Yesterday the Church celebrated Pentecost Sunday,
the day where the Holy Spirit comes down upon us.
And yes, the Holy Spirit REALLY came down to us.
It was started few days ago, my mum is a Catechism teacher and she has a few students who want to join first Holy Communion. But in order to do so, baptism is essential and compulsory in order to receive Jesus' body and blood for first time. Not only that, these children's family, too wanted to being a part of a Catholic family. This is a good news.
The problem was, these families are bumi. When they want the children to be baptized, they need to have communication with local BEC and the church, and language is their barrier. After all, they are not Catholic. My mum had a mind set to have a talk regarding this issue with the priest one day but I insisted her not to because the priest will not entertain her alone. But I gave her an advice: "If you bring these people to meet with Father, when he sees it, he would be happy that these amount of people (about 14 people) are going to be a Catholic. Sure he loves it."
So my mum arranged these group of people gathered at one place, and wait for the arrival of priest. She called the catechism coordinator to come over, unfortunately, it was a missed call. Then a person came, who my mum entrusted her to be on her side, sadly, it was a back stabbed. The parish priest finished his blessing on a parishioner's new car, went inside the church's vesting room. He saw my mum and gave a gesture to her, but we didn't understand what his gesture about. His gesture was more on "wait", and the church bell rang, the 1.00 pm mass was about to begin. My mum felt very disappointing, she even want to give up. That so-called "faithful" person, who was respected by many people in community, said something that cause these people to have their heart broken, She gave these people, who interested in knowing our faith with this painful answers: "You know, there are many procedures need to follow in order to be the Catholic, and your children cannot be baptised since you are not Catholic. Not only that, your children need to learn 1st gred and 2nd gred catechism class before they can enter Holy Communion Class (3rd gred)." When you heard this, as a person who has the interest in joining the Catholic faith, you will gave up and make the decision not to join at all, (after all, who wants to join a religion that stab your heart). It felt so hurt for these people, who were excited to meet with the priest face to face for the first time and not achieved, wasted 1 hour for sitting there doing nothing just for the sake of this supposed-to-be wonderful meeting, one of their child was sick, and received bad advice form a Catholic person. It was a devastating day for them. My mum took all the blames and critics, from that person and these people. Bet the Holy Spirit didn't work with that person that day, so just forgive and forget.
My mum and I participated in mass, but the complains on this issue came out from her mouth. She even gave up the hope on meeting the priest and she suggested that she will discuss this matter to the new priest (since the priests' transfer effective on June). She told me, she prayed to God before making any decision. Somehow we were in a conscious state and we had feeling that God doesn't want this things to be happened. I asked my mum: "Now, what are you going to do?", she replied, "Next year only baptism, or see the new priest and ask his opinion," It turned out it didn't happen in that way, and I was about to say "The Best Pentecost Sunday ever", just like how the apostles felt on that day too.
I had a meeting at 3.00 pm regarding a mission. I didn't aspect to meet Greg at church, a busy man from Asayo. He gave me a hug, told me that he was the person who want to give the briefing. While I was having a chit chat with my friend Fabian and him, the parish priest suddenly waved at us. Greg thought the priest was finding him, no, Fabian thought the priest was finding him, no again, and he called my middle name, Magdalyn from far away. I was trilled, he knows my name, (at least my middle name. You know it is difficult for a priest to remember 8000++ parishioners' name). So I approached to Father, "Yes Father?". He questioned me where to get the St. John Paul the Great books and I explained I got it from a publisher. He suggested me that this person wants it and he wanted me to deal with him and I agreed. But funny things happened after that. While we had a briefing on this mission, Father called one by one the names of those who are going the mission. When he called my first name, Josephine and I lifted my hands, he said:"You are Josephine,". Fabian giggles as Father remembered my middle name, but it was fair enough he knew my name.
And the best story was about to reveal. As my mum was disappointing about what had happened today, the priest met her personally and wanted to know why my mum needed to see him. So she told the whole story that she brought a whole group of people to see him, but it was turned down and they left. They wanted to be baptised in Catholic faith and total 14 of them (3 families). My mum issued the problems and the priest said that he will settle it everything, just give him the forms and relatively documents. The children were allowed to be baptised on August and the priest even gave these children's parents have some time to think whether want to join this faith. Praise the Lord.
So, this is the role of Holy Spirit, guiding you the right way to be a better person. Oh ya, the gesture that Father issued was inviting my mum to go inside the office and have a talk. My mum intention was not to overtake the other's leader duty, but she wants these people to have the feelings to be welcome into the Church. That is how Jesus do to make people believe in Him; by performing miracles, preaching the good news of the Lord, for our sake he died on the cross and gave us new life. Thus, people felt the love of God, the Father, God, the Son and God, Holy Spirit.
