Bryan Angelo Patrick

Penang

I love to read. You can lock me in a room with nothing but books (and of course food and water) for a whole year and I would come out asking for more time to spend inside. It was no surprise that my vocation story also started with a book. I would be lying to you if I said that I have always wanted to join the priesthood. It was never my intention until very recently. But God has a way of calling you. I chuckle sometimes thinking about it. He used the thing I loved the most to call me.

I have read more books than I care to count. But there was one book that I have never finished. I have also not finished reading a few books which I had started, but this one kept calling me back to finish it. As you might have guessed, it was the Bible. At that point, I hadn’t read the Bible probably since my Primary School days. It has been in my TBR (to-be-read) pile ever since. Out of nowhere, one night, I woke up in the dead of night having this unexplainable urge to read the Bible. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. This happened quite a few times until I decided to actually read it.

As a child, the Bible was my favourite book. It was the first book my father bought for me, and I still have the battered old copy of that Children’s Bible. Reading it again after so many years and through the eyes of someone who can finally understand some of what it is about, gave me a sense of awe. But at that point, I was only reading the Bible as a book and nothing more. It was a fantastic book. The best book I had ever read. But, at that point it was nothing but a book for me.

I read it everyday because I couldn’t put it down. It was so good that I wanted to tell everybody about it. I tried talking to people about it but nobody shared my enthusiasm, not even some very religious people who I had seen going for Mass practically every day. So, my focus shifted from wanting to just read the Bible to wanting to share my experience of reading it with people and to encourage them to read it as well. So, I started studying the Bible and trying to find out ways to get people involved. It was also at this point that I was really captivated by the readings during Mass and sermons of the priests. I loved the way some priests could interpret the Word and captivate the congregation. This was exactly what I wanted to do. As I continued reading the Bible, it became obvious to me that the Bible was no mere book. The further I read the louder I heard God calling me. He gave me an image of myself teaching the people His words. That image was unshakeable. I no longer wanted to just teach the Bible, I wanted to teach about the Lord Himself.

But to do that, I needed to learn. That is why I am here. I strongly believe God has sent me here to learn more about Him so that one day I can teach about Him. This and the combinations of some other stories is what brought me here. But I won’t get to the other stories here. It is a story for some other time. For now, I truly believe that I’m here because God wants me to be here

Bryan