My dear knights and ladies of the Marshallan fraternity,
This third letter from my desk comes in the vein of the tradition that allows the reigning Supreme Knight of our Order to send out a Christmas message to all Brothers and Sisters of our fraternity. I am happy to continue in this tradition because it gives me the opportunity to wish you all my dear Brothers and Sisters and your families, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year full of God’s Blessings. Under God’s supernatural power, may you all increase in health, wisdom, prosperity and holiness in the coming year. And may you, in the year ahead, be bountifully filled with the spirit of unity, charity, fraternity and service. Kindly extend same to families of Brothers and Sisters who have joined the Noble Order above.
This month, I have chosen to address you on the subject of “making ourselves available to the Church”. My choice of the subject is due to the relationship that I see it has with the whole essence of Christmas. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. But beyond this, is the even more important celebration of Jesus making himself available as God’s instrument for the salvation of mankind. The Bible gives us several quotations to support this assertion. For example, at the beginning of Johns’ Gospel, we read about the Word which was with God; which was the source of life, which life brought light to humanity. In Philippians 2:6-8 we read about Jesus not clinging to his Godly nature but in obedience to the Father, giving up all He had and making Himself available to carrying out God’s plan of salvation for mankind. Romans 5:8 says that “it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us”. What Love!
Many prophets had prophesised Jesus’ coming into the world but the actualization of the prophecies is what we celebrate as Christmas. Have we ever stopped to think for a moment what would have happened to the human race if Jesus, the ideal of the Christian knight, had decided to cling to his equality with the Father and refused to make Himself available to be sent into the world?
For me therefore, the celebration of Christmas, should among other things, remind, renew and strengthen our resolve to make ourselves available individually and collectively as Marshallan knights and ladies to help the church. We need to make ourselves available or more available whichever maybe the case to various aspects of Church life, such as areas that bear on youth formation, our professions, providing leadership and support to church institutions and businesses such as “The Standard” newspaper and Quality Insurance Company, etc.
For example, it is quite common these days to hear adults complain about the youth of today. We lament their indiscipline, laziness, disorientation, disrespect, etc. But are the youth of today not what they are because many of us have not been available to them? Could it be that the youth are in this situation because many of us have failed in our task of guiding and educating them to become hardworking and helpful, duty conscious and disciplined, focussed and motivated, respectful and resourceful? One needs to just take a look at how we treat the Junior Order of our fraternity to understand the point I am making. We simply don’t care beyond dressing them up to join our Church parades. The generality of the Noble Order has abandoned the Junior Order to the few organisers, some of whom themselves require some organising. Yet our youth in the Church today whether in the Marshallan fraternity or not, need formators who are ready to walk beside them and be their friends to release the great potentials God has put in them. Our youth need adult friends who appreciate them and would help them appreciate themselves and their talents; friends who would counsel them in their fields of study and choice of careers, friends who understand them and the many challenges they face today; friends who would motivate them, lift them up when they fall; friends who would invest in them because they are indeed assets, and challenge them to bloom and blossom wherever they are and have been planted in our society by God. That is what the youth of today need and is this too much to ask of Marshallans?. Let us make ourselves available.
Our Noble Order is awash with professionals and intellectuals of all sorts. It is indeed a “goldmine” of high calibre, excellent quality and diversified human resources. These rich and enviable human resources are found in almost every parish of our Church yet how do we make them available to the Church and even to our Order? Would it be an idea to form a network of professionals within our Order and from that, a database of experts whose knowledge and capabilities could be made available to the Church when needed? Let us move away from the situation where apart from the occasions when we attend Church services in full regalia, many of us are content with attending first Masses on Sundays and slipping quietly away for the rest of the week.
Following from this is the issue of joblessness of many of our young people. There are many of us who occupy positions in our jobs with possibilities to employ others. Could we be a little “inward looking” and make some of the jobs available to the jobless of our Church?
The Noble order is a fully paid up shareholder or part owner of The Catholic Standard (weekly newspaper). I guess many of you did not know that. At the last AGM held in Accra which also happened to be the very first since the newspaper was born, your representatives at the meeting managed to get a seat on the Board of the paper for the Noble Order. This places an additional responsibility on the Noble Order to help circulate the paper within Ghana. Again, could we make ourselves available to support this effort? As a first step I entreat all Marshallans in Ghana to resolve to buy a copy of the Standard each week. It is only GH?0.4, very affordable. Second, there are many of us in high positions in Ministries Departments and Agencies and in the private sector and who can influence adverts in favour of “The Standard”? Could we help here as well?
My brothers and sisters, there are many more areas that we can make ourselves available to our Church. Let us wake up to our responsibilities and make ourselves available to support the Holy Roman Catholic Church which we have sworn to defend at all times and under all circumstances.
Remember, YOU ARE THE KEY! Make yourself available as much as possible and be counted in more significant ways than you have hitherto been, towards the growth of our Church.
Once again, have a blessed Christmas!
Yours fraternally
SIR KT. EDDIE PRAH
(SUPREME KNIGHT