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| The Knidos Labyrinth. Mirador, Baguio City. Taken after our house discernment retreat, December 2015. |
(Originally published as a post on my Facebook account)
I have not been able to update this website for the past two years, but I marvel at how the Lord has made His love so tangible in my life.
After ruminating for years about a possible religious vocation, I finally had the opportunity to discern my vocation full-time in a religious setting last year. It required me to leave my job, give my belongings away, and live in a quasi-religious house run by an active religious congregation, together with other like-minded men, for ten months.
This journey allowed me to get a foretaste of priestly formation, having been asked to study philosophy, theology, spirituality and literature. It also allowed me to be immersed in various apostolates, among them helping out in a small chapel in a suburb in the outskirts of downtown Quezon City, teaching Christian morality in a Catholic high school, and giving recollections and discernment talks to college students.
It was an experience that allowed me to see how God was indeed calling me to utilize my gifts and talents. More importantly, it was an experience that allowed me to espouse a lifestyle of prayer, mindfulness, and selfless service. This eventually led me to discern that an active religious life may not be for me, and that God may be calling me to some other expression of a deep desire for union with Him.
The ten-month journey may not have led me to enter the religious order I had once desired. But I now slowly realize the wisdom of it all: that perhaps it was not all about gunning towards a particular path I desire, but it was all about giving up my all for God, and seeing where that act of total self-offering takes me.
That act, I soon learned, got me started on a labyrinthine journey, that continues to teach me to relish the beauty of the journey itself, and to keep in mind the ultimate destination: union with God.
Now, just like the winding path of a labyrinth, my journey has taken me back to the medical academe. I look forward to where this bend will take me next.
I humbly commend myself to your prayers.
