How Great is Our God

           God has been good and faithful to me for He has answered my prayers. Sometimes what we think is meant for us and when we don't get it means God has prepared something good for us and what He really meant for us. 

I was accepted jn the Lay Contemplative Associates of the Cisterians in Georgia, USA. Praise God!

I thought at first that my application was not going well but after a few days (3 days of silence), the vocation director emailed me saying, everything is going well. Then yesterday night a I have received a beautiful news! I will start my formation this February. 

I thank God, our Blessed Mother and our Lord Jesus! Quaerere Deum!

Rejection and Redirection

      It will become almost a year now after I withdrew from my Third Order Carmelite formation. You may have read my previous post that I found a Dominican spiritual director but it has been just the same. There has been no follow-up that has happened and I still feel the lacking. 

I have been searching for a lay religious community that will accept me and my formation online. That was when the life of this contemplative monastic group caught my attention. They are the Trappists and also known as Cistercians. I know St.Benedict because I wear his medal and it was blessed by a Benedictine monk. It needs to be blessed by a Benedictine monk because there is a special rite, powerful prayers of exorcism and blessing, making it a spiritual weapon against evil.

If you have not read the life of St. Benedict you should. He has a twin sister named St. Scholastica. I have found a lay community in the US that has accepted me as an isolate and overseas member of the Cistercian. I have already sent my application letter together with my support letter from missionary priests (Missionary of God's Love) from Australia. Fr. Vincent from Indonesia and Fr. Steven Tynan, my former parish priest and he has known me for a long-time he even baptized my baby before he flew back to Australia. He is now a rector there. 

I thank God for leading me to the Cistercians, for an understanding vocation director, Sandy and for Fr. Cassian OCSO for accepting application. I pray that Our Lady and our Lord Jesus will bless this new path of mine. Our Lord is indeed the great healer for he healed my broken heart of my past experience with  the former secular order that I joined before. 

What attracted me to the life of Cistercian is their love for Mary, silence and a life of simplicity and austerity. As a sign of following this practice of life and being one with them my Facebook cover was changed and I made us of AI generating St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Gertrude the Great. Two Benedictine saints and one Cisterian to remind me and help me in living their life in the secular world. 

I will never tire seeking God like the song of St.Anselm.