Et dabo pastores vobis iuxta cor meum

by Yas Jayson Tuesday, June 27, 2017 1 palagay god of greater scheme

So I’m back to the world outside the walls of the seminary. At least for a year as I intend to transfer to my local seminary and serve my local church. I know it is God who planned everything that was to happen, it was He who stirred my restlenessness and my desire to have a more authentic formation to priestly life. When I look back to those days several months ago when I was torn between staying put for the sake of stability and the urgent need to find that place where God wants me to be, I cannot but be grateful that God’s hands has been guiding me all along.

He even took care of my worries. The nuns whom I worked with before took me back after my replacement resigned. I do not have to worry about my finances for the year, plus I get to save more to support my siblings’ college fund.

Leaving meant one less person to fill the ever-shrinking population of seminaries. All around the world especially in North America and Europe convents, monasteries, and seminaries are closing due to lack of vocations. Some barely cope with the change in demographics. Gone are the days when these hallowed walls are filled to the brim with young and energetic religious. In many cases, convents and monasteries are left with aging men and women.

Such is the case with the nuns I work with at the moment whose average age is 76. With various ministries requiring so much energy, these nuns proved me that age is not just a matter of wrinkles and wobbling knees but keeping that fire of zeal in their heart, being youthful despite decades of wear and tear of life. But this must not take away the fact that their numbers are dwindling. Who would continue these good works after they are gone?

Who sends labourers to this vast field of the human world? Who decides which ones to take the role of fishers of men, of shepherds among men?

A certain nun in-charge of finding new recruits once confided to me the difficulty she faces in attracting young people to enter religious life. The work of a vocation promoter has been a more daunting task than how it was before when men and women would heed God’s invitation for them without “turning back”. While much of society has changed, the struggle to discern is made more difficult by the many attractions and distractions. Social media offers alternative happiness and opens up new and promising opportunities. The desire for wealth and power has reached new forms and expressions. Men and women who feel the desire to follow Jesus are often lured to delay, to retrofit decisions to suit convenience, and to totally abandon heeding.

While pondering on the nun’s woes, I remember the words of Yahweh to Jeremiah who worries too much: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart.” I will give you. Shepherds after my own heart. Is it not assuring that God himself promised to bring men and women to enter the religious and priestly life, that he himself will take charge of filling those convents, monasteries, and seminaries with men and women capable of so much love for the lost, the least, and the last? We may think that entering religious life is slowly becoming a thing of the past, unnecessary, irrelevant, and impractical. But the God who has been constantly loving us has made a promise that He will not leave us abandoned like sheep in barren lands.

He will send shepherds. Not just simply shepherds. But shepherds as meek and as compassionate as His son, the Good Shepherd.

So do not worry, sister. He will send us shepherds.