My faith remained a constant assurance for me throughout my formative years, but it wasn’t until I went to college that I could more aptly engage with a community of like-minded friends. For most of my life, and even in high school, my family was the primary fuel for my faith. In college, while pondering the greater questions of my occupation and vocation, my family in Christ grew.

My involvement in campus ministry made clear to me that I had more of a heart for ministry than the scientific studies I was pursuing at the time, so I decided to attend a Come and See retreat within the diocese. By the fall semester of my second year of college, I decided to seriously consider pursuing a call to the priesthood.

After initially discerning with the Capuchins, I then felt a burning desire to return to the Philippines and to reconnect with family. I left the Capuchins but continued to follow the Lord, and over the next few years, He burned away all my desires that were not for Him. The Lord showed Himself to be a generous Father and provided for me the opportunity to return to the Philippines and my family. My time there was richly blessed, but I could not shake the truth: I wanted my sole focus to be Our Lord, my first and truest love.

After many conversations with role models and close friends, I decided to move back to the U.S. where I had first heard the Lord’s call. When I was ready to reach out to religious orders again, my mom reminded me that every year we’d lived in the United States, we as a family had taken a pilgrimage to the Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I naturally felt drawn to go on a retreat with the Marians of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who oversee the Shrine and promote devotion to the Divine Mercy.

Growing up, I personally knew very little of the Marians, but when I visited them, their spirituality proved incredibly familiar. The Marians seek to imitate and mold their lives inspired by the Immaculata, and so have I. They pray for the souls in purgatory, to which I’ve had a devotion since being a youth.

Furthermore, their charge by St. John Paul II to help propagate the message of the Divine Mercy has filled my life already with so much grace. I only desire to join the Lord and the Marians in their mission.