“Rejoice in the Lord Always, Again I Say Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4)

Abstract

At a time when the world and the church are short of reasons for celebration, here is a candidate: I invite you to celebrate the priesthood in this “Year for Priests.” I recommend that we applaud especially those who are in the ministerial priesthood because in our contemporary African society they are like the “Fiddler on Roof” who has to balance precariously different facets of his life. Do you remember the movie with that title? In the movie, the protagonist, Tevye, is an archetypal symbol of the tension in the meeting of two cultures, western civilisation as industrialisation and the Jewish culture as tradition. The “invading” western culture is daring, aggressive and too sophisticated to be ignored. The Jewish traditions, ingrained in the cultural life of the village of Anatevka in general and in Tevye in particular, seem ill-equipped to adequately confront it.