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responsibilities within the Trinitarian set-up. Great anticipation too was building up within me especially as I was to receive my habit and pledged vows. The moment I received my first vows I felt overjoyed and so confident that I was really in the right direction of my life. How totally wrong I was when I felt the pull of the outside world. I left the Trinitarian Order after four years.
Being out from the structured Trinitarian life and living with my family back in the Philippines for four years, I underwent wide range of positive and negative experiences which I would like to think that He made me undergo to really strengthen and help me grow to maturity. In all those years I was living a life so totally opposite of what I experienced with my Trinitarian life. Again, He manifested in various ways that "things happen for a reason". I woke up one day and a sudden pang of loneliness and emptiness engulfed my being. I reached a point that I just had about enough of living the life outside. On the outside, everyone thought I was really happy and enjoying being away from religious life. There were countless nights that when I am alone and in deep thoughts and prayers, I realized that I sorely missed the Trinitarian way of life. I had so much discerning to do. I went on self-retreats for my direction. I finally realized that I indeed was lost and longed for my previous Trinitarian family.
I am so blessed that He has not given up on me of His calling me back to be of service to Him. After much anticipation and
with great joy and thanksgiving, I was accepted back to the loving fold of the Trinitarian community. With a long absence of four years, again I had to "rebuild" myself in boosting up my insecurities of immersing myself back into the Western world. But relearning and bonding with my fellow Trinitarian family was a huge relief as I could say to myself that I still had "it" in me. It is not sufficient for me to describe in words the awesome joy and happiness in getting myself geared up for academic studies, the many challenges and responsibilities imparted to me in helping out in many ways my Trinitarian family and its mission, but most of all the wonderful, positive changes of the Trinitarian ways in terms of management and personalities involved.
The second time I went through my Simple Profess vows, I was even more awed with His ways of enlightening me of the glorious mysteries He has bestowed in my "second-time-around" spiritual journey. I just want to point out the many blessings I have received from Him that whenever I am in doubt or lonely or feeling restless, everywhere I turn, someone is always there with an extending hand offering to
help and guide me to figure out a way to get me to where I want to be in this spiritual journey. I have more appreciation and equally happy whenever I don my habit and the awesome responsibilities that go with wearing it.
As of this year, I am preparing for my solemn profession. Part of it is to spend a few months in Rome together with my fellow Trinitarian brothers all over the world. It is a time to recommit ourselves to the Trinitarian Order and to deepen our understanding in ways that could make us better person or better yet future leaders, ministers, brothers, fathers, etc. in the Order.
I still have so much to share but I would just like to stress to those who will be following in our footsteps some wisdom shared by the elders: it is in focusing on the journey now that matters and not the end goal or destination. Because when we focus on our journey now, we internalize the enjoyment and satisfaction of what we are doing and undergoing. And when we do experience the ups and downs of our present journey, we then get to our goal and destination with a clear view and conviction of our mission for Him.