.
The seed of religious vocation was sown in my heart when
as a child I wondered what made a foreign missionary priest leave his family and
country to serve and grow old in another.
When I was in Grade 4, I posed the same question to Sr. Mimi, my teacher in
catechesis.I could no longer remember their answers, but the commitment and dedication to God of those missionaries were what remained in my heart.
St. Bernadette’s life also contributed to my desire to become nun. Since I was young then, and my parents were against the idea, my desire eventually died. My studies and the dream to become a teacher became the focus of my life. My efforts bore fruit. I became a teacher and got a stable job.
With a loving and understanding boyfriend who was a childhood friend, I even planned to have a family of my own.
And there was a time when my Catholic faith was getting weak; I questioned the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I was a Catholic only in name.
When I was 24 years old, something strange happened to me: one afternoon while I was staring at the picture of Jesus on the wall, my tears started to roll down my face. As if in a movie, my life flashed before me and, and I felt God’s love for me, inspite of my sinfulness.It was a meeting with the God of compassion. I was grateful for God’s unconditional love. It was a conversion experience that brought me back to God. I started reading religious books, listening to religious songs, going to confession and receiving Holy communion. My Catholic faith was renewed and God in his generosity allowed me to feel his great presence at the Eucharist during a Mass at EDSA Shrine.
There was a burning desire to offer myself to God through religious life that led me to attend search-ins in various congregations, but I still felt a longing for something more.
An accident I met while on vacation in Baguio, however, kept me in my hometown to recuperate for two months. Providentially, I got a chance to talk to our parish priest, Fr. Lito Malibiran, about my desire to become a nun. He asked me to call Sr. Guadalupe Bautista, RGS, and on July 31, 1996, which I did not know was the bicentennial of birth of St. Mary Euphrasia, I communicated with the Good Shepherd Sisters. I phoned and Sr. Guadalupe answered. That was the beginning of a beautiful journey with the Good Shepherd.
Now as an RGS, my greatest joy was the opportunity given me to share in the redemptive mission of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. It gave me much consolation when the women or girls I journey with rise from the pit of misery and experience renewal and wholeness.
I believe that my own experience of being lost and being shepherded back to God was His way of forming a compassionate heart in me.
(Sr. Maribel Castillo, RGS, is from Sto. Tomas, Batangas. She finished Bachelor of Science in Elementary and Secondary Education from the National Teacher’s College in 1993. A grade school teacher at the La Salle Greenhills, she joined the Good Shepherd Sisters in 1998. On May 2, 2001, she made her first profession of vows. At present, she is assigned at Welcome House, a crisis intervention center, where she helps take care of battered women and children.)
