IN THE END IS ONLY LOVE
Some people say “the deepest desire of a human being is to love and to be loved.” These words hold profound truth and I would like to agree with this statement. We are created out of love. It is because of love, we are born through our parents. Hence, we experience God’s love through our parents. We further learn about what love is through establishing a relationship with others.
We all have an interesting love story to tell. All love stories start with a date. It is setting up a day, a place, a time to meet with someone whom you want to establish a relationship with. Thus, I want to share a meaningful love story.
My love story with Jesus was formalized with a date on April 29, 2004, with the Gospel passage of John 1:35-40: “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “Where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus”. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
It all started with the desire to come and see. I put it, in other words, to come and to learn to love. It was only a desire with no clear conviction on what love was all about. Love is a complex idea. I used to think that it was easy as I thought about it. After living my consecrated life for 20 years, I came to know the meaning of true love as I am now in the fifth year of accompanying the young people in the novitiate.
As many stories are told with their significance, I found joy in being there for them. It took patient listening to their stories of life and accompanying them to grow as what God wanted them to be. These young people are coming from the different realities of the world where we live. It is a wonderful world yet it is a world that is full of discrimination, inequality, poverty, misery, war, corruption, lack of role models, and different kinds of violence and abuses.
Listening to them is to understand their words as the pain is deep. I am afraid to fail, I need to forgive even if I didn’t like to. Actually, it all started with failures, I am confused and cannot understand myself, I want to cry but I have no more tears, I feel alone, am I good enough? Will I be listened to? What if I will be in love someday? Will I survive living in a community? Is it possible to love someone I cannot see?
Nevertheless, in the end, they say: here is my home, here I feel I belong. Here I am free to express and here I learn how to love and to forgive, here I grow, here I am healed, here I feel the presence of God, and here I learn to risk and make a commitment to LOVE.
Is this love? I’d ask myself… Nothing extraordinary thing is being done. Simply to listen to their stories, sometimes boring, crazy and funny stories. Just be there for them, learn from them, look into their eyes, and ask are you fine today? Work with them, invite them for a walk, ride a bike with them, eat green mangoes under the mango trees, sing and pray with them, dance and watch movies with them, play under the rain and take selfie with them.
Additionally, share with them what is happening in our world where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Posting a question to think critically why war is happening in Myanmar, in Ukraine, in Israel, in Gaza, and other places. Why China and America are very powerful? Why much poverty in Sudan? What to do with the people living in the streets and begging for survival in Manila despite the country being a Catholic country? Discuss with them the crisis of our environment, converse about the sexual abuse in the church, the role of the women in the church, what happens to the young people, and why they are away from the church. Why the religious life is not seen as very much relevant to our societies today?
Furthermore, encouraging them to share the little they have to help the weak in the group and extend a hand to the poor and the needy, reminding them that if we want to change the world, we need to change ourselves, go deep into ourselves to discover the treasure of their being, and let them understand that we are here for a mission.
Sometimes conflicts arise as to how to accept what is different from us. We speak in Filipino English, Timorese English, Indian English, Burmese English, Vietnamese English, British English, and American English but eventually, we speak English. Some moments we hear some sayings that in India we are like this, in Vietnam we cook this way, in East Timor we speak this way, in the Philippines we do like this, and many other differences between us. Nevertheless, we invite them to embrace the uniqueness of each one, to cooperate, and to help each other to grow in unity to work together for a better world. After all, we need each other, we all belong to each other, and we belong to a large family of God, we belong to a missionary Congregation to live the interculturality.
Once again I asked myself is this love? Yes, it is. It is love because JESUS is the source of love and I felt unexplainable joy in my heart, and I experienced the pleasure of serving and loving. Furthermore, the Gospel passage of John 14:21-26 invites us to a profound understanding of love and obedience, as Jesus reveals the beauty of divine intimacy. “Jesus said to his disciples: He that has my commandments and keeps them; and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him and will manifest myself to him”.
I am still on a long journey to learn the true love, especially to love the mission of accompanying the novices. However, growing up as a farmer’s daughter, I learn the process of accompaniment as a process of cultivating a vegetable garden. The process is “Prepare the land, grow the seeds, and plant them. Some seeds grow very fast, some are slow, some are healthy, and some are weak but they are all trying to grow. They all have potential and are responsible for their growth. My task is to faithfully and responsibly water them, take care of them, and put some fertilizer sometimes. Above all trust in the GIVER OF LIFE. Seeing them grow each day gives me a lot of joy. I hope to see them stand firm in the choice they had chosen, be confident to face life, and be responsible to be women for others, to share and to help others grow, and to share the love they experienced after they leave the novitiate”.
In the end, it is only love as St. Catherine of Siena states: the human heart is always drawn by love. Therefore, when they are in the communities after their first profession, the communities are places where they are accepted, listened to, involved, valued, welcomed, cared for, and loved because our greatest desire for human beings is to love and be loved.
Maria de Fatima Pui
Asian Continental Novitiate, Manila, Philippines.