Nurturing the Gift We Have Received

One of the best gifts that God has given us is our vocation to religious life. It is a special gift that we have to continually treasure and nurture so that as we try to become gifts to others we bring into realization what the Lord Jesus told us – “The gift you receive, give it as a gift.”. (Mt. l0:8)

The secret to live religious life meaningfully is our openness to the movement of the Spirit deep within us.

We are called by God to a very specific mission of service to the sick. And we have to do it with the love like that of a mother to her only child who is sick and serve the sick with heart in our hands. By faithfully living our compassion for the sick we become God's living presence to them as we cheer them up, give them hope, and help them keep believing that life is beautiful.

To effectively and efficiently do this, we have to continually deepen our personal relationship with the very source of our vocation – God. Thus it is a must that we have to be a man of prayer. We have to be in constant communion with Him. We must try our best to allow Christ to live in us so that we do things not for ourselves but for Him and others.

At the same time, we must value the importance of good relationships with our confreres in the community. But we have to be aware that a community that is God- and other- centered has to be created by the members of the community. If we are able to create this, then our community becomes our power house where we can get encouragement and support in times of difficulties.  It becomes our source of joy and enthusiasm in carrying out our ministry, and our fallback when life becomes burdensome.

The secret to live religious life meaningfully is our openness to the movement of the Spirit deep within us. This happens when we can honestly say that we have tried our best to do His will and not ours. Weaknesses and limitations we may have, but God always supplies us with the graces we need to persevere in our ministry and daily endeavors especially if it is for the building of the Kingdom of God here on earth. Let us do our best and surely God will take care of the rest! God bless us all.