Christian Cardinal Tumi’s New Year Homily: “Material poverty afflicting the majority of Cameroonians is the result of spiritual poverty which renders the heart of the Cameroonian man and woman “complicated and sick,” the prelate says

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

 

Brothers and Sisters:

 

Here we are again at the beginning of a New Year. This is an opportunity for us to thank the Lord for enabling us to see this first day of the New Year. Please forgive me for not starting, as I always do, by wishing you a Happy New Year. Be a bit patient so I can first of all present my New Year wishes to my Mother! I’m not talking of my mother, Mama Catherine, whom you all know is over a hundred years old already, but it’s about my Mother in Heaven, whose feast day the Church celebrates this first day of January, by giving her the most beautiful title of glory: Mother of God.

 

God knows that over the centuries Catholics (and Orthodox Christians as well) have added to her crown of glory the most precious jewels under the most enviable words: The Immaculate Conception, the Ever Virgin …. But, the most precious diamond on her crown, the most precious title, the one of which the others are a mere extension, is the one given at the Council of Ephesus on June 22, 431: Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God.

 

Yes, Happy New Year to you, Mary, Mother of God!

 

You became the Mother of God when your virginal body had the honour to truly give the Son of our Heavenly Father a human body, which enabled him to fully belong to the human race.

 

You became the Mother of God when you said “Yes” and received in you the Word of God, the Word made Flesh. Incredible though this may sound, God did indeed say “Mama” to a woman!

 

You became the Mother of God through your continual fidelity to your exceptional vocation, and, as Jesus will one day say: “My mother and my brother are those who listen to my word and put it in practice.” But who, better than you, did listen and put in practice these words of Christ?

 

You were the Mother of God when, as you discreetly “meditated all that was said in your heart,” you prepared your Son for his great mission of salvation, for his final sacrifice.

 

You were again the Mother of God when, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, you were present at all the “births” marking the great history of salvation: Christmas, Calvary, and Pentecost.

It is therefore not so strange that, in this day’s Gospel, the shepherds should have noticed you first before Joseph, and even before the new born baby. And they left marveling at this new born baby, obviously, but also at the picture of a mother feeding her baby with love. Such simple maternal acts carried in them an unsuspecting grandeur since they were being made to the Son of God.

 

All the mothers of the world were thus promoted through you, and it is natural that they, in turn, have taken pleasure in calling their own infants as their loving “Jesus”.

 

But, do you think saying “Happy New Year” to Mary is something a little out of order? Mary is in eternity; she is no longer in time. She has nothing to do with the New Year, which cannot add one little wrinkle to her face.

 

Well, I’m not so sure. Mary is also the mother of humanity, and, by virtue of this fact, she continues to follow the story of each of her children. How can Mary be fully happy in her eternity if all her children are not united around the Father?

 

She is interested in the New Year, and that is why I wish that she would not be disappointed with her children, especially Christians, who together with her are responsible for bringing Christ into the lives of others.

 

In fact, Christians, and men and women of good will in our country, have disappointed the Virgin Mary, protector of Cameroon, throughout the past year.

 

Do we need to recall that ten months ago, in February 2008, our country faced one of the greatest crises of its existence; what has been termed “the Food Riots”.

 

These sad events, which no one would ever want to relive, brought distress into many families, whose children were killed as they took to the streets with empty hands to make themselves heard, to shout out their frustration against misery, unemployment, corruption and price hikes on our markets.

 

Companies and individuals lost several years of investments and sacrifices through looting. What lessons have Christians, sons and daughters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who govern our country and assume heavy responsibilities before God and before man, drawn from these events?

 

It would seem that the promises made to reduce the prices of basic commodities were just wasted effort as the situation has deteriorated further, instead of improving.

 

Go to our local markets and to the super-markets of our big cities and you will find that the price of a kilogram of meat, fish and chicken has risen dramatically. Housewives are suffocating under the price of even a liter of oil. There, where we thought a solution had been found, the situation seems to have worsened.

 

The Cameroonian people seem to have been taken hostage in their own country because they can hardly breathe; they can barely obtain what they need at an affordable price. Everything is expensive. Which leads one to wonder who is making fun of who here.

 

I continue to wonder when Cameroonians would be able to earn a salary that can enable them to make both ends meet each month.

 

When are we ever going to feel secure in our towns and villages?

 

Corruption, which has been so openly denounced but timidly tackled, is now not only expanding but has become a veritable institution, even though laudable efforts have been made over the years to combat it.

 

Corruption, which earned Cameroon a “gold medal” on the list of the most corrupt countries in the world, even though we are “poor and highly indebted”, is a consequence of a greater evil, which evil, I stress over and over again, is called “impunity.”

 

Insofar as the laws of this country shall continue to be violated and stepped on by the same people who voted them and are charged with the responsibility of implementing them, the fight against corruption shall remain ineffective. Impunity remains a veritable cancer in Cameroon because it rewards the guilty – often the rich and influential – and penalizes the poor and the weak.

 

There, too, I wonder who is mocking who?

 

When shall we recover the billions of francs that have been embezzled, and which, we are told, the embezzlers have openly admitted embezzling?

 

When will the said money be restituted into the public treasury? And what guarantee is there that even when the said money finds itself back into the treasury other embezzlers of public funds will not siphon it away in turn?

 

Not only should such money be restituted into the public treasury, but it should be used openly for social needs that everyone can see and that are of benefit to all Cameroonians.

 

When will such stolen money, that has only benefited a handful of unscrupulous individuals, be used to build roads for our people?

 

When will we build low-cost houses with this money to benefit all those Cameroonians languishing in shacks while those pillaging the public treasury, and their accomplices within and outside the country, are building for themselves colossal and ostentatious mansions as if to make a mockery of the poor?

 

When will this stolen money be used to build new amphitheatres to ease the congestion in classrooms that make us ashamed of our universities where the young ones are packed like sardine to follow classes?

 

When will this stolen wealth be used to electrify public places in our cities and villages where bandits take advantage of darkness to steal, rape and kill with impunity?

 

Those are questions which each Christian, son or daughter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, cannot help asking, even if in Cameroon you are immediately branded an opponent of the ruling class by merely asking such questions?.

 

But who can remain indifferent to such a state of affairs, or who is not appalled by it, insofar as misery and poverty continue to progress? How can it be possible that anyone in Cameroon can be happy all alone, while all around him all he hears are cries of distress?

 

What we are condemning in our society is only the tip of an iceberg of spiritual poverty which has been consuming Christians and the authorities of our country. Pope Benedict XVI, who will be visiting our country over the next few months, puts it very clearly in his Message for the celebration of the Word Day of Peace: “We know that other, non-material forms of poverty exist which are not the direct and automatic consequence of material deprivation.  For example, in advanced wealthy societies, there is evidence of marginalization, as well as affective, moral and spiritual poverty seen in people whose interior lives are disoriented and who experience various forms of malaise despite their economic prosperity.”

 

Then why are we surprised that our country is advancing on two steps? Some have it all, while others have nothing. Some have worked to get what they have, while others have acquired what they have illegally and fraudulently.

 

Material poverty afflicting the majority of Cameroonians is the result of this spiritual poverty, which renders the heart of the Cameroonian man and woman “complicated and sick”, as the prophet Jeremiah puts it.

 

I again turn to Pope Benedict XVI, who writes: “When poverty strikes a family, it is the children who are the most vulnerable victims: almost half of those living in absolute poverty today are children. To take the side of children when considering poverty means giving priority to those objectives which concern them most directly, such as caring for mothers, commitment to education, access to vaccines, medical care and drinking water, safeguarding the environment, and above all, commitment to the defence of the family and the stability of relations within it.”

 

Can we say that that is true of Cameroon? Is that what is happening in the city of Douala ?

 

How often do we hear promises such as: school is free, or will be free, and yet parents are being crushed by the weight of debts because they cannot afford to send all their children to school?

 

When then will this so-called free school become a reality for the ordinary Cameroonian? When will we have schools where each year the school books will not be changed in complete defiance of ethical and pedagogical concerns? Each year, parents have to buy new school books for their children. No where else in the world can such a joke be possible.

 

The Holy Father, whom I quoted a short while ago, says in the same message that “the gap between the rich and the poor has become more marked, even in the most economically developed nations. This is a problem which the conscience of humanity cannot ignore, since the conditions in which a great number of people are living are an insult to their innate dignity and, as a result, are a threat to the authentic and harmonious progress of the world community.”

 

I wish you, who do not want to disappoint your Mother in heaven, a Happy New Year.

 

Happy New Year to you during this year of grace. Yes, each year is a year of grace, that is, a year in which God’s grace leads us. That does not mean that we will have a year without deaths, without disease, without disruptions, without solitude, without inundations, without suffering. It is a year in which you are assured that, whatever your condition of life, Emmanuel, God with us, shall always be at your side. He will always be in the heart of the storms of your life, even if you think that he is sleeping in a cabin.

That was the secret of Saint Therese of Lisieux, whose relics – a bone from her arm – which is in the sarcophagus that is in front of you, had to endure during nine years of her monastic life at Carmel de Lisieux. She threw herself in the arms of the Lord like a small, helpless child entirely dependent on his Father. That is the small way, the secret of her spirituality: total abandonment of herself in the hands of God whatever difficulties she might face in life.

 

I appeal first of all to the youth to answer the call of the Church in various ways and in groups that will be organized throughout this year in preparation for our Diocesan Synod.

 

The youth will become adults in a world where materialism, individualism, egocentrism, shall endanger peace and democracy. One spiritual writer once said: “When the youth become cold, the rest of the world gnash their teeth.”

 

Our world has become an immense supermarket where one shelf is completely empty, that of values. Economic considerations hold sway over the spiritual; private interests supersede the common good. Are you then surprised that corruption should reign supreme, even in areas where the youth are the most active, such as sports?

 

Speaking of poverty, the Pope, whose message for this year, I invite you to meditate on, raised the disturbing problem which touches both adults and youth alike, but especially the youth at the most active part of their useful life in society; we are talking of diseases that are wiping out whole generations: “Another area of concern has been the pandemic diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS. Insofar as they affect the wealth-producing sectors of the population, they are a significant factor in the overall deterioration of conditions in the country concerned. …  It is especially hard to combat AIDS, a major cause of poverty, unless the moral issues connected with the spread of the virus are addressed. First and foremost, educational campaigns are needed, aimed especially at the young, to promote sexual ethic that fully corresponds to the dignity of the person.”

 

May the youth reject the superficial world where the talk is more of Miss Cameroon, Miss World, than of young men or women who live morally upright lives, in solidarity with those who suffer, fighting there where he or she opposes all forms of moral and material corruption.

 

I now wish you all, Christians of today, who live in a secularized world in which you are in the minority and are not very visible, not to become the “fake” ones of tomorrow; but to be the neon light, like those thousands of lights that brightly light up our streets during festivities.

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I wish you all Christians of day,and belated happy new year 2009......