Accidental Trinity

From a story on a Nigerian preist celebrating ten years as a priest.

I had my own share of challenges. Were it not for the grace of God, I would have been dead. The experiences I had in life are worth sharing. The year I finished primary school in 1976, on the 25th day of December, Christmas day, I got burnt from head to toe, and I was hospitalized for more than three months. I was packed into a large blanket because even my poor mother was afraid of holding any part of my burnt body. But I came out successfully and I continued again, another struggle in my secondary education but after my secondary school. Barely after my ordination, I travelled to Zaria to celebrate with the priest, on the next day, the 5th of August, 1996 (just like today, ten years ago). I had a domestic accident in Father Mamman’s house. It was in a bath where I used to sleep and the opening pipe slipped and speared me through my anus and by the grace of God, I survived it. But, the experiences I had with the doctors on that fateful day is similar to what is happening in our hospitals today. The nurses who saw my predicament rushed to the resident doctor, but the doctor said that he would only attend to an emergency case like mine after he might have finished seeing a movie. Unlike in America, you can’t do this because life is respected first. But, you see with us here, even if it is your family doctor, when he is doing something, if he is not through with it, he will not attend to you.

That is not what we priest are called to do. Doctors supposed to be like priests; doctors are to be servants of everybody in every time and in any hour. That was the second hard experience of my life. My third hard life experience was an auto accident on June 20th 2000. I had an accident between Zaria and Kaduna, just by Jaji Army Barracks. I somersaulted five times but came out unhurt and people said that “had it been that this man is not a man of God, he wouldn’t have come out uninjured”. It was even then that I knew these words “man of God” is a sincere word. I somersaulted five times without glass cut, no injury and all was well.

Therefore, I decided to sacramentally bless these incidents — the first one in 1976 as “God the Father” because by that I would have died prematurely; the second one in Father Mamman’s house ten years ago, I named it as “God the Son,” and the one in 2000, I named as “God the Holy Spirit.” In my prayers, I asked God that He should be able to protect me having passed through these past experiences and I could hear God even telling me by answering me, Amen. I thanked God for his mercies towards me.