Ministries of Reconciliation

Jean-Marie Hyacinthe Quenum, S. J. Jean-Marie Hyacinthe Quenum is a Jesuit Beninese, teaching systematic theology at Hekima College, the Jesuit School of theology in Nairobi. He received his doctorate in Theology at Centre Sèvres in Paris. Abstract Two new ministries are arising in the practice of pastoral care in the local Church settings of today’s Africa and Madagascar under the guidance of the Holy Spirit: Faith healing and service of reconciliation. As gifts from God in the Spirit of the risen Jesus Christ, faith healing and service of reconciliation are shaped in Africa and Madagascar by the historical circumstances of post-colonial crisis. Faith healing and service of reconciliation under the influence of the Holy Spirit are ecclesial resources to help the believers to cope deeply with their crisis situations and the new challenges of the times. The Church of Africa and Madagascar ought to encourage ministers who are endowed with the spiritual gifts of faith healing and service of reconciliation by providing for them an additional formation based on practical theology and social psychology. In order to consolidate these two ministries in the church of Africa a theological reflection is needed to link these two ministries to the central Christian ritual of the Eucharist. As an act of the entire community, the Eucharist celebration as the thanksgiving prayer of the faithful may be the best place to minister to the sick by calling faith healers in special occasions to exercise their gift of the Holy Spirit. To meet the needs of reconciliation in post-colonial societies, the Church of Africa and Madagascar ought to re-emphasize the role of relationships over the acts of religious piety. Relationships matter in various walks of life and various forms of ministries of reconciliation are needed to reconcile young people with their parents, spouses in stormy situations, groups of people who isolate themselves from one another, and peacemakers in conflict situations. The new ministries of faith healing and reconciliation witness Christ’s work in Spirit guiding the people of God to face painful situations in trust. The ministries of reconciliation are related to the proclamation of the kingdom of God (Lk 10:5). They find their motivation in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6:12). The ministries of reconciliation are rooted on Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. Through the cross and resurrection Jesus Christ has overcome division between Jews and Gentiles by re-establishing peace and reconciliation. Only a full-blown revival of faith healing and ministries of reconciliation will bring about lasting and permanent changes in today’s Church in Africa and Madagascar. The young Churches of Africa and Madagascar are growing more rapidly than in previous decades J. Baur., The Catholic Church in Kenya. A centenary History, Nairobi, 1990. J. Baur develops at length the growth of the local church of Kenya by stressing the positive achievements of ministries and pastoral strategies in the light of a deep commitment of a shared life in Jesus Christ. Active priests in parish ministry are increasing besides teaching ministries, adult ministries, chaplaincies and outreach ministries for special needs. . The demographic changes of the Catholic population give a public visibility to the activities of the Church in the modern Africa and Madagascar. The Church has reached a good level of maturity at the dawn of the 21st century B. Hearne. (ed.), Ecumenical Initiatives in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, 1982. A sign of maturity: dialogue between Christians has been successful during the last three decades. . She has increased in number Statistical data on African Christianity could be found in the annual statistics produced by G.Barrett and Todd. The Catholic population in Africa ranks second only to Latin America. and gained in spiritual strength J. B. Kato. Awakening the Laity: Ugandan Pastoral Approach (Spearhead nos. 161-163), Eldoret 2003. . She has adequately adapted herself to the profound social and political changes that characterize our secular global society. The believers of Africa have embraced Christian beliefs and values and are ready to inculturate them in the daily life of the people of God T. Okure P.van Thiel et alii, Inculturation of Christianity in Africa (Spearhead nos. 112-114), Eldoret, 1990. . The people of Africa are being called to become “a holy nation” in order to proclaim the glory of God (1Pet.2:9). The positive achievements of the Church of Africa are the results of the Spirit at work in people of God involved in grass root activities Ephraim Anderson. Churches at the Grass Roots. N.Y: Friendship Press, 1968. of worship, human promotion and struggle for social justice and reconciliation J. Sangu. “Report on the Experiences of the Church in the Work of Evangelization in Africa.” 1974, MS. . Among the successful activities of the Churches of Africa and Madagascar, Faith healing J.P. Heil. “Significant Aspects of the Healing Miracles in Matthew “Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41(1979) 274-87. and service of reconciliation merit special attention because they are most appropriate gifts of the Holy Spirit for the development and consolidation of the Church of Africa and Madagascar. How does faith healing manifest itself in the lived experience of the people of God in today’s Africa and Madagascar? How is the service of reconciliation an African distinctive manner to live the discipleship of Jesus Christ? How do faith healing and service of reconciliation connect with the ecclesiology of the Church as the family of God? Our theological reflection will raise the issues of faith healing and ministries of reconciliation in the context of African cultures Aylward, Shorter. African Christian Theology –Adaptation or Incarnation. London: Geoffrey Chapman Press, 1975. . These two realities are perceived in the line of the history of salvation whereby Jesus Christ acts as a healer, an exorcist and reconciler in order to strengthen the bonds of universal brotherhood in the whole human family. The gifts of faith healing and reconciliation are best lived in the faith community gathered by the Holy Spirit around Christ at the table of the Word and Eucharist. Eucharist celebration as the sacramental body of Jesus Christ incarnates Christian faith in the daily worship of the believers. The Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ dwelling in the minds and hearts of the believers is the agent of both faith healing and reconciliation. Through the Hoy Spirit of Jesus Christ the work of evangelization heals and reconciles African people caught up in life crisis of all kinds. The lived experience of faith healing in the Church of Africa The Spirit of Jesus Christ is at work in the Church of Africa. There is a proliferation of religious faith in Jesus Christ in the public sphere. Creative gospel music and videos invade homes and social institutions. The people of God experience the life of the Spirit by which the Son is mysteriously revealed to them. The Church of Africa grows in spiritual strength through the experiences of the believers. By listening to people involved in spiritual life, we witness the powerful presence of the Spirit of God speaking and acting through their whole altered consciousness. Many Spirit-filled Christians in Africa lay and clergy alike have a personal relationship with God who comes in their minds and hearts and shapes their ways of life patterned on the Christ of the gospel. Through the indwelling of God’s Spirit, African believers are moved to live like the Christ of the Gospel. This common phenomenon in the Church of Africa is the best asset for Christian faith. Those who experienced the Spirit of God in African context are most of the time called to the mission of preaching or healing. The faith healer is a Spirit-filled believer who cures diseases through prayer and spiritual words of knowledge. Faith healing calls upon divine intervention to cure disease through spiritual means such as intercessory prayer, the laying on of hands, mental practices, spiritual insights, holy water or creative imagination. Faith healing is effective in traumatic experiences repressed and re-emerged as physical symptoms such as blindness, paralysis or dermatitis. The faith healer deals successfully with psychogenic problems. Possessed by the Spirit of God, the faith healer helps the sick to experience God’s love greater than any symptoms of diseases. The recognition of God’s love is the beginning of therapeutic process transforming the patient’s hope for cure in healing. The person who is healed experiences a new life of faith. The power of God touches the sick person. The whole life of the sick person is completely transformed by the healing experience. The healing experience leads to a grateful life of faith. We ask the Church of Africa to subject these healing experiences to medical scrutiny in order to proclaim the authentic cures as the acts of the Holy Spirit in today’s Africa. The Church of Africa ought to encourage healing revivals in urban and rural areas by helping those who have received the gift of healing to minister the people of God. The ministry of faith healing is different in nature from the power to confer the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Faith healing is the spiritual option for people faced with serious illness out of control of Physicians or other conventional medical care. Believers in tragic circumstances hope for miraculous recovery by considering divine healing. Pilgrimages to holy sites or Marian shrines, the contact with religious icons or an interaction with a faith healer are said to offer hope to desperate sick people. Like Jesus Christ, authentic faith healers reach out to sick people in order to show them the compassion of God who cares for the needs of his creatures. The healing itself is an act of mercy of the sovereign God of the biblical tradition who confirms that “all things work together for those who love God” (Rom 8:28). Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the bearer of the fullness of the Spirit of God has used the healing ministry as a helpful way to proclaim the good news of salvation to the people of Israel during his first advent in human history. Jesus “cured so many that sick people of all kinds came crowding in upon him to touch him” Mk 3: 10-11). With the advent of Jesus Christ in human history, human beings hope for the coming of the kingdom of God in which, every tear shall be wiped away “and death shall be no more, neither shall be morning nor crying nor pain any more” (Rev. 21:4). This radical hope in the last book of the New Testament is the prophecy of the new world of absolute well being anticipated in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the reality of Christian hope in faith healing. In Jesus Christ, the God of hope has broken the power of sin, sickness and death. The God of hope by bringing the crucified Jesus to life has made possible an absolute future for creation and human beings. By faith in Jesus Christ, the reality of eschatological future can be anticipated in everyday life as a day of salvation. Salvation can be experienced as release from debilitating sickness. Commitment to live by faith through prayer under the Spirit of Jesus Christ can release the power of healing for wounded people. Jesus’ Galilean ministry was about doing good and healing (Acts 10; 38). Jesus thought himself as a healer who was concerned with the health and well being of people seeking for his help(Mk2:1-12; Mk3:1-6; Lk13:10-17; Lk14:1-6; Mk 5:24-34; ). The healing ministry of Jesus took care of psychosomatic disorders and mental challenges. Jesus cured people who believed in his power. He healed blind eyes by applying mud made from spittle (Jn 9: 6-7). He raised a dead widow’s son out of compassion (Lk 7: 13). His reputation of healer draws to him sick people oppressed by interiorized guilt and traumatic experiences of life. Such people are many in our beloved continent. They come from the tribulations of civil wars, religious strife, genocides, and refugee’s camps. To survive from day to day living, the anxious and stressful people of our continent need the ministry of faith healers to help them to cope with the unprecedented challenges of fast-changing societies. Their health should be the concern of the whole Church. Faith healing in continuity with Jesus’ ministry does not seek for fees. It does not exclude other forms of treatment offered by medical techniques. Faith healing is practiced in prayerful environment. The faith healer seeks the heart of God by asking divine intervention when human expertise fails to restore health. The ministry of a faith healer is the channel by which God shows his compassion and his love in desperate situations. Faith healing is an aspect of love experienced in prayer. God who is beyond human beings in his awesome transcendence dwells in the believer’s heart and mind through the presence of the risen Jesus’ Spirit. The faith healer moved by the Spirit of the risen Jesus by interceding for the sick people may call upon God to heal their wounds or psychosomatic disorders. Christian practice of faith healing brings the real life of the believers in a process of interaction with the living God of the biblical tradition. God acts in the history of changing situations of believers. He helps them to grow and to mature through the problems raised by their everyday living. God provides solutions to problems raised by the daily living of believers. Occasions, pressures of life and concrete events shape the life of the believers. The believers communicate with the living God who is concerned with the needs of his people. God responds to the needs of his people by bringing new possibilities of life, such as new insights, new institutions and new states of health. In faith healing, the makeup of human beings in their hidden possibilities through the free will cooperation of prayerful believers is given a new state of health in line with the goal of human existence. With faith healing a believer experiences the goodness and power of God in a particular circumstance of life. The ultimate aim of faith healing is to make a creature a loving child of God in union with Jesus Christ, the radical healer of human beings. A healing is a free gift of God’s love in activity in the universe created and sustained by his providence. The gift of faith healing is granted to the repentant believers who approach God in a state of brokenness and interior spirit of the beatitudes. The prayer of the faith healer is the way the God of compassion is known by believers who put their trust on the sovereignty of God who holds in his hands the life of his creatures. The ministry of faith healing demonstrates that God is always with those who suffer. God understands the pains, agonies and sorrows of suffering people. The cross of Jesus Christ reminds us that God cares for his people. Jesus Christ suffered and died so that redeemed human beings may live for ever in God’s love. “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2Cor 4:16-17). The perfect healing occurs when human beings are promoted to glory. They live in God for ever knowing and loving without any limitations of physical body and human emotions. In African religious cultural context Idowu, E. Bolaji. African Traditional Religion: A Definition. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973. , healing is the best gift of God. Herbalists, midwives and tradipracticians Tradipracticians are medicine men and women who use the resources of traditional societies to cure sick people. They practices are now recognized in modern Africa. maintain the health of their fellow human beings by calling them to observe the wisdom and taboos of the ancestors. Healing includes prevention of sickness, prudent living and cure of diseases through various means determined by empirical observation. African traditional medicine men and women believe in life-force, a mysterious and mystical vital power that pervades nature and everything that exists. The benevolent tradipracticians initiated to the knowledge of life essence may manipulate these mysterious powers embedded in nature to restore the health of their patients. Christians have introduced besides clinic facilities, a spiritual healing through intercessory prayer, may this kind of healing add value of well being in the Church of Africa. The service of reconciliation as turning the religious experience of Jesus Christ into fraternal relationships “God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him” (1Jn 4:16). An integrated theology of reconciliation in the Church of Africa must acknowledge the service of reconciliation as a dynamic expression of a life of the gracious love of Jesus Christ for his body, the whole human family. Jesus Christ has initiated a process in mutual love relationships between human beings and God. As the image of the unseen God, Jesus Christ “is the first born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible...all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:15-16). Jesus Christ came into this world to restore everything according to the original master plan of God. The restoration of the entire work of God is best expressed in terms of reconciliation. Reconciliation offered to human beings made according to the image and likeness of God implies adoption and divine sonship. Human beings are now heirs of the creation of God in Jesus Christ. They partake of God’s life of ineffable love. They are like Jesus Christ, men and women for others. By going beyond themselves into a new way of living in Jesus Christ by his Spirit, Christians image the life of the Son in their relationships. Their passion for Christ makes them compassionate toward the restored creation of God. Overpowered by the presence of the risen Jesus, the Christian expands his love by welcoming every human being as brother or sister for whom the blood of the Lord has been shed on Calvary. Reconciliation is an outgoing process of restoring relationships and a yearning for fraternal communion. Reconciliation is a change of heart and mind enabling those who are in Christ to seek a reunion with their brethren. Reconciliation leads to conflict-resolution. The Church of Africa by celebrating reconciliation through word and sacrament invites the faithful to move beyond their limitations, sins and hurts. Their union of life and of love with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is the religious experience from which overflows reconciliation. Reconciliation is God’s freely –given love celebrated in the Eucharist and extended to the neighbour. The Christian brought into a loving relationship with the tri-personal God in the true worship of the Eucharist is empowered to participate in his inner life of love (2P 1:4). The self –communication of God to the believer in the act of worship draws the world into a reconciled state. Reconciliation is a divine activity that regenerates human relationships. Given gratuitously out of God’s love, reconciliation is the purifying of relationships that grow from Christian participation in the divine life of love. Human beings graced by the Holy Spirit of God are enabled to transform their relationships of self –indulgence into a relationship of love (Gal 5:13-25). Born of the Spirit of God, the children of God who are empowered by the Spirit of God abandon the works of the flesh and seek for the renewal of all their relationships. The total openness of graced human beings to the tri-personal God changes the way they relate to one another. Reconciliation is a life style of forgiven children of God who are attentive to make right their relationships with others. Freed from their uncontrolled emotions of hatred and hostility, Christians moved by the Spirit of God are attentive to God’s second commandment (Lk 10:27). As neighbour-oriented people, Christians are agents of reconciliation bringing the peace of Jesus Christ to their offended and hurt brethren. Reconciliation restores harmony and builds up the body of Christ. In the divided post-colonial societies of Africa and Madagascar, the ministries of reconciliation aim at unifying people who are polarized by the issues of political affiliation, sectarian violence, religious fanaticism, cultures, gender imbalance and ethnicity. Reconciliation ministries in Africa could offer a vision of the Social Teaching of the Church as a starting point for reflection and action. The vision of the Social Teaching of the Church can offer working models for reconciliation. Empirical research is also needed in the hot spots of conflicts such as Darfur or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Networking is crucial for associations and parochial missions involved in existing conflict-situations. The religious aspect of conflict resolution is important but in today’s world some sectors of human life face conflicts that must be addressed by autonomous fields of knowledge. Christians must be in touch with these disciplines in order to bring their distinctive contribution. The Church of Africa and Madagascar must promote the programmes of formation of trained and qualified experts in conflict-resolution. The parishes and chaplaincies must have programmes of conflict-prevention at all levels. The ministries of reconciliation in Africa and Madagascar are the ways discipleship is lived in concrete situations. In African context, communal relationships matter over devotional practices and individualistic piety. A reconciled community is the best witness to Christ. A living and fraternal community of forgiven people of God who have overcome by the grace of God their selfishness of sin is the best testimony the Church of Africa and Madagascar can offer to the worldwide Church. This journey starts with the dialogue with Christians, non Christians and secular people of good will. The ministries of reconciliation ought to build up the body of Christ which is the whole human family. Faith Healing and ministries of Reconciliation as the lifestyles of the Church as the family of God Faith healing connects the believers of Africa and Madagascar to the Holy Spirit, the life-transforming power of God made available by the resurrection of Jesus. The Holy Spirit breaks into the lives of the believers by calling them to experience the unconditional love of God. A healing process may lead the believers to the recognition of God who loves and saves them by transforming their lives for his glory. Faith healing makes the believers open to the gift of God’s love. By receiving the healing of body, mind and will, the believers acknowledge their status as children of God adopted in the church as the family of God. A person who experiences the healing power of God turns to God in conversion and becomes an active and grateful participant member of the family of God. The heart of the converted person is set on fire, in continuous, ongoing lifelong process of discipleship. The ministries of reconciliation shape the life of the Church as the family of God. They bring the people of God together for the joyful celebration of the Eucharist from which overflows the neighbour oriented life style of the body of Christ. Reconciliation as a painful process of dealing with human sinfulness is the opposite of separation. It is the restoration of communion by the reparation of the relationships. By correcting a sinful life style of separation and non-cooperation, reconciliation brings about joy, peace, acceptance and love. Reconciliation is an internal transformation that brings the people of God to appreciate fraternal bonds as blessings. Reconciliation makes the church a safe and hospitable shelter for those who run away from each other. Once they are reconciled with each other, children of God in the Church as family of God externalize bodily their friendship with words, sacramental signs and daily gestures. Their experience of being at peace with God, with their fellow human beings and with the whole creation of God affects the ways they relate in their societies. The Church as the family of God ought to be a place of celebration. When people eat together, drink together and dance together, they express their lived experience of reconciliation. They are no longer isolated from another out of selfishness. They feel good to join the fellowship of the Church as the family of God. A community that celebrates reconciliation is a forgiven community that extends the mercy of God to the people of God. As the herald of the kingdom of God, a forgiven community reveals the loving heart of God in people who are in relationship with each other. An African reading of the mystery of Jesus Christ in the light of the gift of his spirit to the Church as the sacrament of the whole family of God ought to help the Church of Africa to identify the work of the saviour as a work of reconciliation. In a divided Africa, reconciliation must be the pastoral concern of the Church. Only Jesus Christ, sent and anointed by God can save Africa from ideological, political and economic fragmentations. Jesus Christ is the only solution to the problems of divisive ethnicity and identity clashes in modern Africa. Jesus Christ’s relevance for reconciled communities is well expressed in the narrative of his life dedicated to turn down the barriers that separate human beings. In one respect more than any other he differed from both his contemporaries and even his prophetic predecessors. The prophets spoke on behalf of the honest poor, and defended the widows and the fatherless, those oppressed and exploited by the wicked, rich and powerful. Jesus went further .In addition to proclaiming these blessed, he actually took his stand among the pariahs of his world, those despised by the respectable. Sinners were his table-companions and the ostracised tax –collectors and prostitute his friends. Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew. London 1973. P. 224. Human beings tend to perceive themselves as separate individuals on a journey of life filled with forces of fragmentation such as structural injustices, violence and fears. Instead of perceiving themselves as related beings, created by God for mutual caring and sharing, human beings are confused about their communal destiny and live in distrust from one another. Jesus Christ came to reconcile separate individuals around the values of righteousness, truth, love and forgiveness. His mission in the first century Palestine was to bring hope to human beings living under the curse of God (Gen 3: 1-19). Jesus Christ is the Holy and infinite God in the flesh. Unlike fallen and wretched human beings who live under the curse of God, Jesus Christ is the Son of God who has dominion over every created reality.” God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). The Son of God dwells among his people as a perfect and sinless man who called all human beings to repent and believe in the mercy and forgiveness of God. A redeemed world is a world where human beings are reconciled with God. Human beings are reconciled with God when they recognize their sins and confess them through real repentance and create conditions to live like the Son so that God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). To experience the reconciliation brought by Jesus Christ, Africans must admit their need to interpret and organize their lives on the soteriological message of the Gospel. Jesus Christ by his work of salvation on the cross put an end to the curse of God in Genesis 3. The atoning death of Jesus Christ as the last Adam, the representative of the whole human family removed the curse of death which is the consequence of sin. “All have sinned and lack God’s glory; and all are justified by the free gift of his grace through being set free in Christ Jesus. God appointed him as a sacrifice for reconciliation, through faith, by the shedding of his blood, and so showed his justness; “(Rom 3: 24-25). All Africans are called to the foot of the cross in order to receive the free gift of faith. The work of the cross reconciles African believers with God. By turning away from their sins and by being united to Jesus Christ through their personal relationships of knowledge and love, African disciples have the peace of Christ that renews them for the restoration of the break up of their interactions with their fellow human beings. Without reconciliation with God there is no lasting reconciliation with fellow human beings. Reconciliation with God is provided by the atoning death of Jesus. By dying on the cross Jesus Christ paid the full penalty of sin on behalf of human beings separated from God. Through his work of salvation on the cross, Jesus Christ removed for ever the curse of God on rebellious and fallen humanity incapable of finding life in observing the law of God (Gal 3:13-14). The resurrection of Jesus Christ completes the work of reconciliation enabling him to grace human beings with God’s forgiveness, mercy and communion. The risen Jesus is calling non-Christians Hendrich, Kraemer. The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Grand Rapids: Kregel Pub, 1963. in Africa through the Church’s ministries of reconciliation to ask for divine forgiveness, rebirth through the power of the Spirit so that they may become new creations of Christ. Jesus Christ, friend of sinners came in this world for the sinners of Africa. “When we were still helpless, at the appointed time, Christ died for the godless. You could hardly find anyone ready to die even for someone upright; though it is just, possible that, for a really good person, someone might undertake to die. So it is proof of God’s own love for us, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. How much more can we be sure, therefore, that, now that we have been justified by his death, we shall be saved through him from the retribution of God. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more we can be sure that, being now reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. What is more, we are filled with exultant trust in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have already gained our reconciliation” (Rom 5:6-11). The Church of Africa and Madagascar acknowledges Jesus Christ as the Son of God who dealt effectively and judicially with the sin of human beings and the punishment due to it. By substituting himself for sinful human beings, shouldering the penalty which justice required them to pay; he reconciles them to God by his sacrificial death. This act of love is the source of ministries of reconciliation. The saving value of Jesus Christ’s death is connected with his life and ministry concerned with the restoration of human dignity. Like the Apostle Paul, the Church of Africa, as ambassador of Jesus Christ’s reconciliation is sent to the nations “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the dominion of Satan to God, and receive, through faith in me, forgiveness of their sins and a share in the inheritance of the sanctified” (Acts 26, 18). The Church of Africa has the historical responsibility to bring the continent out of the bondage of sin. Sin has taken in Africa the forms of despair, afro-pessimism, tyranny, corruption, greed, lust, human made poverty, negative and politicised ethnicity, sexism, gender imbalance, ineffective conflict management, aggression, violence, inequality, exploitation and oppression. These sins produce misery, insecurity, instability, tensions, human losses, unhappiness, deep-rooted ethnic conflicts, violent competitions for scarce resources and underdevelopment. The Church as expert in humanity must help the people of God in Africa to put into practice the prophetic word of God: “If my people who bear my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my presence and turn away from their wicked ways, then I will listen from heaven and forgive their sins and restore their country” (2Chron7:14). Reconciliation as restoration is possible when people are deeply committed to Jesus Christ to bring about lasting and permanent changes in their societies. The agenda of the kingdom of God is about fraternal community that tears down the barriers to justice, peace and harmony. The life changing Spirit of Jesus Christ can give to Africans the sense of shared destiny. The faith in Jesus Christ can be a positive uniting force stronger than the divisive factors of negative and politicised ethnicity. The Church by encouraging good governance, accountability of servant leadership and transparency in the management of community resources can impact a spirit of reconciliation that will restore the basic needs of God’s people for identity, equality, recognition, security, dignity and participation in the life of their nations. Reconciliation brings justice, peace, harmony and development of the whole society by dealing with the abyss of sin rooted in human heart perverted by the lust of flesh, the lust of eyes, and the pride of life(1Jn 2:15-17). In the light of hope, greater than any sin, the Church of Africa and Madagascar professes with the Apostle Paul: “One man’s offense brought condemnation on all humanity, and one man’s good action has brought justification and life to all humanity. Just as by one’s man disobedience many were made sinners, so by one’s man obedience are many to be made upright. When law came on the scene, it was to multiply the offences. But however much sin increased, grace was always greater; so that as sin’s reign brought death, so grace was to rule through saving justice that leads to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:18-21). In Jesus Christ God reconciled human beings to himself. Sin and death are destroyed (1Cor 15:56-57). Jesus Christ is the light for the Church of Africa and Madagascar. He brings to completion the image and likeness of God in his brethren of Africa (Jn 1:4, 9; 1Tim 2:4). The high call is to live by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, our elder brother (Rom 8:29). Moved by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Church of Africa and Madagascar will proclaim peace and reconciliation (Lk 10:5). By announcing the good news of peace and reconciliation, the Church of Africa and Madagascar will be a Church of peacemakers (Mt 5:9). The practice of reconciliation is a valuable way of following Jesus Christ who brought reconciliation and peace to the world. Lived fully, the ministries of reconciliation make the followers of Jesus Christ, the true peacemakers. As a missionary Church, the Church of Africa and Madagascar must be involved in the process of building just and reconciled societies around the continent by defending the sacredness of life in all its stages, human dignity and civil rights. The ultimate reconciliation of the world to God is the mission of the Church of Africa and Madagascar. The lay people sanctified and spiritually refreshed in their faith communities have the responsibility of bringing Jesus Christ’s message of reconciliation to their homes, in their relationships and working places. As instruments of Jesus Christ in the building of the kingdom of God, the lay people are in today’s Africa the worldly ministers of reconciliation. Ordained ministers are necessary for opening the Word of reconciliation to the faithful. They celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass which actualizes the death, resurrection and gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church as sacramental community. They bring reconciliation to the faithful who seek the forgiveness of God. They follow up and celebrate the important moments of the faithful from birth to death. Ordained ministers animate, facilitate and coordinate the ministries of the lay people as leaders and teachers of faith communities. Concluding remarks: Jesus Christ, the original author of creation by becoming human has restored our human dignity as children of God. By acting on the cross in the ways of substitution and reconciliation, Jesus Christ’s death was necessary to release human beings from the curse of sin. Through his first century ministry of reconciliation, human beings have recovered the true knowledge of God. Reconciliation with God leads to fellowship with God (2Pet.1, 4). As adopted sons and daughters of God, human beings are re-created for building up the family of God free of the bondage of sin. As the body of Jesus Christ, the Church in intimate union with the Holy Spirit is a space of faith healing and reconciliation. Our kinship with the last Adam makes us heir of eternal life. The Church of Africa must become the prophetic agent of faith healing and reconciliation. Dr. Jean-Marie Hyacinthe Quenum, S.J. 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