It was a usual evening meal with the Bishop.  All the guests had been shown into the dining hall which in many ways resembled a refectory of a monastery.  It was a long narrow room with an equally long rather narrow table which spanned nearly its entire length.  Chairs lined the table at regular intervals.  The table could comfortably accommodate twenty persons, but on the evening in question only six persons were in attendance excluding His eminence.

 His Eminence’s arrival was eagerly awaited.  All stood up to greet him as he entered and he went around the table greeting all of his guests with a warm handshake and they all in due course kneeled and kissed the Bishop’s ring.

“You are welcome, please be seated; and forgive my lateness.”

He said smiling at all of them.  He looked around,

“You do not all know one another?”

 “ Of course, Father John and father Michael, I must introduce you to Brother Joseph of the Holy Cross who just arrived from Mbaise; and Monsignor Obi just arrived from Rome.”

“Let us start off with a thanksgiving to God for bringing us all together this day to break bread, and share in a common meal. Heavenly Father, bless us and and the meal we are about to receive as a result of your generosity, remember the poor, the sick and the dying. This we ask through Christ our Lord.”

All responded “ Amen”, and made the sign of the cross.

The food was served by the stewards who were both dressed in white.

 “ Brother Joseph, have some meat and stew with your rice today, I ask you to set all fasting aside today.”

 Brother Joseph neither smiled nor frowned.  It was apparent that they were familiar with each other; the one being chided on his austerity and the other being used to requesting a suspension of the same.

 “ My Lord” he responded quietly,” “You know I am under obedience to you, and have always kept the vow of obedience, however, my digestion is no longer used to meat and it has become more of a penance to partake of this delicacy than to forego it.”

 His eminence nodded in acquiescence’

 “My brothers, brother Joseph always has the same excuse, and he always gets his way with the meat”.

 The company all laughed.

 “ Monsignor,I have not had a chance to find out how all is in Rome? Now you must tell me all that is going on. What news we can expect from Rome?” 

“The Pope is very sick my lord, there is talk that he might not be with us much longer, he is clearly loved.”

“Yes, dearly loved by all; but he has been sick for so long and that rumor has circulated for a long time.”

“We are all very nervous, if he dies who would succeed him? Then we worry because his shoes would be too hard to fill, and in a way one would have to feel sorry for whoever would follow him because they would always be comparing all your actions with his and it would be so glaringly obvious that one does not live up to his predecessor.”

“There will always be great Bishop’s and great Pope’s, and likewise lesser ones.”

“There was even some talk that maybe Cardinal Arinze could become the successor the next Pope…”

“I know I’ve heard all this, in all things may God’s will be done.  It would still matter little to us you know.  The pope would be in far away Rome, and we would still be here, in Enugu; with our wants, and our vices and needs, and vocations.  The point I make Monsignor, is it would matter little or not at all to us who the Pope was or is, as Rome is so very far away from us.”

“However, you say that your eminence, knowing full well that if any of the liberated western cardinals were to become the successor they could shake the very stones of St. Peter’s Basilica.”

“I know, I know, Monsignor.  Surely it was providential that he became Pope at all!!! We must trust in God’s providence in all these matters.  I still maintain, that little here would change.  We would still have no funds for church building, no funds for the schools, no funds for the orphans, no funds for the hospitals …the list goes on and on.”

 Monsignor did not say anything, neither did Fathers John or Michael or Brother Joseph.  They all looked at each other fully understanding the implications of the Bishop’s tirade. “Yes”, said the Bishop, “ Hmpf! We lack everything, except vocations.  We have too many vocations! But we have no money to house all the religious women.  We have no funds to train priests.  Forgive me Lord! But at times it makes me sad, and I have often asked our Lord about this.  What do we do Lord? So many are knocking on our doors, our seminaries are overflowing with young men; we have to turn them away. We turn them away in the hundreds.  I told Brother Joseph the other day that we will soon need to send our priests to the missions of Europe to re evangelize the West.”

All laughed except Brother Joseph who did not seem to think the idea was amusing.  After shoveling a few forkfuls of rice into his mouth he quickly excused himself from the table to attend to some urgent matter.

After dinner, Monsignor left for the chapel alone, as it had been decided that all should say the evening prayers separately that night as a matter of convenience to all.  Father John, Michael and the Bishop withdrew to the Bishop’s study.

The death of Father Michael:

Good news is said to travel fast, but bad news travels faster.  Within hours of a lorry running into the white Peugeot that Father Micheal drove, news of the mangled car and its probable occupant spread like wildfire through the diocese.

  To make matters worse, the accident was in the middle of the night on a remote stretch of road far away from assistance.  The lorry driver jumped out of his truck with his assistant driver running beside him. They ran to the car lying on it’s roof in the bush with the entire driver’s side crushed.

“ Ne gu de ya, ne gu de ya.”  The driver shouted. 

They opened the car door and started to tug on the man’s upper torso to dislodge him from behind the steering wheel.

 “ Na fada” “ the assistant exclaimed in disbelief. 

“ I know” said the driver, “I don’t understand he no wan’ comut . Pull him by the shoulder”.
And they struggled and brought the father out.  His eyes were closed.  He was placed in the back of the empty lorry on top of some sacks, his cassock becoming bright red from a large gash on the scalp.  Not once did he open his eyes, nor did any word pass his mouth.  By the time the lorry pulled into the parking lot of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital the once vibrant priest’s body was as cold as stone. 

On arriving, the driver ran  frantically up to the admitting clerk shouting   “ help! “ Fada  de for truck, I think say he dead.’

 A porter arrived with a stretcher and he was wheeled into the entrance of the emergency room. A young doctor dressed in a tie and a white coat rushed forward,

 “No Bp, no pulse, no spontaneous respirations. Nurse, this father is dead, take him to the mortuary.”

 “ Do we have any identification?”

 “ No ma.”

Final identification was to be made by the director of the seminary.  Father Stephen was delegated to personally deliver the news to father John and Father Michael’s mother and young sister.

Father John’s eulogy:

Your lordship, Monsignor, my brothers in the priesthood, my sisters who are here from all walks of religious life- the daughters of Divine love, and the Holy Rosary sisters, and all good men joined here today.  We gather here today to mourn the loss of our dearly beloved son, brother , servant of God, Father Michael.

 I was most privileged to have met father Michael as the spiritual director of the seminary Bigard memorial in Enugu.  It was as you can imagine with great sorrow that I came to learn of father’s premature death.

  I call it premature, because under his tutelage, the number of seminarians at Bigard memorial had increased in logarithmic progression to the point that so many with vocations had to be literally turned away.

 Furthermore, his life was exemplary, he was a shining example of “ Christ in our midst”, tirelessly toiling for his spouse the church.

 Yet calling his departure premature on our part, is presumptuous.  It is presumptuous because that means that we have dispossessed God of His will; we have told Him that we know better, when or how a man should die.  We do this with little consciousness that if the work that was to be done had been done, then it is God’s time.

  Calling it premature means that we have become victims of the pagan philosophy that length of days signifies holiness of life.  Whereas it is not the number of days that begets holiness. Indeed some of the greatest of the saints lived short and fruitful lives.  To his mother I can only say look at the picture of the Blessed Virgin who too outlived her son; who in agony watched as he bore a cross and overcame this pain, which I must tell you that short of your own death will be the worst that you have ever experienced.

To the seminarians who so looked to Father Michael for spiritual direction  and teaching.  I can only say, that you sorrow rightfully at your loss.  Your loss is real; remember that our loss has become heaven’s gain.  Remember, that he can now as St. Pul say I have run the great race, I have kept the faith .  he toild tirelessly to the end.  On the night of his death he had finished giving a retreat to Sisters of Divine Lone in Awka, and was on his way back to the seminary late in the night.  As God would have it, he was never to return, and he was to die long before the truck reached the Teaching Hospital. 

As a novice master he strove to improve the conditions of out seminary, trying his best to make the accommodations decent and en par with similar accommodations world wide.  He appealed shamelessly to Rome on the behalf of our people, insisting that our seminaries must meet certain standards, both physically and spiritually.   I know for a fact that these matter scaused him great distress and were often a distraction from his own pursuit of holiness. There were vdays where he felt that he had rather be in a contemplative position.  Uner obedience ti His Holiness the Bishop of Enugu, he staye din his position.  Once again this was a sign of the readiness with which h epursued the Will of God; putting his own desires for a contemplative union with God on hold to do the Lord’s work in an active apostolate both inside and outside our seminary’s walls.  He will be sorely missed by so many.  However, I want to say on this day, Mt brother’s , father Michael himself who spoke so eloquently as many funerals, would have told you.  Put your sorrow behind you and weep not for me, for I have gone to meet my father. There is no one who has gone to the nether world and returned to tell us wahat they saw, but we know from Holy Scripture that “ Eye has not seen, nor ear heardb the glory that awaits for them that believe in God.”  

The weeping could be heard emanating from the hall.  It was one thing to theorize about the beauty of everlasting life and quite another to come to grips with a loss so profound and so acute. For his mother she had lost a spiritual adviser, a loving son, and for the seminarians they had lost the single most influential person in the seminary.  Although he had been feared for his strictness which he could not compromise as novice master, yet he had loved his novices sincerely, and had only used this lance of fraternal correction when all other measures had failed.  He had been a protégée of the Bishop of Enugu, and the Bishop too wept in his chair.  For it was, he the elder, who should have preceded his spiritual son in death.