Sermon Delivered by
Most Rev. Peter Kwasi Sarpong on the Occasion of the Episcopal Ordination of Most Rev. John Yaw Afoakwah On 10th January, 2015 at the Len Clay Sports Stadium (Black Park), Obuasi.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Let us give thanks to the Almighty, Loving, and Merciful Lord for giving the Local Church of Obuasi a Pastor at last! This is in consonance with what the Lord says in the First Reading of today’s Liturgy. After passing them through the pastoral orphanage for two years and a half, He has now asked his servant, Msgr John Yaw Afoakwah, to father them.
Msgr John Yaw Afoakwah
“…will search out the strays and will bring them back, He will bind up the injured, and the sick He will heal. But the sleek and the strong He will destroy.” (Ezekiel 34:16)
I am the happiest man for being given the privilege of introducing him to you all! I have had the privilege of witnessing to his progress from the Minor Seminary through the Major Seminary to the Holy Priesthood in 1992. Subsequently, among the varied assignments he has had to fulfil was joining the rank of his predecessors Archbishop Thomas Mensah and Archbishop Gabriel Justice Yaw Anokye in staying in my house as my Major Domo or Secretary. All these gallant priests of Kumasi Diocese exhibited all the qualities of a true servant of the Lord and it therefore came as no surprise that he should be the one to fill the pastoral vacuum that had been created for Obuasi Diocese by the appointment of Archbishop Anokye to the See of Kumasi. Significantly, it has fallen on three of them to fulfill the Episcopal Mandate in the Catholic Diocese of Obuasi.
Prior to his appointment, John had exercised the catechetical ministry in which he had been trained, gone to study abroad, taught in the Senior High School, and was indeed combining Senior High School teaching with pastoral ministry, when the lot fell on him to be where he is now.
I know him well enough to testify unhesitatingly that his humble disposition, even if he does not want me to say so, will stand him in good stead as a Bishop.
Soon, he will become a successor of the Apostles and enjoy as of right all the Ordinary and Immediate Power which is necessary for the exercise of his pastoral office.
Bishops by divine institution and by their apostolic office are jointly responsible for the Church. Their Apostolic Mission extends to the parts of the world in which the Word of the Lord has not yet been proclaimed.
In the dispensation of the ecclesiastical resources, human and material, they must take into account the needs not only of their Local Churches but also of all other Churches.
Above all, a Bishop should extend his brotherly care to those Bishops who are harassed by calumny, hardship, bigotry, and persecution for the sake of Christ.
Even though every Bishop must have concern for the Universal Church, Bishops are normally entrusted with the care of a section of the People of God called the Diocese. He is to guide the Diocese with the assistance of his clergy, so that loyal to his Pastor and formed by Him into one community in the Holy Spirit, the Diocese becomes one particular Church in which the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is truly present and active.
Bishops are witnesses of Christ to all mankind. They should not limit themselves only to those who have already acknowledged the Prince of Pastors but must also devote their energies to those who have strayed in any way from the path of truth. We have just heard how Ezekiel puts it:
“He will search out the strays and will bring them back, He will bind up the injured, and the sick He will heal. But the sleek and the strong He will destroy.” (Ezekiel 34:16)
Bishops should proclaim the Gospel of Christ to men as one of their principal duties. They should present the doctrine of Christ in a manner suited to the needs of the time, so as to make it relevant to those difficulties and questions which men find especially worrying and intimidating.
They should help to maintain close relation with the society in which they live. They should use the various modern means of communication available for proclaiming the Christian doctrine.
In the words of Pope Paul VI:
“It would be sinful for us to ignore the modern means of communication in evangelizing the world.”
They should ensure that catechists are well adequately prepared.
Bishops should be mindful of the fact that they have been chosen from among men and made their representatives before God. They should promote the sanctity of their clergy, their religious, and their laity according to the vocation of each individual.
The Bishop should be among his people as one who serves, as a good shepherd who knows his sheep and who is known by his sheep.
In the words of St. Peter, himself a Bishop and a witness to the sufferings of Christ that we have heard:
“A Bishop should tend the Flock of God not by constraint but willingly as God would have it.”(1 Peter 5:1)
The functions of the Bishop are multifarious, but they can be categorized in three forms: the Sanctifying, the Teaching, and the Governing Roles.
He is to regard himself as a faithful steward, moderator, and guardian of the Mysteries of Christ that Christ has entrusted to him.
My Dear John,
I know you very well. I am sure you will discharge your duties as a father and a brother. Love all whom God places in your care: the priests, the deacons, the poor and naked, the immigrant, the stranger, the religious men and women. Do not refuse to listen to them.
At the end of the day, what is expected of you is summed up in the nine questions, soon to be put to you. To eight of these, your answer is going to be an emphatic “I do.” To the last question, however, your response is going to be, “I do, with the help of God.”
Yes,
“He labours in vain who does not build with the Lord.”(Psalm 127:1).
Your answers will be credible only within the context of the Lord helping you.
Those positive replies are an indication that with the help of God you are prepared to meet headlong the graces and blessings of the Diocese of Obuasi and you are equally prepared to accept the challenges that will be thrown to you from a few of Christ’s Faithful of Obuasi, regrettably, Priests!
You will indeed receive the cooperation, understanding, and support of about 90% of the Faithful, but the opposition of the remaining 10% will be formidable, daunting, and well-nigh insuperable from the numerically insignificant minority, regrettably Priests. I am speaking from experience.
You will be dealing with priests who know better than you do; Priests who have answers to all questions, Priests for whom the Bishop is an ignoramus. You will be dealing with priests who will report you to funding agencies that you have embezzled money meant for them for development. Some of your Priests, again, thank God a few, will be bad influence on young, innocent Priests and, unfortunately, even on innocent Lay Men and Women.
I pray God to rid you of Priests who will meet your collaborators, lay and clerical, and tell them, “Why is your father doing this?”
You will be working with priests who will accuse you of cheating the Diocese and report you to chiefs in the Diocese; priests who should know that accusations against you are false and should defend you of preposterous allegations, but are themselves the chief propagators of such malice.
If, by the grace of God, you do not meet such priests, then God bless you. But, if you do meet them, listen to the words of the Lord Himself:
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”(Matthew 5:11).
I speak from experience. They did that to me. You may not know it, but some of us do!
On the 3rd Week of Advent, Tuesday, the Second Reading of the Office of Readings is from the Imitation of Christ. This chapter of the book has a priceless piece of advice for you, John.
“Do not care much who is with you and who is against you; but make it your greatest care that God is with you in everything you do.”
My Dear John,
Please, do not try to please anybody, especially your Priests. You will not succeed anyway. Try to help them and please God. Have a good conscience and God will defend you securely; no one can hurt you if God wishes to help you.
If you know how to suffer in silence, you will surely receive God’s help. Since he knows best the time and the way to set you free, resign yourself to him, for God helps you and frees you from all confusion.
You are going to be a Bishop in order to do one thing: to love your neighbour more intensely. Loving your neighbour in turn consists in praying for your neighbour and in suffering for him or her.
Christ himself is your exemplar in this. He had the time, the patience, and the courage to pray for his tormentors when he was on the Cross,
“Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”(Luke 23:34).
Time and time again, Jesus would exhort his disciples to take up their Cross and follow him. Discipleship is inseparable from praying for your neighbour and suffering for him.
If you are tempted to argue that Christ could do all these because, after all, He was God; that He may have had two natures but He had only one personality, then let us take a look at a totally human personality who performed this double duty of praying and suffering for his neighbour to an extraordinary degree.
Interminably, Moses, appointed by God to liberate his people from servitude, was insulted, ridiculed, and rejected by the very people he was trying to liberate. The insults of the Israelites on the desert extended to God Himself.
But, anytime God was provoked to punish these people for their ingratitude, their treachery, their idolatry, Moses would come in and plead passionately for them. Even when the Israelites collected the earrings of their wives, their sons and their daughters, cast them into an image and knelt before that image saying,
“These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:4).
And God was justifiably going to destroy them for this and foolhardiness, Moses said,
“Why, O Lord, should your anger burn against your People whom you brought out of the Land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ’I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster He had threatened.”(Exodus 32:11-15)
At this juncture, by way of a cliché, we consult the Great Saint Augustine on the Bishop:
He once said,
“With you I am a Christian, for you I am a Bishop. One is a privilege, the other is an obligation which carries with it difficult choices, but which must be made at all cost.”
In appointing Ezekiel as a prophet, God told him,
“I am sending you to the Israelites, a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day.” (Ezekiel 2:3).
God is sending you John to a flock, some of which have always been rebellious. They know better than you. They refuse even to accept the advice of their Bishop in regard to a distinction between Diocesan projects and Provincial ones. They would have revolted against you, they would have rejected you if you had not come from among their rank. Even now, a few reject you in their hearts. They do not realize that a Diocesan Bishop need not be an indigene of his Diocese.
Instead of thinking of the good of the Church they prefer to wish for what they consider to be good for themselves. Some priests, your own co-workers, will push you to the point of exasperation. The Israelites did that even to Moses, their liberator. He bore it all magnanimously until when they rushed on him to give then water to drink.
Moses exploded,
“Just listen, you rebels. Are we to provide water for you out of this rock?”(Numbers 20: 10)
Moses’ outburst for once showed a lack of confidence in God. It refused to acknowledge God’s holiness before the Israelites, and so God did not allow him to see the land that he was leading them to.
There is nothing more painful than for the people you are helping to reject you on the grounds that you are guilty of the crimes you are getting them out of.
Yes, there will be many challenges of this nature in your life. Rely on God when they come!
John, if I appear to be pessimistic and negatively critical, then God be blessed! That is precisely my intention!!
I am trying, if only indirectly, to plead with the small unpriestly elements among your Clergy to desist from meting out to you the sufferings they made me undergo, when I was in charge of them, accusing me of discrimination, favouritism, and Offinsoism.
For me this should help you to correct the few Priests who, instead of helping to put the few Lay People going astray back on the track of sanity, are themselves the chief instigators of such Lay Men and Women.
Your Patron Saint, John the Baptist, has given you the lead.
He accepted it as a duty to correct the inexplicable deviation of Herod from the Law of God. He paid for this with his blood.
He tells you never to attribute any success or for that matter any failures to yourself. Just do what he tells you and allow him to take the blame or compliment.
Remember that you are a“Pontifex”, not a “Pons”; you are a builder of bridges not the bridge itself. You are in the words of Hebrews “A representative of the Faithful before God,” trying to bridge the huge gap between humanity and Deity, which has been created and is continually being widened by man’s pride and insolence.
The Pons or the real bridge you will introduce in the bargain is Jesus Christ. He was the one whom your Patron Saint, John the Baptist, came to pave the way for.
Even though the eyes of the world will be on you as a Bishop, you are trying to promote Christ and his Mission.
Therefore, in accordance with the words of your Patron Saint, which you have adopted as your motto, “He must increase and you must decrease.”(John 3: 30)
You should enhance the name of Jesus, even if it means suppressing your own.
That motto of yours must be your philosophy of life, your pastoral orientation, and your evangelization push. It must make you rejoice greatly at Jesus, the Bridegroom.
You will allow Jesus Christ to live in you and you in him.
So that: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Philippians 2:10).
Amen
Most Rev. Peter Kwasi Sarpong on the Occasion of the Episcopal Ordination of Most Rev. John Yaw Afoakwah On 10th January, 2015 at the Len Clay Sports Stadium (Black Park), Obuasi.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Let us give thanks to the Almighty, Loving, and Merciful Lord for giving the Local Church of Obuasi a Pastor at last! This is in consonance with what the Lord says in the First Reading of today’s Liturgy. After passing them through the pastoral orphanage for two years and a half, He has now asked his servant, Msgr John Yaw Afoakwah, to father them.
Msgr John Yaw Afoakwah
“…will search out the strays and will bring them back, He will bind up the injured, and the sick He will heal. But the sleek and the strong He will destroy.” (Ezekiel 34:16)
I am the happiest man for being given the privilege of introducing him to you all! I have had the privilege of witnessing to his progress from the Minor Seminary through the Major Seminary to the Holy Priesthood in 1992. Subsequently, among the varied assignments he has had to fulfil was joining the rank of his predecessors Archbishop Thomas Mensah and Archbishop Gabriel Justice Yaw Anokye in staying in my house as my Major Domo or Secretary. All these gallant priests of Kumasi Diocese exhibited all the qualities of a true servant of the Lord and it therefore came as no surprise that he should be the one to fill the pastoral vacuum that had been created for Obuasi Diocese by the appointment of Archbishop Anokye to the See of Kumasi. Significantly, it has fallen on three of them to fulfill the Episcopal Mandate in the Catholic Diocese of Obuasi.
Prior to his appointment, John had exercised the catechetical ministry in which he had been trained, gone to study abroad, taught in the Senior High School, and was indeed combining Senior High School teaching with pastoral ministry, when the lot fell on him to be where he is now.
I know him well enough to testify unhesitatingly that his humble disposition, even if he does not want me to say so, will stand him in good stead as a Bishop.
Soon, he will become a successor of the Apostles and enjoy as of right all the Ordinary and Immediate Power which is necessary for the exercise of his pastoral office.
Bishops by divine institution and by their apostolic office are jointly responsible for the Church. Their Apostolic Mission extends to the parts of the world in which the Word of the Lord has not yet been proclaimed.
In the dispensation of the ecclesiastical resources, human and material, they must take into account the needs not only of their Local Churches but also of all other Churches.
Above all, a Bishop should extend his brotherly care to those Bishops who are harassed by calumny, hardship, bigotry, and persecution for the sake of Christ.
Even though every Bishop must have concern for the Universal Church, Bishops are normally entrusted with the care of a section of the People of God called the Diocese. He is to guide the Diocese with the assistance of his clergy, so that loyal to his Pastor and formed by Him into one community in the Holy Spirit, the Diocese becomes one particular Church in which the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is truly present and active.
Bishops are witnesses of Christ to all mankind. They should not limit themselves only to those who have already acknowledged the Prince of Pastors but must also devote their energies to those who have strayed in any way from the path of truth. We have just heard how Ezekiel puts it:
“He will search out the strays and will bring them back, He will bind up the injured, and the sick He will heal. But the sleek and the strong He will destroy.” (Ezekiel 34:16)
Bishops should proclaim the Gospel of Christ to men as one of their principal duties. They should present the doctrine of Christ in a manner suited to the needs of the time, so as to make it relevant to those difficulties and questions which men find especially worrying and intimidating.
They should help to maintain close relation with the society in which they live. They should use the various modern means of communication available for proclaiming the Christian doctrine.
In the words of Pope Paul VI:
“It would be sinful for us to ignore the modern means of communication in evangelizing the world.”
They should ensure that catechists are well adequately prepared.
Bishops should be mindful of the fact that they have been chosen from among men and made their representatives before God. They should promote the sanctity of their clergy, their religious, and their laity according to the vocation of each individual.
The Bishop should be among his people as one who serves, as a good shepherd who knows his sheep and who is known by his sheep.
In the words of St. Peter, himself a Bishop and a witness to the sufferings of Christ that we have heard:
“A Bishop should tend the Flock of God not by constraint but willingly as God would have it.”(1 Peter 5:1)
The functions of the Bishop are multifarious, but they can be categorized in three forms: the Sanctifying, the Teaching, and the Governing Roles.
He is to regard himself as a faithful steward, moderator, and guardian of the Mysteries of Christ that Christ has entrusted to him.
My Dear John,
I know you very well. I am sure you will discharge your duties as a father and a brother. Love all whom God places in your care: the priests, the deacons, the poor and naked, the immigrant, the stranger, the religious men and women. Do not refuse to listen to them.
At the end of the day, what is expected of you is summed up in the nine questions, soon to be put to you. To eight of these, your answer is going to be an emphatic “I do.” To the last question, however, your response is going to be, “I do, with the help of God.”
Yes,
“He labours in vain who does not build with the Lord.”(Psalm 127:1).
Your answers will be credible only within the context of the Lord helping you.
Those positive replies are an indication that with the help of God you are prepared to meet headlong the graces and blessings of the Diocese of Obuasi and you are equally prepared to accept the challenges that will be thrown to you from a few of Christ’s Faithful of Obuasi, regrettably, Priests!
You will indeed receive the cooperation, understanding, and support of about 90% of the Faithful, but the opposition of the remaining 10% will be formidable, daunting, and well-nigh insuperable from the numerically insignificant minority, regrettably Priests. I am speaking from experience.
You will be dealing with priests who know better than you do; Priests who have answers to all questions, Priests for whom the Bishop is an ignoramus. You will be dealing with priests who will report you to funding agencies that you have embezzled money meant for them for development. Some of your Priests, again, thank God a few, will be bad influence on young, innocent Priests and, unfortunately, even on innocent Lay Men and Women.
I pray God to rid you of Priests who will meet your collaborators, lay and clerical, and tell them, “Why is your father doing this?”
You will be working with priests who will accuse you of cheating the Diocese and report you to chiefs in the Diocese; priests who should know that accusations against you are false and should defend you of preposterous allegations, but are themselves the chief propagators of such malice.
If, by the grace of God, you do not meet such priests, then God bless you. But, if you do meet them, listen to the words of the Lord Himself:
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”(Matthew 5:11).
I speak from experience. They did that to me. You may not know it, but some of us do!
On the 3rd Week of Advent, Tuesday, the Second Reading of the Office of Readings is from the Imitation of Christ. This chapter of the book has a priceless piece of advice for you, John.
“Do not care much who is with you and who is against you; but make it your greatest care that God is with you in everything you do.”
My Dear John,
Please, do not try to please anybody, especially your Priests. You will not succeed anyway. Try to help them and please God. Have a good conscience and God will defend you securely; no one can hurt you if God wishes to help you.
If you know how to suffer in silence, you will surely receive God’s help. Since he knows best the time and the way to set you free, resign yourself to him, for God helps you and frees you from all confusion.
You are going to be a Bishop in order to do one thing: to love your neighbour more intensely. Loving your neighbour in turn consists in praying for your neighbour and in suffering for him or her.
Christ himself is your exemplar in this. He had the time, the patience, and the courage to pray for his tormentors when he was on the Cross,
“Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”(Luke 23:34).
Time and time again, Jesus would exhort his disciples to take up their Cross and follow him. Discipleship is inseparable from praying for your neighbour and suffering for him.
If you are tempted to argue that Christ could do all these because, after all, He was God; that He may have had two natures but He had only one personality, then let us take a look at a totally human personality who performed this double duty of praying and suffering for his neighbour to an extraordinary degree.
Interminably, Moses, appointed by God to liberate his people from servitude, was insulted, ridiculed, and rejected by the very people he was trying to liberate. The insults of the Israelites on the desert extended to God Himself.
But, anytime God was provoked to punish these people for their ingratitude, their treachery, their idolatry, Moses would come in and plead passionately for them. Even when the Israelites collected the earrings of their wives, their sons and their daughters, cast them into an image and knelt before that image saying,
“These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:4).
And God was justifiably going to destroy them for this and foolhardiness, Moses said,
“Why, O Lord, should your anger burn against your People whom you brought out of the Land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ’I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster He had threatened.”(Exodus 32:11-15)
At this juncture, by way of a cliché, we consult the Great Saint Augustine on the Bishop:
He once said,
“With you I am a Christian, for you I am a Bishop. One is a privilege, the other is an obligation which carries with it difficult choices, but which must be made at all cost.”
In appointing Ezekiel as a prophet, God told him,
“I am sending you to the Israelites, a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day.” (Ezekiel 2:3).
God is sending you John to a flock, some of which have always been rebellious. They know better than you. They refuse even to accept the advice of their Bishop in regard to a distinction between Diocesan projects and Provincial ones. They would have revolted against you, they would have rejected you if you had not come from among their rank. Even now, a few reject you in their hearts. They do not realize that a Diocesan Bishop need not be an indigene of his Diocese.
Instead of thinking of the good of the Church they prefer to wish for what they consider to be good for themselves. Some priests, your own co-workers, will push you to the point of exasperation. The Israelites did that even to Moses, their liberator. He bore it all magnanimously until when they rushed on him to give then water to drink.
Moses exploded,
“Just listen, you rebels. Are we to provide water for you out of this rock?”(Numbers 20: 10)
Moses’ outburst for once showed a lack of confidence in God. It refused to acknowledge God’s holiness before the Israelites, and so God did not allow him to see the land that he was leading them to.
There is nothing more painful than for the people you are helping to reject you on the grounds that you are guilty of the crimes you are getting them out of.
Yes, there will be many challenges of this nature in your life. Rely on God when they come!
John, if I appear to be pessimistic and negatively critical, then God be blessed! That is precisely my intention!!
I am trying, if only indirectly, to plead with the small unpriestly elements among your Clergy to desist from meting out to you the sufferings they made me undergo, when I was in charge of them, accusing me of discrimination, favouritism, and Offinsoism.
For me this should help you to correct the few Priests who, instead of helping to put the few Lay People going astray back on the track of sanity, are themselves the chief instigators of such Lay Men and Women.
Your Patron Saint, John the Baptist, has given you the lead.
He accepted it as a duty to correct the inexplicable deviation of Herod from the Law of God. He paid for this with his blood.
He tells you never to attribute any success or for that matter any failures to yourself. Just do what he tells you and allow him to take the blame or compliment.
Remember that you are a“Pontifex”, not a “Pons”; you are a builder of bridges not the bridge itself. You are in the words of Hebrews “A representative of the Faithful before God,” trying to bridge the huge gap between humanity and Deity, which has been created and is continually being widened by man’s pride and insolence.
The Pons or the real bridge you will introduce in the bargain is Jesus Christ. He was the one whom your Patron Saint, John the Baptist, came to pave the way for.
Even though the eyes of the world will be on you as a Bishop, you are trying to promote Christ and his Mission.
Therefore, in accordance with the words of your Patron Saint, which you have adopted as your motto, “He must increase and you must decrease.”(John 3: 30)
You should enhance the name of Jesus, even if it means suppressing your own.
That motto of yours must be your philosophy of life, your pastoral orientation, and your evangelization push. It must make you rejoice greatly at Jesus, the Bridegroom.
You will allow Jesus Christ to live in you and you in him.
So that: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” (Philippians 2:10).
Amen
