Rev. Fr. James Kwaku Sedem Wormenor, a Divine Word Missionary (SVD), at his send-off Mass at the St. Mary Mother of God, Parish Adeemra in the Apostolic Vicariate of Donkorkrom, Eastern Ghana, has posed the soul-searching question why people still hunger for love even when ‘love’ is one most commonly used word in the world.
“Beloved in Christ, though we hear the word love, love, love, all over the world, people are still hungry for love. Women are searching for love, men are searching for love, children, elders are searching for love, everyone is searching for love,” he laments.
And the big question, he continued, is “why are we still searching for love if love is a commonly used word in our society?”
“We are searching for love because we have misinterpreted the meaning of love. Everybody now has his own definition of love. For some, love means I have to benefit from the other. For others, love is lust. For some others, love is cheating. For some, love is to play games with other people’s feelings. For yet some others, love is to use others for their own benefit and throw them away later on. For some, love is a means of getting connected. For some, love is money,” the Priest explained.
Reflecting on the First Reading from the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B (Dt. 6:2-6), he drew the attention of the faithful to what he termed “faith profession in God” given to the Israelites – “Listen oh Israel, the Lord your God is one and you must love him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul”.
He added that the Gospel Reading (Mk. 12:28b-34), re-echoes the message of the First reading, but this time, Jesus completes the message: “After loving God with all your mind, body and soul, and everything in you, you must love your neighbor as yourself,” the priest declared.
The homilist opined that nobody has a problem when it comes to God, as when it has to do with loving our fellow human beings.
“To say I love God is easy. But when it comes to loving your neighbour, that is where we are struggling,” he underpinned.
He buttressed on the importance of love saying that people who encounter love experience some kind of joy and fulfilment in their lives. “Anybody who experiences love begins to feel different,” he added.
“Today the readings, especially the Gospel Reading calls us to love perfectly; to love our neighbor,” the priest reiterated, and making reference to the Good Samaritan story in Luke 10, he made it clear that a neighbor is anyone who is in need.
Fr. Wormenor further underlined the fact that because true love is expensive, it is very rare to get. Therefore “If we are saying we are Christians and we want to love, then we must have understanding of that love as sacrifice, and if we give this understanding to love, then we can love unconditionally” he noted.
“To love perfectly, you have to sacrifice your comfort sometimes. You have to sacrifice your pride, your self-interest. You have to sacrifice your time for the other. Sometimes even you have to sacrifice your property; what you own, for the other person,” the priest stressed, adding that that was exactly what Christ did when he came and died on the Cross for us.
The priest made further reference to Mother Theresa who recommended that we should “love until it hurts,” saying that when you love in that manner; when you can feel the pain of love, then you know it is not easy to love.
“It is only when you love like this that you begin to say that I have loved God and I have loved my neighbour,” he declared.
Reflecting further on 1Cor. 13:4f, a passage he referred to as “the DOs and DON’Ts of love, Fr. Wormenor charged the Christians to use it as a guide for love of their neighbours, and love for one another if they truly want to love.
“Beloved in Christ, today as Christians, we are being sent love perfectly. To give the world the love that it hungers for, he endeared, adding that “when we love perfectly, people around us feel it. We don’t need to say it with our mouths before they feel it”.
According to the young SVD priest, one of their SVD Saints, Joseph Freinandemetze once said that “love is the only language understood by everybody”, because “children can feel it and understand it, elders can feel it and understand it, those who speak other languages, when you show them love, they know. Even the blind see it and understand it. The deaf hear it and understand”.
He prayed that God may bless the faithful with His grace to be instruments of perfect love out there in the world.
The heavily attended November 3, 2024 send-off Mass for Fr. James Wormenor, who had barely worked in the Parish for 3 months before his transfer, was officiated by the outgoing priest himself, and concelebrated by Rev. Fr. Dionysius Kopong, SVD, Parish Priest and Rev. Fr. Sofronio Endoma, SVD, priest in charge of the Island Missions of the Vicariate, representing the District Head of the SVDs in the Afram Plains, Rev. Fr. Vincent Amuzu Asafo.
Present at the farewell Mass were the Missionary Sisters, Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSpS) together with some students of St. Mary’s Vocational / Technical Senior High School, Adeemra.
Others were Hon. Sorkpa Mawuli Joshua, Assembly Member for Adeemra, some staff of Adeemra Health Centre and Donkorkrom Presbyterian Hospital, a representative of Compassion International, representatives from St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, Donkorkrom, and some Outstations of St. Mary Mother of God Parish, Adeemra.
By Sr. Sylvie Lum Cho, MSHR (DEPSOCOM, Donkorkrom Apostolic Vicariate)
