploited parents would never afford it. After this, I was hired in one of the biggest
national companies of my country, holding a very good post. This was the most
challenging period of my faith. In fact, to be hired in public companies in my
country, people use to corrupt even if they realize all required conditions, or
one should be from the tribe or family of the one hiring. I myself saw some of
my friends corrupting in order to be granted their due. I did not have money to
corrupt like others, but I did have my faith in God and I prayed for my right.
An other example is my young brother who was asked to leave the postulant
formation of the Franciscan (ofm) because of some
personal conflicts with their formator. My brother
went home and he did keep his faith in God knowing that he was innocently
chased away. He continued with his parochial activities. Some months later he
received a letter from their provincial that he should get prepared to join the
novices in few time to come. This has never happened once again before. My
brother’s faith worked wonders.
All my secondary school formation long
and when I was working in the National Rail Ways Society, I was active in a
youth catholic movement known in the DRC as “Bilenge
Ya Mwinda” literally
translated as “Youth of Light.” Also I was singing in classic
choirs in the parishes where I was. I learned from these groups to pray as
community but also as individual, and to assist the needy. For example I
remember to have been considered as the family member of some one who was
abandoned alone sick in Sendwe hospital at
From my family to the youth movements I
was involved in, I learned to see God in the needy. And this was strengthened
in the SDS formations as I am going to point it out now.
The
SDS has been for my growth, above all spiritually, a cow milk without which I
would remain that child with very narrow human and spiritual formation. With
the SDS religious formation I have become more mature Christian. I am very
grateful to my formators both in the DRC my country
and here in
It is true that from my family and my
surrounding milieu before I join religious life, I received a lot in my
formation as human being. The first awareness of the others and myself is a
family heritage. But the SDS deepened more again this awareness as interacting
being. In fact, during my first years among the SDS, I was obliged to live with
people coming from very different backgrounds and milieus. They were of
different characters and tempers. I had to accept them as my brothers even if
we did not have same roots. Those who are just joining religious life may
appreciate well what I mean here with its exact value, because they are living
exactly the experience in case here. The old religious are used with it and for
them what I am saying here has become a normal reality.
Hence I learned to work with lazy and courageous
brothers, to cook for ungrateful gluttons brothers, to teach songs to unwilling
confreres, to tolerate some unbearable oppressing fellows, to keep quiet even
when I should normally claim for my right, to support some weak fellow
colleagues, to make funny with my brothers but also some times to provoke them
and be stubborn with them, to compose some occasional songs for some functions
and feasts, to work in team with others, to ask for help when I am not able to
do something, to recognize my short comings shamelessly, to admit and confess
my wrong movements in the community, to humble myself when others would be
better doers than I , to challenge myself that I do better like the others,
… Brief the SDS taught me to get along with my short comings and with
others’ as well. I have learned in the SDS to be truly human and
interacting being. It is not that there was a teacher for me to get all this,
but being one of the SDS in formation has provided me with the opportunity of
learning through a concrete and sincere living together.
As you can see it
through my family spiritual background above, I was well prepared for a mature
Christian life. I am sure that even without becoming Salvatorian,
I would have led well my Christian life. But I am also sure that I would not
become the Christian I have become today thanks to the SDS.
My spiritual life, in
fact, has grown in a way that I am sometimes asking myself if I am not wrong
because I am not seeing to others what I am seeing to myself sometimes. Maybe
the others are so discrete and humble that they do not want to show what they
are living spiritually.
What has changed all my
life is
When
reading this, you might question yourself about the authority that gives me the
right to tell you what I want to tell you my brothers in religious formation. I
will straight away answer you that no one asked me to share with you my
experience, neither do I have a golden jubilee in religious life. But it is out
of conviction that this article can help you or someone among us, to get a look
back to yourself and your religious life, so that you see the way you are
growing toward your perpetual commitment in the SDS (for the temporary
professed), or toward your Salvatorian ministry (for
the perpetual professed), and so, following my example, you might identify your
Salvatorian Heritage. I am sure that through this
article even one among us will be moved to question his “salvatorianness.” For this one at least I have
written this article because this is the only purpose of writing it. And since
it will remain in our website, I am sure that this article will help also the
new comers to get along with the seriousness of their religious commitments and
formation, and not to remain only in their intellectual and academic business.
For that, I want to tell them that they need to know first who they are so that
they become prophets among others thanks to their confidence in the Divine
Providence.
This is a human need for
one who wants to be serious with his life. Know your background and do not
forget what you inherited from it. Remember that you are a member of a human
family, your family, and your parents and sisters and brothers love you very
much because they know you better than any one else, since you have grown up
among them. Know that, in spite of your religious life, they need you in their
lives as much as you can help them spiritually and materially. Know that you ought a lot to your parents who
have spent their lives to rear you.
You have to know that
you are member of a human society that comprises a lot of people who are poor,
oppressed, exploited. That the international economic structures that govern
all of us are set in a way that the poor will keep on becoming poorer and the
rich will grow richer. Remember that this is applicable for secular as well as
non-secular structures.
You have to know that in
joining the SDS you have chosen to side with the poor and exploited not in
order to stay with them in their misery, neither to get them poorer but in
order to get them out of their misery, at least in making them aware of their
misery and where is it from so that they strive by themselves to save their
destiny.
You have to know that
you are a free person, and your choices determine your life; and that your
future depends on your actuality. You have to know that you have been created
for happiness and not for suffering. Like Carlos Mesters
says, God primary concern is the well being and happiness of human beings. God
wants them to grow and attain self-fulfilment…
A father’s main concern is not that his son has precise and correct ideas
about who his father is but rather that his son be happy and prosperous in
life. Insofar as he is happy, thanks to the goodness of his father, he will
acquire sound ideas about his father.[2]
Then remember to always follow and look for whatever good thing that brings you
happiness without arming the others.
You have to know that
you have the right to express out your mind, and for that you do not need to
motivate yourself with drinks or other stimulating drugs. Hence you will
contribute to the growth of your community.
You have to know that
fear is the worst enemy of a human being. You have in your reach the power to
eliminate fear. Like says Ralf Waldo Emerson cited by J. Murphy, do the thing
you are afraid to do, and the death of fear is certain.[3]
But be careful to not sin. In fact, fear of failure brings about the experience
of failure itself.
You have to know that
you are full of potentialities that are awaiting you to express them. You are
the only one who can bring them to be real.
You have to know that
your duty is to work out whatever is in your capacity. What you cannot do leave
it to the Divine Providence.
You have to know that
whatever you are doing or wishing to others, you are doing or wishing it to
yourself too. That is why you need to bless and not to curse, to love and not
to hate. This is the secrete of the Golden Rule that Christ left us: “thou shall love your enemy.”
You have to know that
you are in horizontal relationship with your fellow human beings and the whole
creation, but also that you are in vertical relationship with God the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
You have to know that
God loves you very much and will never let you down forever, that He wants only
your good but you should do your duty, which is to realise
whatever is in your grasp. This is the master secret of the power of the Divine
Providence.
You have to know your
limitations and your short comings, and accept yourself as such if you cannot
overcome them.
You have to know that
there are things that only you know about yourself, but also that there are
things others know about you, and things that neither you nor others know about
yourself.
You have to know that
you are called to be Salvatorian, meaning someone
whose life should be a saving act, a prophet of your time.
You cannot be a prophet
unless you know who you are. We use to define the prophet as someone who is
speaking on behalf of God to his people. This is true even nowadays, in our
milieus, as I will try to show it to you later on. But before that let us have
a look to the Old and New Testament as far as prophecy is concerned.
In the Old Testament,
when the People of God turned against God more than once, there came prophets
to get them back to the covenant with Yahweh. Sometimes the People of God went
away from God while they themselves were thinking that they were faithful to
God. They held too much to rituals and formalities to the extend that these rituals
and formalities became more important for them than faithfulness to Yahweh, the
God of their fathers. Let me take some example to illustrate what I am saying
for a better understanding.
The Hebrews took more
care of the temple where they encountered God, at the extend of forgetting the
more serious obligation of living their faith. Cultic worship was the centre of
the nation’s life in such a way that great care was given to the ritual
ceremonies but not to one’s everyday actions.
For each of these
occasions, God raised a prophet to worn the Hebrews that they might change
their behaviour and get back to the covenant.
In the New Testament, we
have also Pharisees and Scribes who clung to the customs of their ancestors and
disregard God’s commandment. They never eat without scrupulously wash
their hands, they never eat anything from the market without first sprinkling
it, they observed the tradition of washing of cups and jugs and kettles and
many other human tradition of this kind, but they forgot the essential: the
love of the neighbour.
Get a serious look to your religious
surrounding and you will see that we are falling slowly in the attitude of
Hebrews and Pharisees and Scribes, in giving pre-eminence to what we regard as
traditionally sacrosanct and inviolable forgetting the essential, the love of
the neighbour, truthfulness, righteousness,
sincerity, honesty. Let me share with you what I saw both in my native Congo
and here in Tanzania, which makes me ask myself if we are not getting back in
the Hebrews’ and Pharisees’ and Scribes’ mistake, that of
giving pre-eminence to appearances and forget the essential. These are
realities I personally met during my religious initial formation and not some
fictitious examples neither results of some bibliographical researches.
People are clinging
self-assuredly to attendance at mass or recitation of the rosary or vigil light
services, as if a religious practice or work can in itself lay hold of and
coerce God! Is not such religiosity the “opiate of the people?”
There are a lot of
practices in the Church that no longer serve to express friendship with God,
but merely the search for human security. In fact, some people are afraid to
leave religious life (or better the convent) even though they are sure of not
being in their place in the convent, because they have no way out. On the other
hand, how do you understand that someone is asked to leave the convent after
five or more years and he is given only the equivalent of a hundred US dollars
to start his new life? What do you want this man to be after he leaves? Even if
one is convinced of not being called for religious life, knowing that he would
have to start his new life with a hundred US dollars, would not he prefer to
continue being in the convent instead of leaving to look miserably for his way
out there? And still we will continue preaching about the love of the neighbour to the faithful!!!
On the other side, how
can someone. Knowing that he has a child outside the convent and still wants to
continue with religious life? What will be the situation of the family he has
founded? And we will still keep on preaching fidelity to the faithful
believers!!!
Still more and worse,
how can some one knowing that he has procured an abortion, ask for ordination
to sacred orders? And he will be speaking in persona Christi!!!
You will find some
people becoming perpetual professed without conviction of what they are vowing,
but because time has come for them to profess perpetually according to the
formation program trend.
Some others would tell
you that they want to quite religious life but doing that would hurt very much
one of their superiors to whom they ought their studies or some other favors.
Are we becoming religious to please some benefactors?!
There are still other
cases such as those who are really and sincerely in love with girls outside
there. But because of having no way out, they continue being in religious
formation while still entertaining their hidden love even after their perpetual
commitment and priestly ordination in religious life. Whom do we think that we
are cheating finally?!
I personally have met
people who are not willing to work in remote communities. They think that their
place is in town. At the same time they call themselves Salvatorian,
meaning the followers of
These are few concrete
examples that show that we are almost becoming that Old Testament people of
God, holding to formalities and forgetting the essential of our Christian call.
For sure you have seen these examples in your religious surrounding, maybe even
more than these. If not, then let me assure you that you will experience them
one day as you are growing in your religious life. Perhaps you are even one of
the people who are living these things in their religious life, or you will be
one of them one day. This is exactly where you need to be prophet. In fact,
these situations are a call for you to be a prophet. It is true that formators superiors have the duty of helping you to re-orient
your life in regarding you not like an enemy nor like someone to get rid of as
quickly as possible, neither like someone to be used as example for the others
to know that leaving religious life is a mistake that leads to death and
suffering, but they should regard you as someone in need of their understanding
and love, a human being that deserves God’s love. But you have also your
role to play and that is the most important one. This is where you will still
keep on being Christian and prophet in your time. What is that role of yours
that you need to play in all this?
Here is what you need to
do on your part. Be sincere with yourself and honest with your commitment. If
you are in conditions that does not allow you to continue with religious life,
then stop being religious. If you find that your place is outside religious
life, then look for your way out, you will find it. If you are sure of being
sincerely in love with a girl outside there, I think that the best you can do
is to leave for her. If you think that God wants you in religious life, then be
faithful and true to your promises. This is the way you will be prophet in your
life and not in proclaiming some good news that you yourself are not able to
live. I know how easy it is to speak like I am speaking actually, but I know
too how difficult it is to take a decision for life when you are in direction
that you think that it is not yours. That why you need to use all your
intellectual faculties and your wisdom because God wants you free and happy. Do
whatever you can do to realize this project of sincerity and honesty of your
life. In fact, “whoever searches finds” (Jesus’ promise).
What you are not able to find leave it to God’s providence. He never
abandons His children who are true and sincere in their thoughts and deeds. You
better believe me because you lose nothing in doing so.
Like I said before,
faith in God’s providence is the master secret to succeed in life. Let me
assure you that it works. But before everything, you have to accomplish first
your duty, which is being sincere and honest, and striving to realise what you can realise.
Only then you can sleep hopefully waiting to see coming your way what you
cannot possess in spite of your efforts and desire for it. There you are a full
and realised man.
Faith in the divine
providence has worked wonders for me as I told you before. Let me share with
you some examples of my experience. After my noviciate
in 1996, I suffered a lot from ulcers. I alone knew that they were caused by
the reality I came to discover in my new community which was for me my second
family... I then decided to leave to God’s providence what I found to be
a solution for me because I was not able to realise
it by myself and by that time. That decision was the very reality that healed
me from my stomachaches. It was at the end of my philosophy in 1999 that
everything happened. Today I am able to eat everything including pepper. After
my pastoral year in 2000, I was selected to come hear in
When I was coming to
Another thing that is for me a wonder of the
Divine Providence is that I finished my theological studies at the Salvatorian Institute without repeating a single exam. You
have only to be in my shoes to appreciate how God’s providence has worked
wonders for me. You might say that all that are the fruits of my hard work as
serious student. But I will tell you that what I am sharing with you are fruits
of God’s loving providence. I still have a lot of example of the marvels
of the Divine Providence in my life, but this is not the right place to write
everything I have experienced.
God’s providence
has become my Salvatorian identity and heritage. It
gives me the conviction that even if I might leave religious life, but still I
will remain Salvatorian wherever I might go and
whoever I might become. The Divine Providence assures me for everything I am
looking for. It has become my treasure that “no thief comes near nor any
moth destroys.” (Luke 12:32-34). The Divine Providence is my pride to be Salvatorian for life.
Dear brother, it is a
very good thing that you believe that you have been called for Salvatorian religious life. Remember that this is more a
state of life than a simple belonging to an international religious community.
Therefore you need to know who you are, where you are coming from, where you
are actually and where you are going to. As you are proceeding with your
initial formation, I am sure that you have found or will found some
characteristics of
My Brothers,
Having finished my
theological formation, I am leaving our dear Morogoro
Students’ community and
Here is my email address and I will let you know
my telephone number once in
DEOGRATIAS ASSANI