Dinner with the Priest” has its spiritual connotations, when compared with the Supper which Jesus had with his Apostles shortly before he paid the ransom.

Hence, the Parish Priest of the Blessed Iwene Tansi Catholic Church Magbon, in Lagos State, Rev. Fr. Michael Omughele recently, replicated this togetherness with the parishioners. On the occasion, he said Dinner with the Priest would go down in the annals of the Blessed Iwene Tansi Catholic Church, Magbon, under the Ijanikin Deanary.

It was fun galore and came with dances. The best dancers and best-dressed couples went home with different prizes. The couples also wooed their wives, as if they were meeting for the first time; sang songs they sang in their hay days as pupils with Martins as the emcee of the day.

Rev. Fr. Omughele expressed excitement when he said, “Today is a great day, where the community gathers to have a dinner with their priest. Which is something I do appreciate. I mean is something that promotes unity in the community. It helps to see ourselves as we are. We sat at the back with my priest friends as we dined with our parishioners.

Ahead of the year-end and with harvest, he said: “The purpose of the gathering is geared towards the harvest. So is a harvest dinner, to raise some money for the church, also to have parishioners come around to enjoy themselves, have a time out, relax, wine and to feel good”.

He digressed to the state of the nation, especially, at these difficult times, stating that Nigeria is not in its best shape because of the spate of poverty and suffering. The solution? “We just pray for the government to come and see for themselves. They need to go into the streets, marketplaces, suburbs and see what Nigerians are facing, maybe that can push them to some levels of empathy.”

How can the Church help to salvage this country, he said, “The church will continue to support the state and work with it. The Church will continue to speak in the language of social justice following what we call Catholic social teachings – justice, care for the poor, social amenities for the people, poverty alleviation programmes, and functional policies. These are the things the church continues to talk about and to urge the government to wake up her responsibilities.”

The wrought in the society who to be blamed? He said, “The truth is that if you have a head that is not functioning there will be a mess in the body. So we pray for much more functional, accountable responsible government, if we have that I am sure the led will be properly led and things will be better.”

How do we move away from the political quagmire? He said, “The government should be the government and the people should also be the people. The government do your work and the people cooperate with the government. There are lot of things that the government don’t have to do for us, we can do them ourselves,let the lead be responsible and accountable too.”

The biggest challenge and the secret you adopted to overcome the challenges?

“When we came here it wasn’t easy because so many other out-station churches attach to the mother church and the mother church isn’t completed, so that is a big burden and you know the four station churches are operating independently, so it’s quite difficult. My greatest prayer is for God to bless our people. If the people are poor the church is poor and if they are blessed the church is rich. So we keep supporting them in any way we can support them and we pray for our people so that God will bless them so that they can keep supporting the church to the best of their abilities.”

Can we link the dinner to the Supper Christ had with the Disciples? He said,” Yes, everything flows from there to the altar, from the altar to the people because it was an altar we set up this evening, you dine in an altar. We withdrew from there we came to share the Eucharist is broken and shared, so it was a common meal this evening.”

The Chairperson of the Harvest Committee, Blessed Iwene Tansi Catholic Church 2024, also the Co-ordinator of the Ijaniki deanery, Mrs Vera Chidi-Maha excited with her group Mrs Lizzy Ikutegbe, High Chief Ezenwa Anyanwu and Mrs Akudeh Ogechukwu, when she said,” The success of the Dinner was hard work and understanding among the group. Again, we are building the Church that we started in 2017.

This is part of the harvest programme, to raise funds. We are trying to buy Cables and wires for the Church. So it affords us the opportunity of dying with our priest. We see our priest only on the altar, this is just to eat, dine and dance, and the people are happy. We are delighted to work for God. They all gave generously, we had tickets sold for N50,000, N30,000 and N10,000.

People gave from their hearts, even today people are still paying.”

The Priest has been around for more than two years …..?

The priest is very reserved, he does not like this kind of thing. It took us time to convince him. He said, “Must we?” We said, ” Father we must”

We had to encourage him, that the reason why people are here is to see you eat….. Dinner with the Priest. This is why we can convince him. Last year when we approached him, he said no. He has his reservations, like I said he is conservative.

Today, he has accepted and we are sure he is happy.”

On the challenges, she said,” It was not easy, people did not turn up on time. It took a week for this event and we started selling tickets. We went to four station churches attached to the mother church to encourage them to support the parish. People were reluctant because of the economic factor, we had to convince them that what we were building is for God and that no matter how it is, God will always make a way, and after their payment, they testified what God has done for them ”