Homily on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Priestly Ordination

 of Most Rev. Emmanuel Badejo, Catholic Bishop of Oyo Diocese, in Oyo, on January 7, 2026

By

Rev. Fr. George Ehusani

Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation

 

I congratulate my friend and brother, Bishop Emmanuel Badejo, on this fortieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, and I thank you all who have travelled from far and near to join us in this celebration. We are gathered principally to render thanks and praise to the God of all goodness for 40 years of amazing grace that has been transparently manifest in the life and in the ministry of this priest of God, from January 1986 to this day. We therefore join the celebrant in proclaiming forever the steadfast love of the Lord. Yes indeed, our mouths will proclaim His faithfulness to all generations. We shall declare that His steadfast love is forever; and that His faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

 

We give thanks and praise to God on this occasion for the mystery of the Catholic priesthood, by which mere mortals, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, do effect the changing of ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the same Body and Blood which Jesus gave to his disciples during the Last Supper at the Upper Room in Jerusalem the night before he suffered. We celebrate today the privilege extended to Bishop Badejo, of presiding over the Eucharistic celebration, of administering God’s mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and of proclaiming God’s word that gives life to those who receive it.

 

The priesthood in the Catholic tradition is one of inestimable, ineffable, and indescribable dignity. It is indeed a privilege, an honour and a grace, for weak and sinful men like Bishop Badejo and the rest of us here, to be called to participate in the mediatory role of Jesus Christ the High Priest. By grace priests are celebrators of the paschal mystery. By grace priest are leaders of the Christian community at prayer. By grace, priests are ministers of the prophetic word. By grace, priests preside over the Church’s programme of pastoral charity. So, by grace, priests are companions and helpers of Jesus Christ in His mission of saving the world from sin and death, and establishing God’s kingdom of life, holiness and peace. No wonder the priest is often referred to as alter Christus (other Christ), or that the priest functions in persona Christi (in the person of Christ).  What we celebrate today is the preponderance of this divine grace upon our brother and friend, Bishop Emmanuel Badejo, over the course of the last 40 years!

 

Bishop Badejo has spent over 18 of these 40 years as Bishop of Oyo Diocese. So, I must express a word of gratitude also to the clergy, the religious, and the lay faithful of Oyo for not only welcoming my friend, but also loving and supporting him as your Shepherd. I want to thank the members of the immediate family, as well as devoted friends and unrelenting benefactors, who have proven to be a major pillar of support for his life and his sacred ministry. May the Lord reward you all abundantly.

Let me use this opportunity to commiserate with you all in Oyo for the recent passing of our amiable pioneering Bishop Julius Adelakun. Many would not know that I had a special bond of friendship with him. But Bishop Badejo knows only too well, that before he came to Oyo as Bishop, I had a great friend and mentor in Bishop Julius Adelakun, which is why coming to Oyo always felt like coming home. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be at his funeral events, due to a major conflict in schedule. But my mind was here all through the period. I am a witness to the fact that Bishop Adelakun ran a good race. He fought a good fight. May he now rest in God’s peace. Amen.

 

Now, long before divine providence arranged that Bishop Badejo and I spent eight fantastic and memorable years working together at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, and even before our priestly vocation led us to the Ss Peter & Paul Seminary, Ibadan, the Badejo family of Osogbo and my family had been well-connected friendly families, thanks to the beautiful environment fostered by St. Benedict’s Cathedral community in Osogbo, where Baba Stephen and Mama Maria Badejo of blessed memory, were prominent functionaries, and where my late senior brother Noel, was a member. This was between 1973 and 1974. I got to know the family and had the privilege of a friendly relationship with Baba & Mama Badejo, with Aunti Biola, with Auntie Margaret, and with Bro Peter, before I eventually met my friend, Ade, and then Sunday and Ayo. The rest, they say is history. But I am always very proud of the fact that Bishop Badejo’s father travelled all the way from Oshogbo to Okene in August 1981, to attend my ordination ceremony. May these departed parents of ours and our Sister Biola, now rest in God’s peace. Amen. 

 

My dear friends, we are marking the 40th anniversary of Bishop Badejo’s priestly ordination at a time when humanity is confronted with widespread spiritual and existential crises. The loss of God-consciousness, or the rejection by many of any spiritual reference point for the human person and the human society, is at a level that perhaps has never been witnessed in recorded human history. We are today confronted with the growing scourge of crass materialism, senseless consumerism, an unprecedented degree of vanity and vainglory, as well as an ardent devotion to the cult of sensual pleasure, with the accompanying peculiar psychopathology that the famous 20th Century Psychologist, Viktor Frankl, identifies as existential nihilism, which is the loss (among many) of any sense of meaning and purpose in human existence. Such existential nihilism has largely resulted from the abandonment of the sense of transcendence in the contemporary society. Yes, as St. Augustine says, “the Lord has created us for himself, and our hearts will remain restless, until they rest in him.”

 

The Scriptures of our Judeo-Christian religion and the testimonies from all other major religious traditions sufficiently demonstrate that the more human beings move away from God, from the consciousness of spiritual or supernatural realities, and the more they are motivated wholly and entirely by materialistic, this-worldly ultimate goals; the more human beings allow themselves to be consumed and overwhelmed by what 1 John 2:16 identifies as “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life;” the more confused, senseless, and restless they become. True, as the men and women of our generation move farther and farther away from God and the things of God, they gradually become disoriented and confused about their true identities, about the purpose of their lives, and about the meaning of the very physical bodies they carry around. We are witnessing today the aggressive and heavily orchestrated campaign from some powerful quarters, for everyone to accept as “fundamental human rights,” the phenomena that have come to be known as LGBTQ+. The call is for us to embrace the open display or free expression of abominable sexual perversions and aberrations that for thousands of years nearly all human societies identified as sodomy and therefore something that could never be accepted as normal human behaviour.

 

Is it not instructive that multiple psychopathologies, including drug and alcohol addiction, depression, suicide ideation, and actual suicides, appear to be increasing geometrically in the same age and among the same generation that has witnessed what is called the “sexual revolution,” when men and women are being told that they no longer need to exercise any restraints, and when all inhibitions in sexual expression, are gradually being seen as vestiges of a dying primitive era? The truth that stares modern humanity in the face, is the same one that dawned on St. Augustine in the 4th Century A.D., namely, that the human heart is either home-bound or death-bound; and there appears to be no resting place in between! Yet, a cursory survey of the dominant segments of our own youth culture in this country, Nigeria, especially as displayed in popular music and dance, in popular comedy shows, and on social media, will reveal that even though our Churches are often filled up on Sundays, and though the public practice of religion still appears to be thriving in our society, all is however not well with us. All is not well with us, because our youths are speedily abandoning the path of Christian virtues and values, and they are losing their souls to the social and moral decadence of the age.

 

Christian youth in this country and elsewhere these days, are often the ones with the least respect for religion and religious persons. They are often the ones denigrating the Church, blackmailing and insulting religious leaders, desecrating religious symbols, and recklessly engaging in acts that used to be identified as blasphemy. Many of the young Nigerians who are today addicted to pornography, and those engaged in internet fraud or the alleged ritual killing (of their mothers, their sisters and girlfriends for quick money), are often Christian youth, who seem to have lost their way in the world. Traditional African religious rituals have suddenly become very attractive for many Nigerian youths, who are today not only enlisting as devotees of traditional deities and ancestral cults in their villages, but also many are actually becoming priests and priestesses of some of these traditional African religious cults, the kind of cults that their parents were never exposed to, because their grandparents had abandoned them to embrace Christianity!

 

We are living through very challenging times, especially for truly religious people, as there is very little sense of spirituality and transcendence left in the popular culture. The powerful purveyors of the global culture have today become increasingly secular, aggressively anti-religious and vengefully anti-church. While thanking God for the fantastic work Emmanuel Badejo has by His grace done as priest and as Bishop over the last 40 years, we must acknowledge that these are difficult times indeed. We are at the threshold of a new dark age, and a new era of Christian persecution, when truly committed agents of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including Bishops, priests, religious, and elements of the lay faithful, will be challenged to embrace martyrdom that will come from different directions, including even from within the Church itself.

Today, an increasing number of men and women, even among those who identify as Christians, are rejecting the true gospel of Christ, and instead they are choosing to dine with the devil and to give themselves over to the most reckless forms of debauchery, self-indulgence and moral depravity. The fastest growing religion in Nigeria today does not appear to be the authentic religion of Jesus Christ, but a self-indulgence enterprise, popularly known as the prosperity gospel, which makes little or no demands on the adherents.

 

Many in the upcoming generation in our society and elsewhere are becoming like those described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:9, as “fornicators, adulterers, catamites, sodomites, thieves, greedy persons, drunkards, revilers, and robbers…. Yes, indeed, the harvest of the Lord is plentiful but the labourers are few. The vineyard of the Lord today features many ignorant but arrogant, fun-seeking, power hungry, enemies of God and enemies of Christ, who shamelessly display and audaciously promote abominably perverse behaviours that insult the sensibilities of god-fearing people of all times. In this kind of degenerate dispensation, we all must brace up for action, and assume our roles as passionate ministers of the gospel - priests, prophets and kings, faithful witnesses of the gospel, and courageous defenders of the Christian faith in these troubled times, not with swords and javelins as crusaders of the Middle Ages did, but with the intellectual, spiritual and moral resources of our faith.

 

In the Gospel passage chosen for this occasion, Jesus admonishes us his followers to be dressed for action and have our lamps lit; to be like those waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that we may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants, he says, whom the master finds alert when he comes (Luke 12:35-37). Sisters and brothers, to be alert, to be fully dressed for action, and to have our lamps lit as agents of evangelization in the 21st Century is going to be a very difficult and challenging spiritual, pastoral and social enterprise. To live our lives and discharge our duties effectively as witnesses, defenders and apologists of the Catholic faith in an age of widespread debauchery and practical atheism, may amount to a via crucis – the way of the cross, which may take some of us toward Calvary. Yes indeed, staying alert, being fully dressed for action, and having our lamps lit for the mission of Christ in the 21st Century, will demand a high degree of faith commitment, and a lifestyle of sacrificial witnessing to Gospel values, not the business-as-usual, cultural Christianity that many of us are used to which makes little or no demands on us.

 

As the world gets more and more engulfed in the darkness, the kind of darkness being manifested in the widespread leadership debauchery and elite idiocy we witness in Nigeria, or the darkness that we see manifested in the radical Gender and Transgender ideologies spreading across the world today, which is aimed at destroying whatever is left of traditional religious and family values; amidst such darkness, the generality of Christians are today called upon to be fully dressed for action, to have their lamps lit, and to stand up to be counted among the true followers of Christ. We are called upon to quickly get ourself thoroughly educated in the fundamentals of our faith as they confront the dynamics of the times, so we may courageously engage the neo-paganism of contemporary society, with the powerful light of the Christian gospel.

 

Thus, to be fully dressed for action, and to have our lamps lit as agents of the Gospel today will require that we daily submit ourselves prayerfully as instruments in God’s hands for the salvation of souls. To be fully dressed for action and to have our lamps lit, will mean that we persons of extraordinary courage and fortitude, who accept the call to shine the light of Christ amid the darkness of contemporary society, and to constitute ourselves into signs of contradiction to a world of ruthless and aggressive competition for wealth and power, and mindless devotion to the cult of sensual pleasure. To be dressed for action, and to have our lamps lit means that we be persons of faith who can interpret the signs of the times, and offer gospel discernment on the historical circumstances of our people.

 

True, we are in the midnight hour, and the Ship of Peter is battling amid turbulent waters. At this time of widespread mediocrity, hypocrisy and apostacy among many Christians, including even among priests and religious, be dressed for action, and to have our lamps lit, is to constantly pray for the grace of extraordinary commitment, so we may be considered part of the Lord’s remnant few, who would be holding the fort, standing in the gap, and putting on the whole armor of God against the wiles of the vicious enemies of God’s people. For as St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, it is not against flesh and blood that we must contend, but against principalities and powers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places… Therefore (he says), take on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm … and quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one (See Ephesians 6:10-17).

 

The challenges I have outlined above are even more pressing for those who are young parents, as they will have to practice their Christian faith and raise their children in a world that is becoming terribly hostile to any form of religiosity and spirituality, and particularly hostile to traditional Christian values; a world that is completely different from the world of January 4, 1986, when Bishop Badejo was ordained priest. When we were growing up, the principal agents of socialization included the Family, the Church, and the school, in that order. And those whom the children saw as heroes and mentors to be emulated, were from among their parents, Church leaders and teachers. But all that have changed today. With the mobile phone in the hands of our children, the television in our homes, and the billboards littering our towns, villages, and highways, the more powerful influencers of our children’s values today are often social media personalities, popular musicians, movie stars, comedians, and sundry entertainers. Many of these celebrities are school dropouts, products of broken homes or dysfunctional families. Many of them are alcoholics and drug addicts, serial polygamists and unrepentant sexual perverts. Some of them are known psychiatric cases. Others regularly display symptoms of one psychopathology or the other. But they are rich and famous. They often have millions of young followers on social media. This is why they are called social influencers, and they are regularly recruited as “brand ambassadors” by corporate organizations.

 

Thus, in the absence of good parenting, adequate evangelization, effective catechesis, and appropriate pastoral care for our children and youth, these celebrities who are themselves often in need of spiritual, psychological, and social rehabilitation, have unfortunately become the prime influencers, the principal inspirers, the key mentors, and the opinion molders and teachers of our vulnerable and gullible young people. So, I really do not envy those who are young parents in our day. Christian parenting today involves a lot more effort and investment than was required when those in Bishop Badejo’s generation were growing up. Those who are still raising young children today should recognize that their children may not turn out to be good Christian children, if all they are able to do is take them to Church every Sunday. Parents of young children will need to do a lot more, with the grace of God. They will need to be Christian parents in all truth and with all seriousness, making their homes domestic Churches, giving loud witness to Christian values, and teaching their children from their earliest days, how to be dressed for action and have their lamps lit; how to become signs of contraction to the evil generation; how to stand out and shine their light amid the surrounding darkness; and how with all boldness, to defend the hope that is in them; as St. Peter urges believers in 1 Peter 3:15. This is by no means an easy task, but with God all things are possible. After all the Lord has promised us that the powers of hell will not prevail against his Church. And we know that the One who called us to be Christians and agents of the Gospel at this time, will not abandon us. May the certainty of his presence sustain, strengthen, and comfort us, as we use the opportunity of Bishop Badejo’s anniversary celebration to renew our commitment to defending the true faith that Jesus left us. Amen.

 

Finally, as we celebrate today the 40th anniversary of a Christian leader, I challenge Christian politicians and office holders in this country, to abandon the madding crowd, and to return to the values and principles that have been the distinguishing mark of authentic Christian disciples through the ages. Nigerian politicians must begin to recognise that leadership is service of the common good, and not a channel for abusing, exploiting and subjugation of the people; that leadership is a call to the life of sacrifice, and not the criminal enterprise of stealing and looting of the resources of the land, such as has been so blatantly and recklessly displayed by political office holders in our nation’s recent history. May the Lord soon hear the cry of the suffering Nigerian people, and bless our land with caring and compassionate persons in leadership positions. Amen.