‘Nothing can separate us from the love of God’ (Romans 8:39). Romans 8, 39. It was this statement by Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans that sisters Delphine SOME and Jessica NAON took as the light that would guide their lives as followers of Christ, on 28 September 2024, in Burkina Faso.
During the prayer, on the eve of their religious profession, we communed with the experience that the future professed sisters had lived during their time of formation to religious life and their novitiate in Cameroon. Each of them shared how they had experienced God’s gratuitous love and his presence in their lives, and how much extracts from our Source Texts and spiritual pages had enriched this time. They also expressed their gratitude for the support and affection of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit whom they had met in the house of formation and in the training communities. There have also been moments of desert and doubt on their journey, but the love of the Lord has been stronger, the reason for the first ‘yes’ they are preparing to say as they follow Christ in the Congregation. These experiences were moments that helped to consolidate their faith. We, the Daughters of the Holy Spirit, the novices and postulants present, benefited and profited from such rich spiritual sharing with our future young sisters.
The temporary profession took place on 28 September 2024 in the community’s new chapel in Koudougou. Before Mass, the chapel and its tabernacle were blessed by Father Louis OUEDRAOGO, the parish priest of Saint Joseph Mukassa, who invited us, sisters and lay people, to make it a place of prayer and sanctification. The rest of the Mass was presided over by Father Alphonse YONLI, of the Discalced Carmelite Order, who is in charge of the novitiate. In his homily, he insisted on the ‘yes’ of the professed sisters to follow Christ, free and gratuitous: it is a first ‘yes’ that should have eternal value in their hearts. He instructed the young sisters to take care of their fraternal life in community because, he said, ‘the community is the first place of mission: when all goes well within it, the mission also goes well. There’s no point in shining in the mission and being unpleasant companions in community; the two must go hand in hand to bear witness to the joy of the Gospel’. He did not hesitate to recall the importance of the feeling of belonging to the religious family.
After this homily full of instructions, we attended the dialogue between the two professed sisters and the vice-provincial, Sister Silvie ROAMBA, which led to the individual taking of vows and the sending out on mission to our communities and peoples. The small delegation of parents, friends, associates and children, who had come to witness Delphine and Jessica’s commitment, joyfully took part in the celebration, which was set to the rhythm of the choir’s beautiful songs and dances. The sisters of the vice-province were delighted to welcome their two new young sisters!
A Mass intention linked to this Mass of religious profession was that of thanksgiving for the jubilee of twenty-five years of profession of religious life by our first Daughter of the Holy Spirit from Burkina Faso, Sister Olga KIENDREBEOGO. We prayed for her and expressed our joy and congratulations for the path she has opened up for us in Burkina Faso.
A fraternal meal with our guests and the chosen ones of the day ended the ceremony of the first vows of our sisters Jessica and Delphine to whom we wish a beautiful and fruitful mission in the following of Christ.
Sister Denise MEDA, DHS – Koudougou. Published on 2 October 2024
