The Sunday Mail
•Remarkable story of Fr Kuli has striking chords with life of Jesus Christ
Kelvin Chiringa
Religion Correspondent
DEATH is the ancient mark of the fall of man. A condition to which humanity is doomed, one whose mention invites shudders of dread.
Men of insight, innovation and ingenuity have struggled in many untold ways to come up with a definite solution to cheat death, yet their efforts have amounted to a ridiculous failure.
Mankind continue to live in a world of depravation, hunger and disease with death always omnipresent, lurking in the pockets of our own darkness striking terror on its victims.
Yet this story, is about one man who, in the final episode of his life, left behind a mind boggling jig-saw puzzle that mysteriously matched the life of the passion of Christ.
Born in a family of eight, Jacob Kuli Chimhenga decided to join the priesthood at a very young age much to the appreciation of his Catholic contemporaries.
His ordination had all the elements of ancient ceremony punctuated by a pious aura of pomp and fanfare as the Archbishop consecrated him for the priestly life ahead on August 1, 2015.
Amidst these celebrations, little did anyone know that three months later, Fr Kuli as he was affectionately known, would be found gruesomely trapped within the engine of his car.
He was crushed beyond recognition underneath the belly of a truck he had hit in a head-on collision along the Harare-Murambinda Highway.
It is has been made known that Fr Kuli amazingly predicted his death many times in almost the same way that Jesus did.
Soon before his death, the priest had uploaded the picture of a truck travelling on a highway and beneath it was a very shocking status: “Smiling All The Way to My Grave”.
“I had downloaded a truck and shown him the picture while I was in South Africa and the next thing I saw it uploaded on his WhatsApp profile picture with a shocking status,” said Mr Joe Chimhenga, his brother.
“My son had urged me to join the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which is a pro-Pentecostal way of Catholic worship because in his words, ‘Very soon you would receive very disturbing news which you may not be able to handle’,” said his mother.
And his last sermon in Harare was at a funeral in Mufakose at which he is said to have revealed knowledge of the exact place of his grave in Chishawasha.
“As we were later to learn, he had told mourners in Mufakose at a funeral mass that he was ready to die, had knowledge of the site of his grave and in his own words he declared, ‘Even at this moment I know I am just but maggots’,” said his sister, Miss Ressy Chimhenga.
In many ways he had tried to show his family what was ahead.
“I had gone on holiday against his wish and before my coming back, Fr Kuli sent me a shocking message which at the time I did not take seriously and it read, ‘Mother when are you coming back, if you delay you will find your son gone’.
“As I was in the days of preparing my coming back, I received news that Fr Kuli was no more,” said Sister Mariah, with whom he worked in Murambinda.
It was at approximately 6pm on the fateful Tuesday when news of his cruel and untimely death landed in the capital; the shock and dread it came with plunging many into darkness.
To an investigative and curious Christian, a meticulous probing of the few days before his death and the nature of his death and burial possess an eerie exactitude to Jesus’s last moments captured in the Bible.
The time frame between his ordination and death gives us three months and this tallies with the three years Jesus took to accomplish his ministry.
Having died on a Tuesday, his body was brought back to Harare for a funeral vigil mass and later interred at Chishawasha cemetery on the following Friday which invites the question: the same day Jesus was buried.
Death robbed the Catholic world of a passionate, soft-natured and charismatic priest, just like Jesus who died at age 33.
Fr Kuli was 33.
To the critical reader, this may sound far-fetched, yet the resemblances between this priest and Jesus Christ go deep.
It took Jesus three days to resurrect while for Fr Kuli, the time frame between his death in Murambinda and burial in Chishawasha gives us three days.
Probably what may be very disturbing in this probe is the appearance of the spiritual number “three” many times.
While driving from Harare for a mass in Murambinda, Fr Kuli is involved in a terrible accident on November 3, dying at the age of 33 after working as a priest for three months, and being buried after three days.
“It is very interesting that my child refused to be breast-fed at three months of age, the many threes visible in his life situations points to a deeper meaning that has the blessing of the trinity,
“The shock I have experienced out of working out the puzzle he left behind has reversely been transformed into consolation such that instead of grieving my son, I now understand him as a mystery of God”, said Mrs Chimhenga.
According to Fr Chota of the Order of the Salesians, he had last spoken to Jacob at exactly 2pm at which time he departed and three hours later he heard of the accident. As Fr Chota would explain later in a mass sermon, the number “three” has an especially deep spiritual undertone that pertains to ‘Completeness’.
“I last spoke with him at exactly 2pm and three hours later he was gone. We understand that Jacob’s life was a subtle but bold divine imitation of Christ,
“The number three spiritually refers to “completeness” and it is clear that Fr Kuli lived his priesthood to the fullest in a very short time,” said Fr Chota.
Perhaps the ubiquitous way in which this number appears saves as an explanation that even though his family would have wanted Fr Kuli to live longer than 33 years and beyond the three months in his priestly office – but his mission was complete.
