The adventure to live loving and the risk to be happy in Christ is what basically form the background of my vocation. I remember someone told me: “Happy you who have responded gratefully to God’s call,’ I replied “I have not responded yet, but I find joy in responding by each day and every day of my life.” Today I am better than I was yesterday, but I am still responding till that day when my yes becomes definite. I am going to tell my story with its lights and darknesses, for life is many coloured and it is for us to let God produce beautiful patterns with the available colors in our lives. He knows better to put together light and dark colors in such a way that light prevails over darkness always.
Love had to win me, for it is the only thing that could. Through different people and events, and by his Word, God humbled me to invest my talents, energies, and time for the good of humanity and for the Gospel. He knocked and opened doors that neither a person, an event nor a thing could close in my life. Being an energetic and passionate youth, I was dreaming big and warming up to put my mark on the sands of my generation. Having been formed in the sciences subjects, I was inclined to chemical and physical engineering careers. Though I had a very mathematical mind, that make me sought more on the reasonableness of things, there was in me always a fact and a feeling that there is God.
The love of Christ urges me on. God has always been to me that above all beings that treats us with a fatherly and motherly love. Later in my life, I could doubt all the other attributes of God, but his benevolence has proved to be an undeniable fact for me. Even in times of suffering, I find that suffering only have meaning in the eyes of the one who looks at us with a loving heart. There is meaning to all in life only if there is a God who is all loving. Nothing else is the founding truth of my vocation but only the love of God. I always feel touched when I read the letter of St John: see what love the Father have for us. I always wonder how much love do others see in me.
In my formational journey, the experience and experiment were in one basket. After me, there was experience available but for me there was an experiment to go through. The truth is, the less travelled road I chose, gave me a lot of adventures as well as challenges. God accompanied me through different people and events and I enjoyed the ride. What I discovered is that following Christ in the footsteps of Claret is a going back home experience, as we embark on going back, we feel at home because Christ who fills our hearts now, is everything that awaits us in the Father.
Dressed in love and inspired by the Gospel, there is a dose of a mystery in my vocational life. Things that without alluding to my faith are meaningless. There is something spontaneous, that works like auto responses. There is also the reasonable part of it where I say, “if I am not committed with my vocation, it would not have been fulfilled thus far.” Saying this l don’t mean that I have already overcome or that I find things of my vocation so easy, each day I strive like the Apostle Paul, I keep pressing on, racing forward towards the goal in Christ. My vocational journey is a marathon, a long march just like life itself. It would not been anywhere yet without having courage and confidence in that l am never alone, the Lord accompanies me.
The mission of Zimbabwe to which I am learning as I do mission, is like a mountain that is steep on one side and on other side children can play. Depending on the perspective of each one, it is a challenge or a possibility. The mission is endowed with several seeds of life that needs to be nursed and nurtured. The work is plenty, and the workers are few or not fit enough. The cultural diversity of the missionaries in the Mission of Zimbabwe is an enrichment but a challenge as well. This mission is for me a joy not at all a struggle because I have my heart in it. It calls me more through different signs to lower my nets for a catch and I should be ready even if it means doing it a thousand times. I do entrust all to our Mother Mary to intercede for the mission of Zimbabwe. A thousand thanks to all who pray for us. Thank you.
Zhomba Mission, Zimbabwe.
January 20, 2022.
