MY VOCATION STORY: SR MARY JANE PINEDA
From The Calachuchi Lane … to the Good Shepherd Fold
My Good Shepherd vocation was clearly affirmed from the first time I entered the gate of our convent in Quezon City. As I walked through the calachuchi drive – peace, serenity and joy filled my whole being. “This is the place for me,” I told myself. The first sister I met was Sr. Felicitas. Her graciousness and spontaneity made me feel at ease and further strengthened my desire to embrace religious life in the Good shepherd Congregation.
As my life in the congregation unfolded through the years of formation and mission involvements to girls and women and their families in St. Domitilla, St. Euphrasia, Buhi, Bacolod Girl’s Protectory, Welcome House as well as foreign missions in Tahiti, Japan and Rome, let me reflect briefly on what ‘matters’ in this life, what has been all these past years that continuously affirmed my vocation.
One’s family, of course, created the first strand of the strings that enabled me to hold together in hard times. They gave us freely to this life, with open and trusting hearts. And of course, our very special novitiate stories with Sr. Immaculata’s in season and out of season jokes. We laughed at anything. The classes together forged another link. I often wondered if I could be as great as St. Mary Euphrasia, St. John Eudes and the women/men during their era. Sharing those three years created bonds that are both strong and tender – and still draw strength from them now.
The bond of shared mission is the one that for me weaves all the threads together of my vocation in the Congregation. The shared faith has enabled me to trust in the midst of discouragement, to pray in moments of sadness and loss and to keep placing my hands in our Shepherd’s hands as I walk the mission journey. Holding faith is not always easy. Having the opportunity to be face to face with girls/women in crisis, searching for run away girls in the middle of the night in Tahiti, standing as witness to the undocumented migrants in Japan, etc. My faith as well as my vocation is deepened, aware that this is His work and I am just His instrument.
I believe that the fruits of this experience are indeed intertwined at the very roots, constantly calling me, as Elizabeth Johnson had written: ‘to grasp that God is no longer to be sought in the clouds…God is to be sought in the daily encounter with suffering, in tears and in the laughter of the poor, in the hungry of this earth and in the groans of creation.”
When I first join the Congregation, I too had my apprehension of what religious life would mean and could be for me. Today, I would say with much gratitude to God that my religious life as a Good Shepherd sister has been beautiful and a fulfilling vocation that I can ever imagine my life to be. I feel so honored and humbled to be called by God to share in His mission of compassion and reconciliation. I pray that I may continue to be faithful in this vocation and at the end can say with Mother Foundress: “I die a true daughter of the Good Shepherd.”
Sr. M. Jane Pineda, RGS is missioned in Welcome House in Paco, Manila, one of the community-based programs of the NCR Consolidated Ministry for Women and Children. She celebrated her Diamond Jubilee last April 2024
