With Advent well underway, I took time off this weekend to reflect and spend time with the Lord in a retreat to discover my personal name and vocation.
Together with 19 other women, we gathered at the FMM House of Prayer for a time of learning, resting, communing and reflecting in silence that helped me crystallize my personal vocation even further.
It begins with a fundamental option - a question posed and answered. If I say yes and opt for God, then this initial response will form the basis for my personal vocation.
This preferential option for Christ challenges me to a personal relationship with Him. To know Him and to know more about His ways, so that I can become more like Him.
As Jesus proclaimed in Luke's Gospel, He came to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, help the blind see, let the oppressed go free and proclaim a year of the Lord's favour.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be a social activist, but one whose radicality is personal and pacifist in nature and is diametrically opposed to the violence that perpetuates and dominates our world.
Is this way of God possible? Yes, if we emulate ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary deeds such as Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero and Satoko Kitahara, and did it with only God's glory in mind.
What these people had in common despite their diverse backgrounds and accomplishments is a personal relationship with Christ, one that kept them focused on living out their own unique vocation in answer to God's call.
The fundamental option for Christ is no easy one for it requires sacrifice, openness of heart, great stamina, and a constant clarification of will and cultivation of the mind in order to follow a suffering Christ that died on the cross for His beliefs.
This constant process of conversion and its attendant challenges was played out in the movie Of Gods and Men, which is a true story of nine Trappist monks who served an impoverished Algerian community.
Under threat from terrorists and a corrupt civil government, the monks faced the reality of death daily and the film chronicles the interior struggle of each man and their ultimate collective decision, which was to stay and continue serving the medical needs of the largely Muslim community... to their untimely death (only two survived being shot).
It isn't often that we are faced with such life-defining moments as these monks, living as we do in relative comfort and luxury. However, we must keep questioning and searching, in order to know why we choose what we choose.
To make a conscious choice for Christ and not make it about just a default position we have arrived at by virtue of our parents' faith.
I am thankful that my parents raised me in the faith, but I am even more grateful that I found Him and that today, eight years later, He is still my fundamental option, my first choice.
Together with 19 other women, we gathered at the FMM House of Prayer for a time of learning, resting, communing and reflecting in silence that helped me crystallize my personal vocation even further.
It begins with a fundamental option - a question posed and answered. If I say yes and opt for God, then this initial response will form the basis for my personal vocation.
This preferential option for Christ challenges me to a personal relationship with Him. To know Him and to know more about His ways, so that I can become more like Him.
As Jesus proclaimed in Luke's Gospel, He came to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, help the blind see, let the oppressed go free and proclaim a year of the Lord's favour.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be a social activist, but one whose radicality is personal and pacifist in nature and is diametrically opposed to the violence that perpetuates and dominates our world.
Is this way of God possible? Yes, if we emulate ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary deeds such as Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero and Satoko Kitahara, and did it with only God's glory in mind.
What these people had in common despite their diverse backgrounds and accomplishments is a personal relationship with Christ, one that kept them focused on living out their own unique vocation in answer to God's call.
The fundamental option for Christ is no easy one for it requires sacrifice, openness of heart, great stamina, and a constant clarification of will and cultivation of the mind in order to follow a suffering Christ that died on the cross for His beliefs.
This constant process of conversion and its attendant challenges was played out in the movie Of Gods and Men, which is a true story of nine Trappist monks who served an impoverished Algerian community.
Under threat from terrorists and a corrupt civil government, the monks faced the reality of death daily and the film chronicles the interior struggle of each man and their ultimate collective decision, which was to stay and continue serving the medical needs of the largely Muslim community... to their untimely death (only two survived being shot).
It isn't often that we are faced with such life-defining moments as these monks, living as we do in relative comfort and luxury. However, we must keep questioning and searching, in order to know why we choose what we choose.
To make a conscious choice for Christ and not make it about just a default position we have arrived at by virtue of our parents' faith.
I am thankful that my parents raised me in the faith, but I am even more grateful that I found Him and that today, eight years later, He is still my fundamental option, my first choice.
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