NUS Catholic Students Society
Tessa Goh
Year 1 | Law
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November 8, 2021
Hello everyone, I am Tessa, a year 1 student.
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Before joining CSS, I was pretty much a regular at church. I faithfully attended my catechism classes, sung in my church choir and Sunday masses were a permanent fixture on my calendar. While I hardly begrudged going for church activities, I never really knew the reason why I had to go for them. God was merely someone I was taught to adore and worship.
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Over the years, I witnessed my friends and family sharing their memorable encounters they had with God so passionately and invigoratingly. I started to feel envious and questioned why God never spoke to me in such an impactful and enlightening way even though I went to church and attended masses so regularly. I had done almost everything a “good catholic” should do. Why did God still feel so distant? I knew he was all things good and that he loved me but I yearned to personally catch a glimpse of the face of Jesus and know his heart.
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When the chance to join CSS came, I wondered - Could joining CSS be the missing puzzle piece to having a close up encounter with God? Hence, I joined CSS without much hesitation.
As the weeks went by at CSS, I didn’t really find any direct answer to this burning question of mine. Nonetheless, God works in mysterious ways. Weekly CG sessions became something I looked forward to every week. Spending time listening to God’s word, reflecting on it and sharing my thoughts with my fellow sisters in Christ allowed me to develop a deeper relationship with God. It was as if God was speaking to me and bringing me closer to Him through His word.
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When my workload and commitments started piling up, I started to turn to God for relief and reassurance, knowing that I only needed to surrender my struggles and let Him take charge. As I lifted up my worries and anxieties to God, I felt comforted that although He will not take away all these struggles, God was journeying alongside me.
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Very gently and without me even realizing, God soon became the anchor of my life. God was no longer someone I encountered only on Sundays. Instead, I started to have a more personal relationship with Him and intentionally placed God first in my life before other commitments. When I needed to sacrifice my social gathering to go for community events, the old me would have felt FOMO. Now, I feel at peace, knowing that God will provide, all in His in good time and good plan.
It then dawned on me that I had been expecting to seek God in a certain way, but as Matthew 6:33 goes, “but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you”, in seeking Him, I needed to seek His Kingdom and that meant, being open to seeking Him through the community that he had placed in my midst. This community at CSS became the face of God for me. For the first time, I experienced the goodness of God in my life through this community. The unconditional love and concern my fellow sisters and brothers showed me and the truths shared during community sessions reminded me of God’s love for me despite my sins.
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I no longer feel dejected or unwilling to go for community events. Instead, I feel a sense of excitement and am encouraged to go for the next community event or retreat so that I can experience more of God’s love and share this endless and overwhelming love with the people around me.
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I am thankful for the CSS community who loves me for who I am - a beloved child of God. Having received so much from community, God has now placed a stirring in my heart to want to share my faith and the goodness He has done in my life to those around me. Just like the widow who gave whatever little money she had, I have faith that even in my littleness, God will multiply my five loaves and two fishes, and use it to be a source of sustenance for others.
My friends, I joined this community out of a moment of desperation in relation to a question I had spent years dying to know the answer to. At that point in time, I was at my wits end and just reluctantly told God “let your will be done”. But God so wonderfully transformed that moment of desperation into an enduring testament of his love and a lifelong journey to draw closer to his heart.
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My invitation today isn’t to do anything, and if there is anything to be done, we've already made the important first step by being present today. Instead, my invitation is to just be, to adopt a disposition of openness and surrender, to allow God to take us by the hand and surprise us.