SINNER TO SERVANT

Be grateful to God who has strengthened you because He considered you trustworthy in appointing you to the ministry.

You were once a blasphemer and an arrogant man, but you have been mercifully treated because you acted out of ignorance in your unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life. To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

REFLECTION

God could change the life of a person with just one flick of a hand. This can happen to you at any given time when you least expect. By the time you knew it, you have been transformed from a sinner to a servant.

I grew up outside of God’s realm so to speak. I was very critical to almost all religions and do not want to be associated to any of them although I was baptized as a Catholic. Being baptized was not a matter of my own free choice but it was a decision that my parents made and undertook right after I was born. In the initial stages of my life, they enrolled me to a parochial school but before I could totally learn the essence and value of being a Christian, they have to transfer me to a public school where religion is not a part of its curriculum. When I became a scholar, the government placed me in a Science High School where I was taught to believe in evolution rather than in creation. In college and in the many years of professional work thereafter, never did I consider God to be part of my life.

It took me forty years of living in the wilderness before I really came to know about God. After experiencing an instant moment of a life-changing event, I became a totally changed man. A calling that will forever change the course of my life.

I am grateful to God who has strengthened me because He considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. My first calling was to serve as a living witness and example to God’s grace in as far as the ministry for married couples are concerned. Then He led me to understand why He chose me to be a Catholic and made me active in this ministry of evangelizing my fellow Catholics to be active servants rather than just be passive churchgoers. From then on, the Lord opened my eyes to the functions of different ministries all working under one body of Christ until I became the Parish Pastoral Head Servant.

My two-year term of office is about to end but my service to the Lord will last for eternity. As always, wherever He leads, I will follow.

Read: 1 Timothy 1:12-17