Browse past isues
Help the mission
Support the mission
Get in touch
I am Benjosef Carlos Raposa, the youngest of five siblings born to Juan Carlos+ and Ma. Patria. I grew up in Naga City in Bicol (Philippines) to a family whose nightly activity is to pray the rosary. At the age of seven, I followed my older brothers in becoming an altar server. In high school, I got involved in the catechetical ministry, doing volunteer works in far-flung barangays and in the jail.
The World Youth Days are, for many young people, an occasion for a deep encounter with Jesus Christ and to change their lives.
“Mary arose and went with haste” (Luke, 1:39) is the biblical quotation chosen by Pope Francis as the motto for World Youth Day. Why did the pope choose this Gospel episode? Why was Mary in such a hurry to leave her home and go to meet her cousin Elizabeth?
I am Fr. Aldrin Janito, one of the pioneering Filipino Comboni Missionaries. I was ordained into priesthood on June 7, 1999. After my ordination, I served as vocation promoter from 1999 until 2003. I was assigned to Sololo missions, Diocese of Marsabit in Kenya from 2003 to 2004. This two-year missionary service marked my life after witnessing the killing of my Kenyan people, who were mostly church leaders and infants. It was a horrible experience but it did not kill my missionary spirit. My last assignment was in South Africa where I spent 16 exciting years in two parishes, Waterval and Acornhoek.
To dare to live one’s vocation is to accept setting out on a journey, going with those who can guide us on the journey, and responding with hope in the face of difficulties. To the urgency of vocation, there has to be an “urgency of response.”
Faced with the challenges of vocational discernment, it is necessary to go out to others and to open the doors so that our life can be authentically fulfilled and bear fruit for the good of all.
To live one’s vocation is always synonymous with uninstallation, leaving, going out, searching, setting out on a journey, and meeting.
The path of dialogue appears to be the true means for vocational discernment and personal fulfillment.
To look responsibly at life and to enter into the dynamism of love as the essence of every vocation is to give assent to the demands of love.
Vocation is openness to life, for it is only the full acceptance of the gift of vocation that makes a person capable of changing the world.
