You are very blessed to be called by our Lord to serve him and to spread his words for the sake of our salvation. I pray that you will inspire and encourage many men to respond to their call for religious vocation.
I know you said that you have difficulties with working with young children and young adults because sometimes they can be tough to handle. Please offer up this difficulty to our Lord, and keep asking him to please help you overcome this. I hope that this difficulty will not discourage you to work with young people because they need you much more to get closer to our Lord. In fact, working with difficult people is an opportunity for us to use and prove how much love God has given us because we can bare such difficult people J
I have had a lot of difficulties in my life and I struggled all on my own. Would you believe my mother never wanted me since I was born, so my grandparents took care of me from day 1. I have only lived with my parents for 3 years in my whole life, between the age of 13 to 16, and then I was all alone afterwards. Despite my feeling of being rejected by my parents, I have been fortunate that my grandparents always reminded me the 10 commandments and most of all to Love both people who loves us and hates us. When I reflect upon my life, I realised that with every difficulty we face, we must always remember that God will always send us a Simon of Cyrene in our life, but only if we allow that Simon of Cyrene to help us carry our cross. I used to be very shy and stubborn at times that I refused help. But you know, Jesus did not refuse Simon’s help because Simon sincerely wanted to help. In my life, because I never had any parents helping me grow and develop, it was always my friends who helped me carry my cross in times of joy and sorrows. I have faced a lot of extremely difficult people in my life, and there were times that I just wanted to end my own life. However, as I got older, I learnt to surrender all my troubles and bad emotions to the Lord and ask Him to help me receive his love so that I can make him and his people happy. I ask the Lord to give me more strength to love him more when I face difficult people because the moment we can face and love those type of people that we really feel that wonderful divine grace given to us. Therefore, whenever you are around those little naughty children, just remember that it is an opportunity for you to really see how much love the Lord has placed in your heart, and then you will feel that true sense of joy no matter how difficult children can be. Maybe you may just develop great passion about guiding young people to know Jesus J
I always see that our sufferings and difficulties is nothing but a journey to help us find our passion. If you see a person who loves alcohol, drugs, and all the things that destroys the body and the soul, he or she will tell you that he or she has suffered so much in life and that is why he/she needs drugs/alcohol to numb the pain. But, if you find a person who has passion for doing good things for the Lord, who loves the church and gladly offers up everything that he or she does to the Lord, he or she will also tell you that she has suffered so much in life. Ask yourself, which passionate person would you admire? The majority would say the second because he or she has visible signs of peace and success in life. Therefore, our suffering is nothing but a journey to help us find our passion, but only do we find the passion of our hearts if we suffer with Christ alone. We need to have compassion before we find our passion just like how we’ve witnessed the passion of our Father through the compassion of his only son.
I have so many saintly role models, although I did love movie stars! I always ask the Lord to help me have the fraction of my saintly models. I don't think I can ever be as strong or as good as the saints. I do many silly things!!! Whenever I feel weak, I ask Jesus to bless me and inspire just like he has inspired my favourite saints. I ask Jesus to bless me with even the fraction of St Anthony of Padua’s talent to articulate, the tenacity of St Paul of Tarsus and St Pio, the humility of St Francis of Assisi, St Clare, the obedience of St Rita of Cascia, the sweetness of St Therese of Liseux and St Philomena, and the love of people that St Jude of Thaddeus, St Josemaria Escriva and Pope John Paul II. These saints and JPII are my role models because everything they did was inspired by Jesus. And of course, we must ask the Lord to give us strength each day to hold on to him and to love him because this is all we need to serve him and fight temptations that comes to us. I understand that living in a seminary can be difficult sometimes, but I hope that when you find yourself in such a situation that you will ask your saintly role models to pray for you, and that you will look up to them and remember that they have suffered greatly much more than what you might ever suffer but their spirit were at ease because they were suffering with our Lord Jesus. Please always remember Jesus when he was carrying the cross, and that our Father will always send you a Simon of Cyrene in your life to help you carry your cross/difficulties. Maybe one or two children in that class you visit can give you great joy, and they are your Simon of Cyrene in the midst of all the naughty little children J
God Bless You Dong, and I hope to see you soon again. I will always keep you and all of your fellow seminarians in my prayer that you may all love Jesus more and more. May you always seek to receive the Holy Spirit. I am sure that Mother Mary and St Joseph are always praying for you.
God Bless,
Mavi
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