By Mark Joeverth Zamora

Manila, March 10, 2020: Sister Jolly Joseph, a member of Daughters of the Sacred Heart and a missionary from India, has been working in the Philippines for the past ten years.

She spends her time as a campus missionary in the Central Colleges of the Philippines, Sta. Mesa, Quezon City, Manila.

She says spending childhood with sisters in India influenced her to become a nun. She realized her vocation as a teenager.

As years passed by, she searched for true love, because everyone was longing for love. In the end, the answer she received was God. According to her, it is Him who can love us unconditionally. “Why are we longing for love? Because the one who created us is Love,” she says.

She was convinced that only Jesus can provide her the love she longs for.

She encountered lots of challenges in her journey to becoming a nun.

One of them was the difficulty in leaving her comfortable zone. A nun must live according to the rules and regulations of the congregation.

Before become a nun, she had worked as a teacher for 16 in the south and the north.

The move to northern India brought her first cultural shock.

“Everything was different — Culture, food, climate (extreme cold), and language,” she recalls.

As a prerequisite to become a nun, she had to learn Hindi and English, which are different from her native language, Malayalam.

Also, she left her family, colleagues, and hometown, to follow her calling.

“Everything was different,” she said, but the challenges did not dampen her resolve to become a nun. She embraced the difficulties with a smile, she claims.

Leaving the family was tough. But over the years, she has realized that the more one is away from one’s dear ones, the more one is connected to them.

Starting a new life in the Philippines

She is now engaged with Filipino students. The Filipino culture is different from the Indian.

The Indian students are more disciplined and obedient than their Filipino counterparts.

But when it comes to love and politeness, the Filipinos take the crown. She could always notice the welcoming, hospitality, and the good upbringing of Filipinos.

What unites both the group is their faith in on God.

“There may be differences in culture, language, lifestyle, and such, but among these differences we have, we only have one God,” she says.

Her message to the youth is that, they must know the true faith, so that they can change the world. She said that faith is not something that we acquire immediately. It must be taught from childhood.

Faith and belief in God must start in the family. The family is the most responsible in molding every child to become faithful followers of Christ our Savior.

She firmly believes that the faith stars in the family. “If the family is scattered and they don’t care for the children, they will not learn anything,” she said.

The church alone cannot do anything. And education does not only pertain to learning academic knowledge, but the fundamental knowledge which is faith shall be taught first to the children.

Parents must cooperate to Catholic authorities in educating the children regarding faith and belief in God. A family which is united in God’s will, living in His commandments, are the true Christians.

She further explained, “I will love you, you can love me. I am your teacher, I am your mother, I am your sister, and I am your ‘kapatid’ (brethren in faith). You can call me anything you want. This kind of belongingness must be brought to them.”

Preserving the faith in times of persecution

Sister Joseph says many Christians face persecution in various parts of the world. She has a message for those being prosecuted.

“If you are being killed, you must be ready to sacrifice your life. If you have faith, you’ll know your ultimate destination.”

She further explains that humans can only kill our body but not our soul.

Sister Jolly happily expressed that she is ready to sacrifice her life for the faith as a martyr, and aspires to become a saint in her life for a specific reason: “So that after I die, I could bring many souls to the Lord; I would love to pray for them.”

(Mark Joeverth Zamora is a journalism student in Manila.)