Agege deanery of the Laity Coun-
cil of the Lagos Archdiocese on
Saturday, March 14th, organised
a retreat with a call on Christians who
want to follow Christ faithfully to pre-
pare for more persecution, trials and
temptations.
The one-day spiritual exercise held at
St Catherine, Alakuko, attracted large
crowd from the 11 parishes under the
deanery.
Other highlights of the exercise were
holy mass, confession, benediction,
recitation of the rosary, a talk on “the
consequences of following Christ in an
ungodly society” delivered by Rev. Fr.
Anthony Boateng, who is also the Parish
Priest of St Raphael Catholic Church,
Ajegunle-Ilo.
Fr Boateng dismissed insinuations that
once one follows Christ, things would go
smoothly.
He said, “Life cannot always be smooth.
It is full of ups and downs. If you want to
be a Christian, be ready for challenges;
sorrow, temptations will come. So have it
in your mind that it’s not going to be rosy
when you are following Christ.”
He, however, assured that whoever fol-
lows Christ faithfully and devotedly are
not working in vain as Christ has prom-
ised to be with such.
“If you have God, you have everything.
If you are in God, you don’t need to fear
the devil. Devil takes permission from
God before he can come to you as he did
to Job. “
He recalled Our Lord Jesus Christ,
his mother; the Virgin Mary, Job, Abra-
ham, the apostles and other Saints who
suffered persecutions and death for fol-
lowing Christ. He, however, said they all
reaped the fruits of their faithfulness and
dedication to God.
Fr Boateng said Christ doesn’t live His
followers because “on departing the
world, He prayed for the apostles, that
when troubles come that God will give
us the grace to overcome them. He did
not say troubles will not come. “
He regretted that many Christians still
behaved like the Israelites during the ex-
odus experience “because we don’t want
suffering, you do what others do, you
have forgotten that though you are in the
world but not of the world.”
“Temptation must come because you
are human, but don’t yield to it; tempta-
tion is not a sin, “Fr Boateng said.
During his homily at the mass, Rev Fr
Jude Abulu, who is also the chaplain of
the Laity Council in the deanery as well
the Parish Priest of St Catherine Alaku-
ko, dwelling on the Gospel reading of the
day which was on the prodigal son, said
most of the time “you and I behave like
the elder son because most of the time
he is expecting his father to reward him,
because his religiosity was not founded
on spirituality.”
“There are a lot of Christians who
strayed into the second son. A lot of us
want focus for ourselves. Most people
that contest elections in the society do
so in order to attract attention to them-
selves without doing anything to add to
the spirituality of members.
He said the story was a demonstration
of how loving God is to the people.
Urging the people to take the spiritual
exercise seriously, the homilist said “lent
is all about turning back to God strong-
er, more generous, more charitable and
asking for forgiveness not only from God
but our fellow human beings. “
The chairman of the Laity Council in
the deanery, Mr Charles Onyewu, said
the spiritual exercise was to re-exam-
ine ourselves with a view to improving
members spirituality.
