This is not a continuation of my previous thread but could be linked. During morning Mass on November 1, 2007, we learned Rev Fr. Patrick Adegbite had been murdered the previous night by robbers. We expected to see him there but he was gone. I saw hope leave many people.
A saw a girl crying bitterly and I knew she was not coming back to the church anymore. A lot of us had been personally transformed by Father Adegbite as he was not a ”normal priest”. Very unorthodox and organized deliverance sessions as well as exorcisms.
Many people had probably started to see him as an object of worship rather than what he was trying to get them to see. I probably was one of those people. He made me do my first holy communion after 29 years of leaving cathechism. The blessed statement changed my life.
I had decided to do it the day he was killed and never got the chance to discuss it with him. He died and we didn't understand why at that time. I decided to still go ahead with catthecism and conclude it at my home church in Benin City.
Because of those trips back home, I also got to spend time with my father before he too died. Many things in my life changed when I became a communicant. Hard to explain but there was a transformation in circumstance. Like bonds broken.
Monsignor Ogunmodede took over from Father Adegbite and I still remained with the church in Lagos. Monsignor didn't do all of those deliverance sessions but there was a day he prayed with me to get married and the next week I met my wife. He was alarmed that I wasn't married.
He wasn't the messiah figure Father Patrick was but he was transformational in his own way. I still send money to that church anytime I have Naira. He called me early this year after I did. He was in America. A weird coincidence. He didn't know I had paid money into the account.
Father Patrick had to die for us to see that he was human. Christ had to also be crucified in his human form for us not to have complete faith in humans. Humans must die but faith and love endure.
The timing of his death for many of us meant that we had to finish the journey of faith by ourselves. That is what life is mostly like. The training wheels go off after a while and we are all on our own. What we then do at that time will also inspire others. Jesus left the wheel.
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