REFLECTIONS OF A KENYAN PRIEST

By Fr. Casmir Odundo Yesterday we celebrated the Memoria of St. Barnabas, as apostle and one of the greatest collaborators in the Pauline Ministry. A lot has been said and written about this great man. However, today I would like to reflect on an aspect about him that is often overlooked. The fact that he was a collaborator of St. Paul. Though he calls himself the least of the apostles (1 Cor 15: 9) we know that in certain terms, St. Paul was one of the greatest. His greatness is of course first and foremost the work of the grace of God. For we all know that apart from Him we can do nothing. (John 15: 5). Secondly we can account for the greatness of St. Paul from his apostolic zeal for souls. However, his success was also mainly influenced by the fact that he had many collaborators and the Pauline Ministry was largely a collaborative ministry. Pope Benedict XVI summarized it beautifully, “ St. Paul is an eloquent example of a man open to collaboration: he did not want t...

By Fr Casmir Odundo One of the remarkable moments of the Pontificate of Benedict XVI was when he visited Auschwitz, the place of the massive holocaust of the Jews by the Germans. It was difficult for the German Pope to express himself. " To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany ," the then 79-year-old pontiff said. He went on to utter a spontaneous prayer to God " In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? " It is this same silence of God amid the Covid-19 pandemic that has prompted me to write this reflection.   Why Lord, do you remain Silent? It is now over six months since the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in China reported the first case of ...