June Reflection

My Life of Faith

Humans tend to worry a lot. We would worry about what to wear the next day. Will we have food on our table tomorrow? Will we wake up to a new day after tonight? The worry list goes on.

I too am a natural worrier, but for the nine years that I was inside the seminary I cannot deny the fact that I did not worry much. I didn’t have to think about where to eat or what jeepney to ride going to school; it was all provided for. Of course there were things that did bother me like passing all my subjects or if I was going to graduate. But looking at this on a higher level, I believe that with the faith I have in God, I don’t have to worry about the future either. I am now here in the novitiate and I continue to trust in God’s will for me.

I can compare faith to a person eating in a restaurant, enjoying his meal. This person eats something that was prepared by a person whom he doesn’t know or hasn’t even met before. For all he knows, he could die from something in the food. In our life, God is the cook and we are the costumers, we eat at the banquet that He prepares for us and we eat whatever is served and would always find it delicious. For me, faith is believing in someone or something that we don’t see. We don’t see God but we are convinced that He is there to guide and to bring us to the right path.

To have Faith is to be sure of the thing that we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see” (Hebr. 11:1). The Handbook of Religious Life bluntly puts it this way because we sometimes would believe immediately in things or persons. When we watch commercials, the usual tendency is to believe the effect of a particular product and we would be drawn to buy it. In our day to day living, we easily believe a person who sounds very convincing. In the book, it is mentioned that man is born to believe, belief gives us the courage to rest confidently on the infinite chest of a most fatherly love. We are indeed born to believe. When we sleep in the evening we believe that we are to wake up the following day. We believe that God will provide for us what we need.

I had a recent experience in my life that is connected to faith. Last September 27, 2010, seven of us (my batchmates) took the Licensure Exam for Teachers (LET) in Manila. The exam was exhausting and it really drained me because it was a whole day exam. Months later, the results came out and I was quite hesitant to look at the result because I was afraid not to find my name on the list. Indeed, I did not find my name; in short, I did not pass the exam. It was the first time in my life that I was not able to sleep and I felt cold the whole night thinking whether the news was true or not, was it just a dream. That morning Fr. Reggie called me and he confirmed to me that I did not pass the Let exams. I thought I was the only one who did not pass but I found out that we were three. I got discouraged and immediately told myself, maybe this is not the life that God wants for me. I kind of blamed God for not giving me the knowledge to pass the exam.

It took me a long time to accept the reality and with the help of my formators, I decided to try again. This time I put my faith in God. I realized that there are things that He allows to happen so that I will learn from it. I took the second exam last April and just last month I saw my name on the list of LET passers. I guess God wanted me to learn something from my experience. I once read in a book, “do we have to let calamities happen before we go back to God?” or “do we need bad things or misfortunes to happen before we turn to him?”

To have faith in God we must be able to surrender our very self to God and trust in Him. We must believe that God will never fail us and that He is very compassionate to us even though we keep on sinning against His name.