Did I make it?

When I was sixteen, my name was just Ong Hock Lin. One day,my mother told me that if I passed my O level, she will allowed me to be a Catholic. At that time, I was growing up in a simple Chinese household and she was trying to pray to what ever god to listen to her prayer to help pull her daughter out of the poverty cycle.

It was six months before the O level, and I studied like hell, (no pun intended) as this will be my only opportunity to be a Catholic. My father had objected violently to it as he was afraid that I will not be at his funeral.

Of course, I have to choose a Catholic name. Growing up with a Catholic education in St. Anthony's Convent, we sang a hymn each morning after singing the National Anthem.

I remebered that the song Make Me a Channel of Your Peace touched me very much.

It was the prayer of St Francis of Assis and so I decided to adpot this name. I sent up to do what the prayer described.

After being a Catholic for 28 years,(I was baptised in 1980) I wonder if I had lived up to half of what the prayer had described.

Reflecting on my vocation as a teacher, I felt that I have fallen short in some areas.

C'est la vie.
That's life.


Singing the song today in Church, I have decided to tried yet again to live up to the name and the saint's vision that is encompassed in this song.

Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace
Based on a prayer by St. Francis

Make me a channel of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love,

there is injury, Your pardon Lord,

And where there's doubt, true faith in You.

Make me a channel of your peace,

Where there's despair in life let me bring hope,

Where there is darkness - only light,

And where there's sadness, ever joy

Oh Master,

grant that I may never seek,

So much to be consoled as to console,

To be understood, as to understand,

To be loved, as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

In giving to all men that we recieve,

And in dying that we're born to eternal life.