By Vivian Onyebukwa
The Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos has celebrated the Feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross and the 50th memorial anniversary of Most Rev. John Awao Amuzu Aggey.
Aggey was the first African Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos, and first African bishop.
The event, which took place at Holy Cross Cathedral, Lagos, was organised to honour and pay tribute to Aggey and also a thanksgiving for the price Jesus paid on the cross.
In a homily by the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Most Rev. Alfred Adewale Martins, who was represented by Vicar, Lagos Region Archdiocese, Very Rev. Msgr. Bernard Okodua, extolled the virtues of the late archbishop, describing him as a man who stood for the truth.
He described him as a peacemaker, referring to an incident when Aggey, as the president of Catholic Bishops of Nigeria, mediated in the feud between the Nigerian government and the Pope when the government accused the Pope of supporting Biafra after Biafra broke away from Nigeria.
“He took time to explain to the government that the Catholic Church was not partisan, and peace reigned. He was generous to a fault. People were not disappointed that came to him for either financial help and moral advice. A humble servant of God, he operated an open-door policy. You did not have to write a letter to see him. He was a shepherd and a good man of God,” the bishop stated.
Martins recalled how Aggey died two months after ordaining him a bishop.
Okodua referred to Exaltation of the Cross as the triumph of the Cross. He said: “The very word cross signifies punishment, pain or death. Nobody likes to carry a cross. When you have difficulties or disappointments, we call it a cross. You say I am carrying a cross, my wife is my cross, my husband is my cross, meaning he or she is not cooperating, difficult or he is giving you headache.
“In the Christian world, the cross of Jesus Christ is what we are venerating, remembering and honouring. It is not just the wood, it stands for salvation. Jesus Christ, the Son of God was sinless.
“You can punish a criminal for an offence but you don’t punish an innocent person, even Pilate said Jesus Christ was innocent but because the elders of the people hated him out of jealousy, they insisted that Pilate must condemn him to death, and so he did, just to please them. And the punishment was persecution.
“So, they crucified him because that was one of the normal way of the Romans in punishing a criminal. For them, Jesus was a criminal, for us, he is our Saviour. He chose to die on the cross willingly, he could have avoided it, if he wanted to, but he said that is what His father wanted, that is why he came into the world to suffer and to die.”
He further stated that Jesus Christ came to save man from sins through his suffering and death on the cross. “That means without the cross, no resurrection, and if Jesus did not rise from the death, then our faith and preaching has no meaning. So what we did today is simply to say, thank you to God for the gift of His son and Jesus Christ for dying on the cross for us; and by so doing he is telling us that we all have to carry our own cross as he did so that we can also share in the glory of his resurrection. Because he died he rose, and because he rose, God honoured him, and gave him a name that is above other names.
“We are Christians, followers of Christ; that is the meaning. We don’t follow just by name; we follow by action. He said it, if you want to be my disciple, carry your cross, follow me, meaning imitate me. What type of imitation? Humility, submission to the will of God, love of fellow human being, forgiving those who offend us, admitting our own fault when we offend people, among others,” Okodua stated.
Speaking on the life and times of Archbishop Aggey, Okodua said: “Honestly, I was not in Lagos in his lifetime. I lived outside Lagos and he died just three months after my ordination. So, I only knew him as a seminarian.
“When I would have related with him as a priest, he left, so I did not know much about him except what I hear about him. He didn’t live in this premises, where the bishop is living, he lived at Ikoyi, the Archbishop Court, but my relationship with him even as a seminarian, each time I came home, he asked us to do some casual work, and I met him on this occasions.
“He was a simple and humble man, he was always in his khaki short, his assistant then was the late Bishop of Ijebu Ode, Bishop Albert Fashino, who was what was called mission boy at that time, and also a student of St Joseph’s Teachers Training College, Owodele in Surulere.”
On why the Archdiocese decided to honour him, Okodua said it is because Archbishop Aggey was the first African bishop of Lagos. “The one we had before him was Archbishop Tailor, the one before Tailor was Archbishop Rock; they were all Irish Priests. Rock and Tailor were all buried in the premises of the cathedral. Aggey’s tenure didn’t last very long, he was Archbishop for only seven years, but this seven years he made an impact in the life of the people and it was the beginning of what they call indigenization of the church.
“We have local clergy, the church cannot grow if there is no local clergy, he promoted local clergy. As I said, he encouraged those of us at the seminary at that time, he never accepted that somebody should be expelled from the seminary”, he added.