Franciscan
Life is a Journey and I am a PILGRIM
I believe life is a journey. In this journey of life, I am not alone. I journey with God.At this moment as I stand before you, I know, I am not alone. The presence of God is around me guiding me in what I do. As I look back my life of 32 years and beyond it, I see the Invisible Hand of God that has been always present. God has begun to walk with me the moment He thought of me.
We are reflecting on the theme Walking with God. This theme implies that we as people walk with God. I would like to turn this around: God walking with us. Like it or not, God does not leave us, He just walks beside us at all moments of our life. However, it is up to me to ask if I am reciprocating with God. Do I also walk with God? God takes the initiative, the first step to walk with me. The moment I recognize God's presence around me, Which IS indeed there, I begin to walk with Him. How do I recognize that God is walking with me?My life, I think, is the answer.
My parents are not born Christians but Hindus. My father had a profound experience of Jesus in His life that he decided to become a Christian. God touched my father in a way that he just could not but become Jesus' follower.He has now a Christian wife, three Christian children of whom one is a priest. Is it an accident that my Father became a Christian? No, it is a providential act. It is here that I recognize that God has already begun to walk with me. God thus introduced Himself to me through my Father.
As a child I remember going to Church with my Father. I used to just kneel down without uttering a word, a simple gaze at the crucifix was all my prayer. I saw Jesus there not as a statue but as a living person who in return gazed me. That was all my prayer as a child. I carried a small crucifix or Rosary in my pocket, just to make sure, that Jesus was with me. These were my childhood experiences of walking with God and God walking with me. As an adult, I do carry Rosary but I know God walks with me always regardless of whether I carry a rosary or a Cross.
My father is the first catechism teacher that I had. He taught me not so much with words but by his actions. In my village there existed a milder level of caste based discrimination? I still remember my father teaching us to treat everyone equally. All were welcome to our house and my father lent his help to all in the village. In his own ways, my father as a school teacher educated the children of the village about morals, values and the importance of life together.
The villagers worked in the quarry. The school children to whom my father taught were the children of stonecutters. They suffered from poverty and injustice. It is to these children, my father committed his whole life. He lived with them and shared their joys and sorrows. We as his children studied with other children of the village in the same school so that we would learn the reality of life. As a Christian, my father never forced his Faith on others, especially, his students. He however considered everyone as the Children of God.My Father through his exemplified life taught me about Faith and Service. That God walked with me early in life through my father is a fact. That I had such a father is no accident or fate, but God predestined it. God has been walking with me!
My village is predominantly a Hindu village. There are only five Christian families. The other three hundred families belong to Hinduism. We had no church, common place of worship and we prayed together in our own families. There came to our village a group of protestant preachers. My father, who was a school head master in our village, helped them to preach Jesus to the whole village. My father asked me to accompany them in their ministry. I was happy that even as a child I had a chance to proclaiming Jesus. I was always with them in ministry and prayer. God had already chosen me for His ministry.
As a child I didn't understand the differences among many Christian churches all that I knew was that we all believed in one God. I grew in my Christian faith in an ecumenical setting. I remained firm in my childhood desire to become a priest as I moved from childhood to adolescence. Franciscans later came to my village and I learned about Francis and I could not just stop reading about Him. I was obsessed with Francis. I thought I should one day became His brother. I heard God calling me and I responded. That Franciscans should come to my village was indeed work of God. I still believe that they came just to help me discern to become a Franciscan. No one imagined that there would be a priest in our village, but God willed it. That was how God walked with me too!
As a Franciscan pastor I worked in a village consisting of 300 families. The villagers are mainly daily-wage earners. The problem of alcoholism was rampant. The youth were unguided. The children were not attended to. It was a parish with many challenges. Being Pastor is walking with God and walking with my parishioners. As a pastor I decided to walk with my people with the strength that I received from my walking with God.
I was just 18 months then ordained and I was just 28 years old when I became the Pastor. With only inexperience to my credit, I took upon the ministry. I believed that God has brought me to this place and I was not going to be anymore alone but God would walk with me. Through my devotional and prayerful celebration of Eucharist, I tried to make God alive among us. Through the Word we read and the Bread that we break, I believe, God comes down and sits with us, listens to us and walks with us. As we celebrated the Eucharist, with the grace of God all of us did feel the presence of God around us.
I used to ask myself: If Jesus was the Pastor in this parish what would he have done? He would have visited every house and would have proclaimed Peace. House visit was my means of bringing God and His blessings to the people. I used to visit the people in their houses. People were very welcoming and they used to share about their struggles. I used to attentively listen to them and strengthen them with my consoling presence and prayers. I believed that these people had been entrusted to me by God and I have to care for them. Just as God would walk with these people, I needed to walk with them.
My parish is a parish of children. I noticed that with parents whole day working the children were not attended to and they were let free to grow up. I decided to organize special prayer services for children, study hours, value based classes and various games. The children were always around the church cleaning, arranging for mass, doing flower vas, practicing songs and so on. The children must grow up in an atmosphere of bliss and joy. I tried to ensure such upbringing.Walking with Children was an important aspect of my mission.
I can summarise my pastoral ministry as a time of my walking with God. I found God not only in the church but everyone I came across, in every house I visited and every child that needed love and care. I was able to walk with God and with these people because God had already been walking with me!
As a Franciscan I rendered my help also towards HIV-infected people. They needed someone to walk with them too. HIV-infected people face discrimination and isolation from the society. Even their near and dear ones abandon them. Besides the health related problems, the stigma and disgrace that the HIV-infected brothers and sisters suffer make their life all the more miserable. Unable to cope with their depressing and hopeless situation, a few women had attempted suicide. It takes great courage for a HIV-infected person to accept his/her distressing condition and to carry on living. I accompanied these people too in making thesepeople too in making them strong in their resolve to live a meaningful life.
Once I visited a HIV-infected man who was helpless as his health was worsening day by day because of Tuberculosis. He had a large tumour on his neck and was coughing frequently. His wife committed suicide a year ago once she came to know that her husband was infected with HIV. His only son was taken by his wife’s family members. He was living with his aged mother who herself was sick.He had no proper food, medicine and money to travel to the government hospital. His situation was really pathetic. When I spoke to him in his house, he said that he was contemplating suicide for some time and that if I had not gone to his house, he would have died.
In conclusion,
As a Franciscan, I see my ministry, as Walking with God. Francis says that we are all pilgrims in this world. As a pilgrim-Franciscan, I walk with God. As I said earlier, it is God who first began to walk with me and I am just with Him walking.