Monday, April 01, 2013
I went for my first ever church retreat yesterday (Black Saturday) and it turned out to be more like a series of recollections by a visiting priest from philipines (Msgr B. Chito) but it was really enriching and his words have touched my heart and helped renew my faith, so yay although you will definitely not be seeing this hahaha but thank you Msgr Chito (: you've no idea how much this will help me... :D
I was actually totally apprehensive about the whole thing initially cos i thought like, omg retreat.... i don't do all this feeling-sharing and group reflections kinda thing oh no can i pls not go?! but i'm glad i went haha, truly, and i'm going to post some of what i managed to take away from Msgr's talk, not for the purpose of being preachy but because I would really like to remember all those pearls of wisdom for life, and also share them with you all if you are interested to read it! (:
so firstly,
Listen with your heart and you will never forget. This totally works, (tried and tested by me! ) because I listened with my heart that day, and the words truly sank into my mind and will probably be etched there for a long time! Listening with just your ears is not so good, cos it tends to go in one ear and come out from the other... hehe true story!
number two!
Mediocrity is the enemy of discipleship, and discipleship itself is an act of love. To add on to this,
Love is a matter of will, and does NOT come from the heart, contrary to what people always say. Sounds cheem? But not really haha, basically it just means that if we are mediocre, we will never be able to be good disciples. Also, one can only be a disciple if one truly loves the leader or whatever this whole discipleship thing is about. I think this can be applied to any aspect of our daily lives actually, and not just in the religious sense. Anyway this made me truly ashamed of myself because then i realised that I have let myself become mediocre, and not just in my church ministry, but also in my schoolwork, and in every other thing possible. And on hindsight, it really seems like I started becoming mediocre when I started losing faith in my religion. This was around the same period when I felt like I just could not be happy anymore, and I hated the world and everything around me just seemed like chores, and nothing could ever make me happy.
So basically, I lost faith and lost hope, and then started getting unhappy, and lost my zest to do my best. In terms of lectoring, I stopped preparing the readings in advance, and just turned up 15 mins earlier in church to flip through it before going up to the pulpit, when previously I used to start prepping the night before, reading through the excerpt at least like 3 times before going up. And i think that explains why I started getting truly mediocre... Proclaiming the readings in a monotonous voice with no real idea whatsoever about the meaning of whatever I was reading aloud.... to me, they were all just words on the paper, and all I aimed to do was get through it without mistake, when I should actually have been aiming for so much more than just a mistake-free reading. I started losing the eye-contact, the emotion, everything.... And I have been this mediocre for the last few years i think! Actually since year 1 of dental school. I think my life started going downhill from there actually, but ok I will not start blaming the dental school for everything haha. I think in terms of lectoring, the best years for me were those just after Confirmation, because I was so enthusiastic in serving my duties, and cos I truly felt like I had been filled with the Spirit, and this filled me with this unexplainable need and desire to be excellent at fulfilling my duties in the ministry. Sigh... so ashamed of how mediocre I've become!
In terms of school work too, I've become mediocre. Again this is gonna be attributed to dental school bahaha. It really gave me such feelings of inadequacy that I lost faith in God and myself, and just lost interest in everything. I mean.... since I'm not awesome to start with, why even try being awesome right? But I'm going to change that mindset... from now on I will not let myself become mediocre again. I will do my best in everything, and I will not give up so easily anymore... no matter how inadequate I feel, I must pick myself up and bounce back. I must not let school kill my faith, and bring me down!!!! Dental school, you're not gonna crush my spirit anymore!
number three!
God knows what is best for all of us and
God makes all things beautiful in his time. Everything happens for a reason, and it's all in God's grand plan of things! It may be hard for us to take initially, but it might be what is best for us, so just accept it, and carry on. (: God will not just leave us in the lurch, so even if we are going through terrible times, cling to the hope that God will help us out of it, and all we have to do is just
believe. Also, we shouldn't question why things are going too slowly for our liking, or why God is taking so long to answer our prayer, blah blah, because God will do what is best for us, but in his time, not our time. So just be patient and wait for it.... (:
This is also related to point number three: We should not keep asking God for this and that, because again, He knows what is best for us, so sometimes if you are asking for something but He thinks it's not the best thing for us then obviously you will not be getting your prayer answered!
Point number four! The devil acts in very subtle ways but it always tries to lead you away from your identity. It's important not to be tempted by the devil, because
mission flows from identity, and if identity is distorted, then the mission will fail automatically.
There was definitely more stuff that he talked about but unfortunately i don't seem to remember it anymore ): though the above few points were quite enough to help me and i definitely feel like my faith has been renewed! Msgr did mention something along the lines of faith being like a handphone battery, so you have to keep recharging it and keep it from going to the "one bar level" aka danger level haha! (:
Am definitely gonna be a happier person now, haha not gonna revert back to angsty old me anymore! it's unbecoming and it's just not who i am! My identity is not that of an angsty person i'm sure, so the devil (in the form of dental sch) is gonna always try to make me angsty and angry at the world, but i'm not gonna succumb anymore! so yes, i'm allowed to rage at times when things in sch piss me off, but it's only gonna be temporary! i won't let it get to me, and i'm not gonna go to bed angry, and i'm gonna make sure I'm at peace with myself all the time (:
So yes that's it for the retreat thingy (: I feel almost as good as i did after confirmation now (: the feeling is definitely not as awesome as then, but it's almost there ((:
I went for easter vigil this year too! (: haha my second easter vigil! the last time i went, i think i was still in primary sch! :O anw i like it!! it's meaningful and i think i will make it a point to go every year, just like how i always make it a point to go for midnight mass on christmas eve (unless i get totally drunk after dinner, which happens sometimes yup oops) I'm also gonna make it a point to go for the entire triduum starting from maundy thursday, because it's a worthy sacrifice and perhaps it will make me feel better somehow (:
anw, it's almost gonna be monday, but not yet! so i'm not late in saying HAPPY EASTER! ((:
remember that there is nothing out there that we should fear, because even death has no hold on us anymore (:
