AS A CHILD, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE?

From Grade V to High School, in our English classes, we had Formal Themes, and we had to write them in that hour, submit to the teacher for corrections and marks. Writing was always my favorite, and I elaborate in details my thoughts and reflections. I guess, since I was young, I was already a reflective person, and I normally express them in a form of diary or journal. One of the themes was this question above. “What I want to be when I grow up?” Always, I express my desire to be a doctor. Priesthood was not in my mind at that time. I wanted to study any course in Science and proceed to become a doctor. That was my only wish. When we were young, our town, Sibutad was very rural. When somebody gets sick, they had to be brought to Dipolog City or Dapitan City. This desire was more strengthened, because I was living with a sickly mother. I have shared in the past, her series of strokes and how we even had to hire a car in the middle of the night to rush her to the hospital. My wish to become a doctor was more on witnessing poor situation of our town by then. I was dreaming to be of great help, to work in the municipal clinic and attend to the sick. I don’t think they were highly paid by then, but I looked at their passion for life, and I wished to be one of them. But as you have known already, poverty was also a hindrance. Yes, when we were young, we had a booming business, but it died little by little because of my mother’s health condition. There was no way for me to become a doctor. But looking at my life now, a priest, a missionary priest in Africa, I think I am also a doctor, not in science but in another level. Like I am a doctor of souls. When I go and visit the sick for confession and anointing, I go there like a priest-doctor, I pray for their healing, spiritual and physical and healing of relationships. To be a doctor is not just a profession but also a vocation. When I look at them now, doctors and nurses, and all our front liners because of Corona Virus, their way of life is also a calling from the Lord. I really salute them for that. They are our modern heroes. I am treading a different path from my original desire, but I guess the Lord has answered my desire in spiritual sense.