“Floyd pleaded for his life as the officer ground into him till he died. His death, not an isolated racist occurrence in America, provoked rarely seen protests and mayhem all over the U.S,” the Nigerian Bishop recounts and adds, “Many Americans wondered how such mindless mayhem could occur in the self-acclaimed greatest country in the world.”
The 58-year-old Bishop regrets “that human beings are able to go into space but are not able to love the neighbor with whom we live.”
The events in the U.S., Bishop Badejo reflects referencing Psalm 104, showcase “the contradictions that occur when a people drift from God in unbridled pursuit of science and self-serving pleasure. The reality is that devoid of God’s spirit, humanity diminishes and disintegrates. Conversely, the more a nation advances the more of God’s spirit it needs.”
“The Holy Spirit is the force that conquers the exaggerated notoriety of evil forces in the world today. It reminds us that the Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, not the devil’s,” Bishop Badejo reflects, citing Psalm 24.
He continues in reference to the first letter of St. John, “If we have the Holy Spirit in us, if we make a home for him in us, we are those to whom those powerful words are addressed: ‘He who is in you is stronger than he who is in the world.’”
The Nigerian Prelate who is also the President of the Pan African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS) emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is our “assurance that Jesus will never abandon us after all since we know that wherever the Holy Spirit is, there God the Father is and there Jesus is present.”
“In fact, the Holy Spirit is the force through which we experience the closeness of Jesus Christ, in healthy times or ailing times, through thick and thin, pandemic or no pandemic. Through him God makes all things new, and restores life to the dead,” he says.
On Pentecost Sunday, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Nigeria’s Abuja Archdiocese said, “We fail to make very significant progress because we still don’t speak a common language of love.”
Archbishop Kaigama who was presiding over Mass at the Church of Assumption in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja clarified, “The language we speak is of war, superiority, pride, prejudice, hatred, threats, discrimination, etc. instead of the language of the Holy Spirit which is the language of love and forgiveness.”
He continued, “We have the tendency to ignore or look down on people we think don’t have much to offer.”
