SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church celebrates Galilee Day

In the spirit of Easter celebration, the SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Jakande Estate Isolo Lagos, recently celebrated the 2017 Galilee Day.

Catholic Churches over the world celebrate Galilee Day to mark the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is also a day they join the apostles of Jesus Christ in faith to meet with the risen Lord and a day to specially share the joy of the risen Lord with one another.

The day started with the holy Mass; the people together with their Priests offered the most acceptable sacrifice to the Father for the gift of one another and for the gift of life eternal.

Speaking at the event which witnessed the presence of who is who in the Catholic family and representatives of the government, the Parish Priest, Rev Fr. Leo Ukwuani, while comparing the 2016 Galilee Day and that of 2017, said the enthusiasm and the zeal of members were encouraging.

He said: “I was thinking we cannot have anything that is better than last year but when I came here today as I saw the crowd I saw the enthusiasm the zealousness and the action I said God I thank you because whatever is worth doing is worth doing best”.

Speaking on the significance of Galilee Day, he said: “It is very simple just like in John 20, in Mark 16 when the women saw Jesus, he told them to go and tell His brothers, the brothers are the Apostles the inner caucus of Christ ministry. So he told them to tell them that they should meet Him at Galilee that they would see him as he has risen so that is what we are celebrating that is why we left our church and came to this place, this is our Galilee.

Advising Catholics, the cleric urged them to look onto him (Jesus) who was pierced, saying that he is “our strength, he will never disappoint us, while urging them to look onto him who was pierced.

“You know the Bible says in John 19-37, the one they pierced, they looked onto Him, even it’s our sin that made Jesus to enter the grave but at the same time He did not mind, He did not consider it, that is why the Bible says in Roman5: 8 very clearly although we were sinners, He died for us.

Also speaking the event, a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Jude Idimogu, maintained that it is always good for Christians to remember their root, adding that Catholic Church is a church you can always reckon all over the world.

He said: “SS Peter and Paul is number one in everything we are always winning and leading and by the grace of God. So my message is that we should live in peace we shall always work together that unity will always move Nigeria forward in respective of the division we are from and the spirit of Easter is forgiveness, because Jesus died for our sin and we live a better life onward by living a sinless life.

“Even though we know we cannot achieve that on our own but with Jesus we can always achieve that. However, you can see what is happening here, and I must tell you SS Peter and Paul have a strength of over 20000 thousand members so it is a very key church especially in this constituency Oshodi/Isolo constituency II talk less of Lagos. so I enjoy all of us to be peaceful let us love one another and continue to move forward and promote the interest of Lagos by living in peace and love our neighbor as we love ourselves,” he said.

On what he hope to do for the church, Idimogu said, “Well I do not have a choice, it is my constituency, it is my pace, I cannot run away from it but with the support of the Parish Priest and some members we will continue to do our best to promote individuals. You can see in a little way I have giving a small scholarship to one of our members no matter how it is.

Speaking on his expectations for 2018 Galilee day, he noted that the expectation is huge. “We know we have done this and we are going to go back as a Parish community and sit back in the Governing Council, take the gaps ,look at what is it that we did well and also at what we did wrong. We are going to match them up and bring out something that is going to make sense next year as we saw this year, it was based on the feedback we got last year so we have people who are going to give their own opinion on how next year is going to be but I see next year as very promising basic”.