Being Called by God!

The Call

My parents were Catholics and had a strong faith. For them being a Catholic meant going to Church once a week and doing daily prayers. It also meant that they tried to live a perfect life where they treated others the way that any Christian should. I do not recall that they ever read a Bible Story to me and I do not think that we even had a Bible. Being a Catholic seemed to be about listening to the priest explaining God and our faith, as well as traditional prayers and Catholic customs such as the Rosary and Novenas. We heard from the Bible every Sunday when the priest would read a story from the Bible and explain it. We depended a lot on the priest.

As a child, it was easy for me to believe in God. He was an old man with a beard that sat on a throne in heaven. Jesus was his son who came down to earth to tell us how we should live. Then there was his mom, that was the best mom the world had ever seen. Believing in God was a simple thing. I did not question any theological matters or even the existence of God. I accepted God and he was a vital part of my life. This was most likely because of the influence of my family and the Catholic school I was at.

I think that I always had a fascination with priests. They had such an important role. After all, they were God's representatives on Earth. I would sit in church and watch them. There was something about them that could not be explained. They had a special grace and a style about them. It was like they were living saints and even angels. While some boys had astronauts or firefighters as heroes and wanted to be like them, priests were my heroes.

When I was about 11, we moved to Ireland. This country was very Catholic and the Church has a lot of influence on its politics and social life. This made me see priests as men who had a special status where they were listened to and respected. I always thought that people treated priests as if they were royal and the answer to everything. Their status impressed me and made me think that they can use their power to make the world a better place to live in.

I was a child in the 1980s and I could see that my parents were worried about things like unemployment and inflation. There was a lot of fear that there would be a nuclear war at any time. It was a scary time to be a child. It did not help that a teacher told us at school that we will all be unemployed and have no future. When I looked at the news, I could see nothing but bad news. People were starving in Africa and there were so many people in the world that had no human rights. All this made me think that there was no hope. The world was falling apart. The world was doomed!

I was very close to my grandmother. She could see how afraid I was about the future. I remember that she would tell me about her childhood and how bad things were then. She would smile and say that even though things looked bleak, I had a better childhood than she had. There will always be problems in the world. There will always be evil people. This being said, we must never forget that there were good people that did good things. She told me that we always had to have hope and be optimistic and do our bit to make this world a better place to live in.

One thing my grandmother did was visit the church with me. There was a special atmosphere in the Church when there was no mass. It was so quiet and peaceful. The only sound you could hear were echoes of footsteps when people walked or when someone coughed. A few old people would be in the Church as they silently prayed. We would always light a candle and my grandmother would recite some prayers. I would just sit in silence and hope that God would somehow speak to me. I could never hear him, but in a way, I felt his presence. I found out that being in a church was an escape from the world outside. It was a bubble of heaven.

I decided my destiny before I even was a teenager. I wanted to be a priest or a religious brother. In this way, I knew what to aim for and what life could offer me. If I was in a religious order, I could do what I could do to change the world. I could be a friend to the poor and oppressed. I could be a spiritual leader for people. I could change the world and the lives of countless people. I was quite confident that I had what it took to be in the religious life. I believed in God. I was intelligent enough. I wanted to make this life more like it was heaven.