BY REV. FR. GERALD NWAFOR
I used to think that liturgical practices in the church could be unilateral. But with experience and facts before me, I am retracing my steps. I do not want to deal with substances of worship, which cannot be changed anyway, but with the cultural differences and personalities. I used to sit in my brother’s shop when the people from Western Nigeria would come to the market. Not to exaggerate, it would take nothing less than five minutes for them to ask how you are. I do not understand the language very well, but I was amazed by what they were saying in that exchange of pleasantries.
One of them, mostly the senior person, would be asking a question, and the junior person would be answering swiftly, to the point that you would ask yourself if the person asking hears what the respondent was saying. When I got the privilege to visit the western part of Nigeria later in life. I discovered that they value greeting so much that if you do not greet with that passion, they see it as a sign of disrespect. They can party a whole day, drinking and dancing.
Their sense of time has nothing like urgency. They take their time to do whatever they put their mind to. I went to a liturgical service in the morning on a weekday (regular morning Mass), which was about an hour and a half. The catechist would greet the congregation for coming, and the priest, in his introduction, would greet the same people for coming. Homily is divided into three main parts, namely, the greeting again, the homily itself, and the conclusion, which is a minor greeting. After the Mass, the priest asked me if the Mass was long. I said no because I did not want him to feel bad. But knowing what I know now, I think it should be about communicating Christ to the people, not about how long or short the time was. The Europeans are very conscious of time, so they always look at their watch and have a kind of asymmetrical followership to their plan. The culture of the people plays a large part in the way they worship God. Man, being a religious being, has been in a worshiping mode before the advent of Christianity.
Our forefathers believed that you give time to the deity for the deity to listen and protect you. The fact that the leader of a church wants to sing before the homily should not be a problem for other leaders. If the congregation loves the musician-priest because of his talent, the only thing we can contribute is admiration or tell him to make sure that the song is a gospel song, not a mundane song. If it is a priest who loves to share stories like Jesus, we should enjoy the story or tell him to always tie the story to the readings. There are many ways to get to the destination. Meanwhile, the church in Nigeria has a tradition of offertory in all the Masses, which is in line with the traditional worship that whenever you are visiting the shrine, you must bring something for sacrifice, no matter how small. During funerals, weddings, weekday morning Mass, and jubilees and anniversaries, the church in Nigeria would have an offertory collection as long as there is a liturgical celebration, and in some cases, two collections. I have gone around a little bit, and some people do not collect offertory in any other thing outside the Sunday collection.
It was an eye-opener for me. The time factor is not the problem and should not be. Development is also a factor because I wonder how many churches or dioceses in Nigeria would tell the congregation after Mass to go to the church website and read the announcement. That will be a joke taken too far. I once visited a website of my friend who was trying to create a civil society in his parish where people can go to the web and read the announcements, and if possible, donate and give their offering online. I was fascinated, and I told him that I would like to watch the progress and the milestones he has achieved. We spent the whole night trying to open the website, and the system was running round and round. We were not successful that night, and I encouraged him to keep trying until he gets it right, but I left the following morning, wondering why we should be quick to copy the developed nation and their behavior. I think we should remember that we must live with our realities (Nku di na mba na eghere mba nri).
We cannot be American or European in Nature because God has a reason to make you African first, so that you can also bring something into the liturgy.Finally, I would just say that virtue stands in the middle: too much of everything is bad (Agbara gbara gbafe oke oburu ala). The ordination ceremony I went to in Nigeria lasted for four hours, which I would say is moderate. The one I went to in America lasted for 86 minutes. I cannot juxtapose the two because the one in Nigeria has ten candidates for ordination and more than 10,000 people in the congregation. There was also an offertory and long lines for communion. The one in America had 6 candidates for ordination and fewer than 500 people in the congregation, and the bishop spoke for 15 minutes during the homily, which was also the same amount of time the Nigerian bishop spent in his homily. The congregation in Nigeria was electrified and vibrant, while the congregation in America was calm and civil.
There was pomp and pageantry in Nigeria, but in the American situation, it was different, no Igba-Eze, Aku-na-eche enyi, Igba umu ogalanya, et al. But in both situations, I experienced God in the celebration and the people. There was no way the Nigerian liturgy could fly in the European community or the American public. On the other hand, there is no way you can gather 10,000 people for an ordination Mass and tell them not to make a joyful noise unto the lord for what he has done for his people. We all express our thanksgiving differently. Mass is the highest form of thanksgiving we can give to God, so I encourage you to give it to him the best way you know it keeping the guidelines of the liturgy and love.
