By Geraldine Sasirekah Eusabius RMI
In response to God I, vow to God to live for the whole time of my life the Gospel counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. With these words, I began a permanent commitment as a religious sister in the congregation of the RMI Claretian Missionary Sisters in 1997. It’s been twenty-five years now and when I look back, I have a lot to remember, cherish, and be thankful.
I don’t remember thinking about being a sister when I was in grade school. But then, what led me to make the decision to enter religious life? I realized that when it is God who calls there’s no escape. He continues till we hear, recognize his voice and respond. It’s astonishing how he makes you to start thinking about why not become a sister? My eventual path to the Claretians was not my initial plan. But I found my way to where I am meant to be. I still look back fondly on those years and am grateful to God.
It happened to me in my light-hearted youth; in my non-attracted attitude towards religious sisters, yet HE called me to become one among them. Without doubt he’s a God of wonders and unexpected amazements. I first contemplated the call to religious life after my high school where I heard a Claretian (CMF) sharing about his vocation journey. The sharing touched the core of my being, and intrigued within me a question of why not I too become a religious? Then, and there without fully understanding what it meant I looked-for becoming a sister. God was very patient with me; it took little more than two years to make the final decision to enter the congregation even though I had never met a Claretian sister before. I searched for them and found that the Claretian family had sisters, brothers, priests and the lay. I felt an attraction towards their life as missionaries; from then on, I started communicating with the sisters in the Philippines. The sisters welcomed me so lovingly into their midst and the rest of the journey from novitiate throughout the present is a bed of roses not without thorns! God has put me in the right place, and this is the feeling I have ever since I entered; an at-hominess. Everything I could imagine for my future is connected to the Claretian life. To this day, I get excited and enthused with the missionary life.
With recognition that I belonged to this life and that I found joy and fulfilment in it my relationship with God became central. I am happy and I am grateful. All are called to seek God and my way is through the call of Claretian missionary life. The joy of this life gets me up each morning and causes delight in what love has in store for me and that day become real and non-negotiable. God brought me into a closer relationship with him and kindles in my heart a very strong desire to be a missionary of Christ which I consider as my real identity.
Religious vocation is not a question of career but of life. The Lord has never stopped calling me and I know the Lord continues to call others too. I whenever I reflect on my life’s choice, I think of me that I took the road less travelled, and that has made all the difference. My life as a Claretian Missionary Sister is a life where God’s grace abounds. He kindles a new restlessness and desire in me to seek a deeper relationship with Him. In my journey he made me to realize that surrendering fully to his desires is the only way for a total and complete happiness in life.
Chillaw, Sri Lanka.
March, 2022
