The Rejection at Nazareth



SELECTED READING
The Rejection at Nazareth | Matthew 13:54-58

 PERSONAL REFLECTION
Rejection is painful, even more so if it is what comes out of exposing ourselves and allowing ourselves to become vulnerable in the hands of another. The months leading to my application and eventual acceptance to Arvisu House had seen me struggling with what could be the most painful rejection of all in relation to my vocation discernment journey. 

Someone told me that I should give up on this discernment because I am just too old for this. I had been told that I think too highly of myself to even consider that this will ever work; that I am not good enough to become a priest, much less to become a Jesuit. I had been told that this is the height of hypocrisy, that how I had been living my life is a glaring testament as to why I should never be accepted. As you could imagine, I was hurt by those words, but what’s more painful is that the words came from someone who knew me too well. Those words came from me. 

The past two weeks here in Arvisu had been filled with grace in that we were constantly bombarded with reminders that our self-awareness and criticalness of our own faults and limitations should not get in the way of seeing ourselves as unworthy of the vocation we are discerning about.

The Jesuits we have met so far — from the incoming novices, scholastics, to the priests — they might have used different words, but they all deliver the same message of encouragement: that we should work towards opening ourselves up to fully accept God’s love for us, and that this openness entails acknowledging our limitations and embracing them as an integral part of our offering and response to God’s love. 

In fact the reminders from them had been so constant that I am sometimes led to wonder if it’s not already being overdone. But then I am also reminded that I sometimes tend to forget too quickly, and that in my stubbornness and complacency, I might fall again into that trap of self-rejection and the downward spiral that comes with it — putting up that wall of insecurity that will separate me from God’s love. And then I come to terms and become even more grateful for the consistency of these reminders. 

And so as I close this reflection, I would like to beg for the grace that I, and also you my dear brothers, may not so easily forget that God loved us first, and that may we be guarded by the Holy Spirit against self-rejection and self-loathing as these restrain us from receiving His love in full. 

Amen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Final Entry

Image
  This will be my final blog entry. The image above is a word cloud generated from a compilation of all my morning praise reflections as a Jesuit candidate in Arvisu House. I was blindly taking on this word cloud project, genuinely curious about what my reflections would reveal about the entire experience. It makes me happy that in the end, data reveals that God is at the center of it after all.  Make no mistake: it still makes me sad that I was rejected  not accepted to become a Jesuit novice, but I am fully convinced that God had His hand in that fateful decision. In his subtle way, I would like to think that He prepared me for it -- making me realize, especially in prayer during my final days there (Arvisu House) that He had always been with me, and nothing is bound to change that.  Nevertheless, as I continue to anticipate what He has in store for me, I continue to be disoriented, not knowing what to do with my life in the midst of this awful pandemic. This Covid-19 plague is reall
Read more

The Good Shepherd

Image
MORNING PRAISE | May 04, 2020 |  The Good Shepherd |  J ohn 10:11-18 PERSONAL REFLECTION If my  Arvisu  journey were a Korean drama following a standard season of 16 episodes,  I would have already been starting episode 1 6  by now: that  calm and quiet stretch  where the climax had been  completed , and the open ends of the story are already being  tied up , in preparation for the  inevitable  finale.  N ew story arcs or plot twists  no longer surface ;  and  no new characters  are  being introduced;  instead, conflicts big and small are being resolved and closed, marking with it the signal for characters to leave the storyline one-by-one.  These days, I often find myself looking back at the discernment  drama  that I have lived for the past 289 days: the struggles, the pains, the joys.  I thought that being alive for 38 years prepares you fully for this epic story, but apparently it does not. For the storyline  was  brimming with unexpected plot twists and unpredi
Read more

Jesus' Departure

Image
MORNING PRAISE | May 22, 2020 | Jesus' Departure | John 16:20-23 PERSONAL REFLECTION One December evening in 2005, our television’s reception of ABS-CBN was unexpectedly, almost miraculously clear, and this allowed me to watch JesCom’s tv movie called “ Maging Akin Muli .” I never fully grasped back then how this serendipitous moment would turn out to be a decisive moment in my life: for it will apparently mark the beginning of my vocation discernment journey, which, as it turns out, will be one crazy adventure spanning almost 15 long years. Nine days from now, just like each one of you, I will be handed a letter which contains a confirmation of how that 15 years of discernment will come to an end. It’s amazing how much is at stake in that one decisive morning – the coming to an end of a 15-year journey; the conclusion of ten months of adventure in this sacred house that I have learned to call “home.” Much like most of you, I have no idea how that moment will turn
Read more