SOME REASONS
TO BE GRATEFUL OF IN THE STUDENTS’ FORMATION COMMUNITY / MOROGORO
It is a human habit to
praise people most of time when they have left us or at the cemetery during
their burial. That is the way we use to acknowledge people’s merits.
Today I want to get rid of this habit and make a
difference in praising someone who has work very hard for the Society of the
Divine Savior and most of all for the initial as well as the ongoing formation
in the congregation being himself the superior of a formation community.
Fortunately
for us in Morogoro Students’ Formation Community, we are experiencing
daily the hard work of this formator, our formator, and we are learning a lot from his life as well
as from his preaching.
We use to see his office enlightened up to late during
the night. Some times we ask ourselves what is he doing up there by that time
of night whereas we know well that the Institute has deprived him from most of
his subjects as theologian in dogmatic and they have left for him only
homiletics and some elective courses which are often not chosen by students!
How can this father spend so much time preparing the only subject he is
lecturing once a week? Maybe he is sleepless every night! Maybe we are too
noisy that he is not able to close his eyes before everybody has gone to bed!
No, that cannot be true because even when we are in recollection the situation
is the same… Maybe he is spending his time wandering in the global
village through Internet since he is being connected twenty-four hours a day!
Maybe he is reading some interesting novels! Maybe… maybe…and
maybe…!!! All our suppositions were wrong very wrong about what our formator was and is doing in his office up to late in the
night.
Today we are carrying in our hands the fruit of those
overnight sitting of this “Mzee.” We can
actually be sure that he was and is not spending his time for himself in his
office, but he is spending his time thinking of the future of the Society.
In fact, today, thanks to the overnight hard work of
father Dan our formator, we can actually have all the
talks of our founder from 1890 to 1913 in English translation. We were having a
portion of the English version of our founder’s talks in
“Exhortations and Admonitions.” The rest were in the DSS XXIII German
and Latin versions. This is the very work that Father Daniel Perkaske SDS, our formator in
Morogoro Students’ Formation Community, has translated. We can actually
understand our founder’s mind better than before. It is only up to us to
take our time to read and transmit to the future generations. It is also now
the work of the French speaking Salvatorians to
translate from English what is already done.
Thanks to your overnight hard work father Dan, we are
having actually the complete DSS number XXIII in English version. There is a
lot to be grateful for. It is true that you have worked as a team in the
Historical Commission. But on our part we have been seeing you hard working
here in our community.
You deserve our gratitude,
father Dan, for your sacrifices which are numerous. As you know well, some
people are not very positive with you for some reasons only they know
themselves. But we who are living with you in this community, which we use to
identify as being “not so good, not so bad but our community,” we
are witnesses of how hard you work to show us the way to responsibility in
freedom and maturity. Some times you teach us through your talks and homilies,
but most of time you teach us by the example of your life, which is not the
life of a “saint” but the life of someone who is trying hard TO
BE a Christian in truth, your life.
Then whom do you people want
me to believe in between a higher responsible in the society who says many good
things, gives many good orders and very intelligent criticisms, someone holier
in cassock than in common clothes, who insists every time that we should live
the constitutions and the statutes, but who does not live himself what he
demands me to do; whom will I believe between such a confrere and a simple
priest who tries his level best to live his vocation and who preaches mostly
with his own life than his mouth? I think, for a sincere and serious religious
in formation, the choice is clear. Faith without works is naught says the
letter of Saint James (
To be a Salvatorian formator, father Dan you are one. In fact, what we are
becoming after these years spent with you in this formation community is,
according to me, what should a Salvatorian be; mature, responsible, free to
decide for his life and for the good of the community. We are becoming more
conscience of our being Salvatorians and not of being
only some young people waiting for orders to be executed. Thanks for the gift
of your simple but strong Christian witness to we who are in need of models and
good formators. It is true that in such formation
milieu, those who would not be serious with their lives would find here the
appropriate place to use wildly their freedom and live anyhow. They would not
understand your way of forming at the expense of their future. Then think also
to such confreres.
Thanks father Dan for being there for us.
DEOGRATIAS ASSANI