Shehan Perera
I was born, baptized and raised in the Catholic Church but I didn’t really meet the person of Jesus until a freshman retreat in high school. That night during adoration, before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, I was overwhelmed by what I can describe as God’s love for me and was moved to tears by sheer joy.
In spite of this indescribable feeling, the retreat high didn’t last as I went back to my daily life and choices. The following years through high school and into college I spent with one foot in each door. I could feel God slowly drawing me to him, and yet I was constantly turning my back to him and choosing sin and everything that the world had to offer me. When I was 22, I reached a breaking point where I had to choose which door I would commit to.
I was going down the wrong path when I heard him say to me, “If you keep going, there is a chance you will never find me again.” The creator of the entire universe was pursuing ME?! Who was I to turn him down? So, I chose which door to walk through. Long story short, soon afterwards I went on to discern religious life in the Bronx with some joyful Franciscans, then on to serve as a missionary with NET Ministries and eventually settled in Minnesota where I met my wife.
In the past decade there have been many difficult and incredibly painful moments in my life while walking with the Lord. But even during those moments of spiritual bewilderment and times where I felt seemingly abandoned by the Lord, there’s no escaping his presence and love. Recently, my mum passed away from cancer. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever endured. In the weeks leading up to her death, I had to just sit beside her and watch this devout and faithful woman agonize and suffer without being able to do anything about it except pray. One day, while clutching the rosary and praying beside her, there was a moment when I felt so alone and angry at being helpless and abandoned, when at once Jesus’ words on the cross came to heart: “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was with me, and knew exactly what I was feeling in my heart and was teaching me to trust in the prayer of Psalm 22.
I am Catholic, quite simply, because I am a prisoner of the Lord. His love holds me fast. There is nowhere else for me to go, no other way, because I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. There is nothing I can experience in this world where the Creator of the universe won’t be with me. “Where can I go from your Spirit, from your presence, where can I flee?” In his mercy, he has given me everything I need to stay close to him through his Word and his Church. I trust in those ways he has set out for me. I know and have come to believe that he is the Holy One of God. His words are life, and when I can’t fully see or understand what he’s doing in my life, I echo the words of Peter: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”
Shehan, 34, and his wife, Rose, are parishioners of St. Peter in Mendota and are members of the Teams of Our Lady movement. He works as a manufacturing engineer and his wife tells him he has too many hobbies.
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