HOMILY BY MSGR CLETUS TANIMU GOTAN AT THE MASS OF THANKSGIVING FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE 60TH ORDINATION ANNIVERSARY OF VERY REV FR JEREMIAH O'CONNELL SMA AT ST LOUIS' CATHOLIC CHURCH, JOS ON MONDAY, JUNE 13th, 2016.

Ez. 3:17-21; Eph. 1:13-14; Lk 10:17-2

Today, we joyfully gather around the altar of St Louis Catholic Church, Jos for the celebration of the Eucharist, the Church's great prayer of thanksgiving, for Very Rev Fr Jeremiah O'Connell SMA as he celebrates the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination. Permit me to start by thanking all those who have been instrumental for making the occasion possible. The occasion recalls to me the Office of Readings from Pope Gregory the Great about us priests. The reading quotes the Gospel saying that "the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few" and went on to say: 'it grieves us to have to say that...we see around us a world full of priests, but it is very rare to find a labourer in God's harvest, because we are not doing the work demanded by our priesthood, although we accepted this office.'

Sixty years into ministry and still here at the age of eighty four, no one can say that of Fr O'Connell! whom we thank for his steadfast and generous ministry in the Vineyard of the Lord in different capacities, at different locations as a missionary priest. His first port of call in the Archdiocese of Jos was St Joseph's College, Vom where he worked and rose to
the status of a principal between 1961 and 1967. He was later transferred to St Murumba College, Jos between 1968 and1975 and served there too as Principal. He became Parish Priest, St Theresa's Church, Jos between 1976 and 1978 when I worked closely with him as a curate, which qualifies me today to preach at the occasion. From 1978 he retired to St Louis Parish where his has been till date. For a very long time he was the Vicar General, and procurator or finance officer of the then Catholic Archdiocese of Jos. If I were to assess him, I would say he is a very devout, kind and a compassionate priest who loves his people and has a great vision for the church, what we should be like, how we should live and how we should relate to other people. He has, no doubt, enriched our lives and strengthened our faith as he now gives each of us the singular opportunity to also look back on our own missionary journeys and renew our commitments to God as we face the challenges before us in today's context.  We congratulate you and thank you on behalf of the Church for these many years of witness and service to the people in the old and present Catholic Archdiocese of Jos and elsewhere.  

You can truly say on a day like this with the Psalmist, "Let me sing the praises of the Lord, and of His marvelous deeds in return for all that the Lord has done for me."  Unlike the days you first approached the altar of the Lord, sixty years ago, to receive the indescribable gift of the catholic priesthood and religious profession, none of the members of your biological family is here today as you stand once again before the Lord to praise and make acknowledgments for these amazing years of service. Our gathering here, however, consisting of representatives of various parishes stretching from Angware to Maijuju, Angwan Rogo to Zawan, representatives of government and those from the business world, we take the place of your family represented here by the wife of the Irish Ambassador to Nigeria as we join you in thanksgiving to God not only for your dedication and contribution to serving the gospel in the Diocese of Jos  but also for the gift and the grace of these past sixty years from which most of us here and the people we represent have benefitted. We are indeed deeply privileged in the diocese of Jos to have had you as a valued and highly regarded priest and we thank God for the wonders He has done through you.

All this chunk of time in the life of Fr O'Connell on earth has been spent doing what Christ came to do and which each of us here this morning is required to replicate at our duty posts namely, to make God known as a father who loves and calls each and everyone of us to conversion - to tell us that whatever our past, whatever the gravity and the number of our sins, God does not look at our sins, but at our intentions, and our desires. Fr O'Connell, you have made Jesus Christ present in ways more powerful than you will ever know. You have helped the people entrusted to your care to realize that God is not God the way we would be God, if we were God! by your voice preaching, teaching, and comforting; your hands baptizing, blessing, anointing, and absolving; your eyes seeing, smiling, caring, and crying; your ears listening, hearing, and understanding; your feet walking, and walking to churches, classrooms, graduations, weddings, family gatherings, deathbeds, and gravesites.  You have stood by Jesus in His trials, in the trials of the members of His Body, the church. We thank God for you and for your ministry. 'Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchizedek.

A lovely story is told of the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, the great Michael Ramsey of blessed memory.  Close to the end of his life, he was living in a convent on the outskirts of Oxford.  A young Muslim from Bangladesh who kept the post office across the road, where the Archbishop used to buy stamps, came to visit him, and asked how long he had been ordained.  Ramsey answered, 'Nearly sixty years.'  The young man said, 'That's a very long friendship', and Ramsey repeated the phrase over and over, savouring its memory and smiling.  Father, on this day of celebration and thanksgiving when we delight to honour you, blessing God for all you have been and all you are to us and to so many others, our prayer is that your own 60 years of friendship with the living Christ who calls us to follow him will only grow and deepen in intimacy through the days and years ahead.  

In our postmodern world challenged and characterized by relativism, the life of the Father O'Connell as a priest vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience should be a sign of contradiction that serves to invite and encourage us to ultimately define ourselves regarding Jesus...whom he has so faithfully followed, without ambiguity and without compromise. His life's journey, as a priest/religious has been like Mary's own journey - a pilgrimage of faith, a pilgrimage of consecration, a pilgrimage of devoted Missionary service ... in which he had been called to be Jesus for others - in the various Missions where he has served and where he continues to serve.

That this celebration falls within the current Holy Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis to experience the wonder of the mercy that is Christ's gift should be another golden opportunity for us to stand back and evaluate our lives in terms of how merciful we have been towards others. The year is a call by a Merciful God who does not keep record of our sins but asks us to forgive seventy times seven times (Mt. 18:22), the one who overlooked the scandalous lives of men and women unacceptable to society but welcomed by him as in the call of Matthew (Mt. 9:9), or Zachaeus, (Lk.19:1ff), who ate with sinners (Mt. 9:11), or allowed the woman with a bad name and reputation to anoint him and kiss his feet (Lk. 7: 36ff). The challenge for us, in being merciful like the Father, whom we ask to be merciful towards us, is that we have allowed mercy to slip out of the grammar of Christianity. We have allowed raw power and the quest for vengeance to take centre stage in the daily grammar of our lives. While the Lord asks for mercy, do we not often hear among us sayings as: Do me I do you, God no go vex; back to Sender; Holy Ghost fire; all as metaphors for vengeance and the quest for afflictions of our enemies, all in sharp contrast to what Jesus Himself has taught us? We as Christians and for many of us here as priests and religious, should  and must change our world where people seem  very hard in the practice of forgiveness in daily life.  This is the reason why we hear news of wars everywhere and people fighting and killing each other; every one blaming other parties and neglecting the virtue of forgiveness.

See what deadly harm corruption has done us as a nation and how it has messed up our lives as Nigerians. There seems to be an unwritten understanding that nothing can be done honestly in Nigeria. Study artisans closely and you will think that they are wired to cut corners, trained to tell lies and use substandard materials. Indeed, there is a seeming mentoring program for corruption in Nigeria. Unfortunately, we all do not see corruption in the things we do in our own corners.  We fail to realize that people don't just become corrupt overnight or on the day they occupy big positions - corruption has already been embedded in us even if we hardly see ourselves in the picture. If you steal as a clerk, you won't suddenly become upright as a perm Sec. The nurse that takes a bribe to provide a bed space for a patient does not see this as corruption. She would rather say "where you work is where you chop - so this is my workchop". The vendor that fraudulently withholds payments due to a newspaper from copy sales does not see corruption in this - it is the minister who has been accused of stealing N2 billion that is corrupt in his own estimation. When a mechanic teaches his little apprentice to buy fake spare parts, when a parent who is in Jos tells lies over the phone that he is in Abuja or Lagos before his little child to evade the harassment of his creditor he is sowing corruption into the future. When you pay a carpenter to use mahogany for your furniture and he uses ordinary wood to maximize profit, he has demonstrated what he can if he eventually gets a big contract. Did Jesus not say that if you are faithful in little, you will be faithful in much? If you cheat in a N10,000 deal, will you suddenly become upright in a N10 million contract?

In the spirit of the Year of Mercy, let us be all hands on deck to turn around the country, to overcome the multi-dimensional challenges facing us and heal the wounds inflicted by the corruptive indulgence of the wicked people to whom our commonwealth has been entrusted at different levels of governance but who have converted such general welfare into their own and the economic comfort of a few. We all need attitudinal change, value reorientation for a reformation of mind where we see good as good and bad as bad. We all need a conversion, a change of mindset, and a change of conduct and above all the fear of God as a sine qua non. We need to be on the same page condemning whatever is wrong wherever, in whomever and in whatever form it comes and irrespective of our usual sentiments of region, tribe and religion, which have held us in bondage for decades. To succeed, we must all, in the words of our Archbishop, become tribally blind, regionally blind, politically blind, and religiously blind. Our religions can only be such when they help us positively by making a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, and a Christian become a better Christian.

As we give thanks today, for the priestly life and vocation which Fr O'Connell, has shared with us, we pray that he may know the grace of final perseverance in the years that lie ahead and for ourselves that whatever years we have clocked in the eternal call of Jesus Christ, each of us may be unstinting in our response to Christ's continuing call, wherever it may lead us. Fr O'Connell, this morning many have wished you "ad multos annos" meaning: "May you continue for many years". We give thanks for all that has been and for all that is, for the health and happiness you enjoy, and for the faith and families with which you are blessed. As we thank God for you, we pray that you may have many more years in the service of our Lord and Saviour  Jesus Christ. At the end of your days may you hear the words, "Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord."