SURGA DAN BUMI MENYATU
Para pembaca yang budiman
Tidak lama lagi rekan-rekan kita yang beragama Kristen dan Katolik, merayakan Paska. Kepada pembaca yang merayakan Paska, penulis mengucapkan selamat Paska. Kepada anda yang tidak merayakan Paska, penulis mengucapkan "selamat membaca" dan mengalami sendiri kehadiran Tuhan di dalam keanekaragaman ciptaan-Nya".
Cecilia Sutjiadi mengungkapkan "kegembiraannya" setelah melihat, menghadiri dan mengalami "surga dan bumi yang menyatu". Peristiwa itu telah mengubah dirinya. Dia hidup baru dalam Tuhan, yang melihat dunia dan kehidupan di dunia ini secara baru. Penulis berharap, anda pun terbantu untuk melihat dan merasakan kebaharuan hidup anda, setelah mendapat inspirasi dari tulisan Cecilia ini:
The Footprints of the Jubilee Year
My name is Cecilia Sutjiadi, 39, single, and I’m from Bali, Indonesia. I’m living in Bali, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Bali is a little island in Indonesia, known for its wonderful nature and beautiful culture. The people are friendly, naturally elegant, and beautiful in their culture and expression. They arrange the paddy fields terrace composition so artistically. Everywhere you look is a beautiful view, like a frame of a painting. For Balinese people, their faith is integrated with their traditional daily practice. Most of them are Balinese Hindu.
Currently I’m working in a Property Developer Company as a Marketing Manager. Now we are developing a Villa estate in Bali, sitting on a hill with a magnificent view to the Indian Ocean. We are going to market them to investors, who are interested to have a home in Bali during holidays.
I was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. I’m the eldest of 3 sisters and a brother. I was baptized when I was only a few days old. We were brought up in a traditional Catholic family. Our parents were actively involved in the Church ministries, but they gave us enough freedom, but they do not push us to do the same. I think that they pray for us more, because eventually we joined the church ministries in our own time.
When I was 5, our family moved back to Indonesia, I grew up in Bandung, and finished my study in Architecture Engineering at Parahyangan Catholic University. The first year after I graduated my bachelor degree in Architecture, the company where I was working had to close down and they had to let go the architect team, including me. It was during the world economical crisis, when most of the construction project could not finish, and many projects and company suffered.
When I was in college I also took part in forming a youth prayer group team for college students, and I was blessed to have a spiritual direction from a holy and humble missionary priest, Fr. Rolf Reichenbach, SSCC. During the same period of the economical crisis, he was transferred to serve in Batam Island, a small island near Singapore. When he heard about my situation, he invited me to go to Batam Island, where some construction works were still in progress, and they were open to recruit architects. That way, during the weekend I also managed to do some volunteer works in assisting the parish priests to serve the parishioners living in illegal houses and in scattered little islands around the Batam Island.
By God's grace, Fr. Rolf Reichenbach, SSCC help me to get the chance to study about mission and evangelization for a year in Rome, and it became one of the best year in my life. The more I learn about our faith, the more fascinating it is. The perfect love of God is so deep and we need to love Him more to be able to understand His way.
It is always a joy for me to share my experience in World Youth Day. A celebration of young people of all Nations with the Holy Father.
One thing for sure, World Youth Day has been a living testimony to the world. It’s a witness to secular world that the Church is alive, with authentic spirit and energy from the Church’s young generation. The generation that is full of love to each other expressing their faith in joy. During World Youth Day, the city turns out to be a city of joyful youth. The joy of the young people contagious to the city, and since that day, the face of that city would never be the same.
No other event in this world comparable to World Youth Day, I can say. Even the Olympic Games cannot be comparable.
The first time I heard about World Youth Day, was from my parish priest, back in year 1995, where World Youth Day was held in the Philippine. I wished to participate, but I couldn’t go due to my exam term. Then in 1997 I heard it was held in Paris. It was too costly, so again I was not able to participate. Finally I had the chance to participate in the Jubilee World Youth Day Rome 2000. I was in Rome during that year attending the Emmanuel School of Mission. After my first experience of World Youth Day in Rome, then I wished to work for it too. So it led to my two years volunteer work in the World Youth Day 2002 Toronto National Office.
So my first World Youth Day experience was WYD 2000 Rome, Italy. It was a strong experience, to feel like real brothers and sisters with everyone, even from different country that we were not able to communicate verbally because of the language. But the language was not even a barrier!
In World Youth Day, I experienced my faith in a whole different way. There were time when I feel so close with God in the silence of prayers and devotions. In the joy of praise and worship. In the union with heaven through beautiful Holy Masses. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the big garden. By learning wonderful messages of the love of God from wonderful world class speakers. But to experience the love of God through the presence and through the brotherhood and sisterhood with all nations from different country was a very powerful experience too.
I was also touched by witnessing the expressions from other youngsters in loving our God. How they performs with full love and joy to our Creator. I was touched by the song and dance, musical shows, and movies. Through talk shows, art exhibit…. I really experienced our faith in an amazing way. Meeting hundreds of thousands youngsters from all over the world, spreading joy and laughter everywhere in the city. Concert stages on the streets performing wonderful singers and bands from all over the world. The whole city turned out to be a big faith amusement park!...:)
The Mayor of Toronto was a Jewish man, in one of his speech he described about his experience in World Youth Day in Rome 2000. For a time in his life, he saw an ocean of 2 million young people gathering together, joyful, happy, without drugs and violence. He said, “I only can feel love in the air, and I want to bring this to Toronto”. What he said was really true; we only can feel love in the air!
In WYD 2002 Toronto, Canada I was touched when the Pope blessed every country during the Calling of the Nations Ceremony. It’s like heaven on earth. We were all proud of our own nationalities, and at the same time, we also feel like real brothers and sisters with all other nationalities. Usually we were looking for uniformity, and avoid differences. But here, we are proud of our own identity, without looking for uniformity, and naturally at the same time we love the difference and able to see the beauty. How beautiful if we love each other, there will be no war, no violence. It was really an amazing experience that I feel.
When I involved in the World Youth Day 2002 Toronto National Office at the programming dept., the more I realized about how big and beautiful our Church is. Through all kinds of talents, music, singing, dancing, and even juggling! Expressing the love to our God by doing the artistic paintings, sculptures, band performances, movies, and musicals. Not to say so many seminars, and talk shows, prayer events, Adoration, Rosary, Vespers. Movement Communities, groups, talents, congregations, take part in all kind of events. Groups from all part of the world took part in many events. Can you imagine? There are so many ways to express our love to Jesus in the Church. You can name it. Not to say that each country brought their color of the culture.
There were so many young people crazy about their faith and love to Jesus. They do crazy things for Jesus; want to be a witness of the love of Jesus in different ways. They all work together for the same project. You know what young people do when they were crazy about things? They can be very creative. I saw a young man shaved his hair with a shape of a World Youth Day logo; teens paint their nails with the World Youth Day logo. Other guys paint their chest with the face of JP II, We were singing, laughing, everywhere in the city: in the subways, buses, terminals, streets, cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, and every corners of the city.
So, how World Youth Day gave an impact in my life? World Youth Day made me realize that the Church is like a garden and we are all the flowers. When we are part of a group, sometimes we think that our group is better than the others. That was my way of thinking before I experience World Youth Day. World Youth Day opens my eyes, that in so many things, things are so different in so many ways, colors and kinds, and they are all beautiful in its own way. Every person, every group, every way of expression…. We are all unique. We are all beautiful in our own way, in the Garden of our Father. That way in harmony we should always love our God, The Creator.
Participating in World Youth Day have a big impact on me, the message from the Holy Father was so strong in inspiring my life journey as a young adult. These are message from Pope John Paul II in my first WYD that always stay in my heart:
1. Dear young people, in such a world is it hard to believe? Is it hard to believe in the Third Millennium? Yes! It is hard. There is no need to hide it. It is hard, but with the help of grace it can be done.
2. It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness, He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.
3. Today you have come together to declare that in the new century you will not let yourselves be made into tools of violence and destruction; you will defend peace, paying the price in your person if need be. You will not resign yourselves to a world where other human beings die of hunger, remain illiterate, and have no work. You will defend life at every moment of its development; you will strive with all your strength to make this earth ever more livable for all people.
4. In saying "yes" to Christ, you say "yes" to all your noblest ideals. I pray that He will reign in your hearts and in all of humanity in the new century and the new millennium. Have no fear of entrusting yourselves to him! He will guide you; he will grant you the strength to follow him every day and in every situation.
The last thing, Pope JP II quoting from St. Catherine of Sienna, “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire”
My life after World Youth Day surely never be the same. The whole World Youth Day experience and the message of the Holy Father stamped in my heart. The time I heard that quotation from Catherine of Sienna, it was in Italian, translated to English by one of a friend. I remember it was literally translated: “If you are where you should be, you will set the whole world on fire”. This word “where you should be” gave me the courage, to be open and trust to Him. It influence my decisions in my life, the way I decide where I should go, which career I should choose, which place should I live, what is God’s mission in my life. The message of the Holy Father gives me inspiration and courage, to follow Him where ever He leads me.
Since that time, my feet took me to Canada, return to Bandung, move to Jakarta, and now I live here in Bali.
In my single life, I believe that God knows the best for me. It is not easy to face the challenge as a single person in these days. I try to continue to follow Him, using my time and energy to work and serve as a single person. Every person has their mission according their state of life too. My singleness is a grace and a testimony to others that we do not have to worry. Sometimes in our culture, women tend to get marry for a status, and later on regretted the decision. But I believe, when God allows me to be single with His Company, He will be my guide, and show me all the way. That way I live in peace and joy, not in anxiety.
I’m proud to be Catholic, and I’m very blessed to be part of it! Gloria.
Bali, 19 April 2010
Cecilia Sutjiadi
39 years old, an Executive, Bali, Indonesia
Proficiat Cecilia. Terima kasih atas "sharing" anda. Semoga banyak jiwa dan hati yang terbaharui. Semoga makin banyak orang yang merasakan kasih sayang Tuhan melalui kehadiran sesamanya. Meski berbeda agama, suku, bahasa, budaya dan warna kulit, tetapi semuanya adalah ciptaan Allah dan dicintai oleh-Nya. Perbedaan itu ternyata dapat menambah rasa syukur dan rasa kagum akan Allah Sang Pencipta yang maha kuasa, maha bijaksana dan maha pemurah. Perbedaan bukan untuk dipertentangkan dan dijadikan alasan untuk bermusuhan dan membunuh.
Tidak lama lagi rekan-rekan kita yang beragama Kristen dan Katolik, merayakan Paska. Kepada pembaca yang merayakan Paska, penulis mengucapkan selamat Paska. Kepada anda yang tidak merayakan Paska, penulis mengucapkan "selamat membaca" dan mengalami sendiri kehadiran Tuhan di dalam keanekaragaman ciptaan-Nya".
Cecilia Sutjiadi mengungkapkan "kegembiraannya" setelah melihat, menghadiri dan mengalami "surga dan bumi yang menyatu". Peristiwa itu telah mengubah dirinya. Dia hidup baru dalam Tuhan, yang melihat dunia dan kehidupan di dunia ini secara baru. Penulis berharap, anda pun terbantu untuk melihat dan merasakan kebaharuan hidup anda, setelah mendapat inspirasi dari tulisan Cecilia ini:
The Footprints of the Jubilee Year
My name is Cecilia Sutjiadi, 39, single, and I’m from Bali, Indonesia. I’m living in Bali, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Bali is a little island in Indonesia, known for its wonderful nature and beautiful culture. The people are friendly, naturally elegant, and beautiful in their culture and expression. They arrange the paddy fields terrace composition so artistically. Everywhere you look is a beautiful view, like a frame of a painting. For Balinese people, their faith is integrated with their traditional daily practice. Most of them are Balinese Hindu.
Currently I’m working in a Property Developer Company as a Marketing Manager. Now we are developing a Villa estate in Bali, sitting on a hill with a magnificent view to the Indian Ocean. We are going to market them to investors, who are interested to have a home in Bali during holidays.
I was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. I’m the eldest of 3 sisters and a brother. I was baptized when I was only a few days old. We were brought up in a traditional Catholic family. Our parents were actively involved in the Church ministries, but they gave us enough freedom, but they do not push us to do the same. I think that they pray for us more, because eventually we joined the church ministries in our own time.
When I was 5, our family moved back to Indonesia, I grew up in Bandung, and finished my study in Architecture Engineering at Parahyangan Catholic University. The first year after I graduated my bachelor degree in Architecture, the company where I was working had to close down and they had to let go the architect team, including me. It was during the world economical crisis, when most of the construction project could not finish, and many projects and company suffered.
When I was in college I also took part in forming a youth prayer group team for college students, and I was blessed to have a spiritual direction from a holy and humble missionary priest, Fr. Rolf Reichenbach, SSCC. During the same period of the economical crisis, he was transferred to serve in Batam Island, a small island near Singapore. When he heard about my situation, he invited me to go to Batam Island, where some construction works were still in progress, and they were open to recruit architects. That way, during the weekend I also managed to do some volunteer works in assisting the parish priests to serve the parishioners living in illegal houses and in scattered little islands around the Batam Island.
By God's grace, Fr. Rolf Reichenbach, SSCC help me to get the chance to study about mission and evangelization for a year in Rome, and it became one of the best year in my life. The more I learn about our faith, the more fascinating it is. The perfect love of God is so deep and we need to love Him more to be able to understand His way.
It is always a joy for me to share my experience in World Youth Day. A celebration of young people of all Nations with the Holy Father.
One thing for sure, World Youth Day has been a living testimony to the world. It’s a witness to secular world that the Church is alive, with authentic spirit and energy from the Church’s young generation. The generation that is full of love to each other expressing their faith in joy. During World Youth Day, the city turns out to be a city of joyful youth. The joy of the young people contagious to the city, and since that day, the face of that city would never be the same.
No other event in this world comparable to World Youth Day, I can say. Even the Olympic Games cannot be comparable.
The first time I heard about World Youth Day, was from my parish priest, back in year 1995, where World Youth Day was held in the Philippine. I wished to participate, but I couldn’t go due to my exam term. Then in 1997 I heard it was held in Paris. It was too costly, so again I was not able to participate. Finally I had the chance to participate in the Jubilee World Youth Day Rome 2000. I was in Rome during that year attending the Emmanuel School of Mission. After my first experience of World Youth Day in Rome, then I wished to work for it too. So it led to my two years volunteer work in the World Youth Day 2002 Toronto National Office.
So my first World Youth Day experience was WYD 2000 Rome, Italy. It was a strong experience, to feel like real brothers and sisters with everyone, even from different country that we were not able to communicate verbally because of the language. But the language was not even a barrier!
In World Youth Day, I experienced my faith in a whole different way. There were time when I feel so close with God in the silence of prayers and devotions. In the joy of praise and worship. In the union with heaven through beautiful Holy Masses. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the big garden. By learning wonderful messages of the love of God from wonderful world class speakers. But to experience the love of God through the presence and through the brotherhood and sisterhood with all nations from different country was a very powerful experience too.
I was also touched by witnessing the expressions from other youngsters in loving our God. How they performs with full love and joy to our Creator. I was touched by the song and dance, musical shows, and movies. Through talk shows, art exhibit…. I really experienced our faith in an amazing way. Meeting hundreds of thousands youngsters from all over the world, spreading joy and laughter everywhere in the city. Concert stages on the streets performing wonderful singers and bands from all over the world. The whole city turned out to be a big faith amusement park!...:)
The Mayor of Toronto was a Jewish man, in one of his speech he described about his experience in World Youth Day in Rome 2000. For a time in his life, he saw an ocean of 2 million young people gathering together, joyful, happy, without drugs and violence. He said, “I only can feel love in the air, and I want to bring this to Toronto”. What he said was really true; we only can feel love in the air!
In WYD 2002 Toronto, Canada I was touched when the Pope blessed every country during the Calling of the Nations Ceremony. It’s like heaven on earth. We were all proud of our own nationalities, and at the same time, we also feel like real brothers and sisters with all other nationalities. Usually we were looking for uniformity, and avoid differences. But here, we are proud of our own identity, without looking for uniformity, and naturally at the same time we love the difference and able to see the beauty. How beautiful if we love each other, there will be no war, no violence. It was really an amazing experience that I feel.
When I involved in the World Youth Day 2002 Toronto National Office at the programming dept., the more I realized about how big and beautiful our Church is. Through all kinds of talents, music, singing, dancing, and even juggling! Expressing the love to our God by doing the artistic paintings, sculptures, band performances, movies, and musicals. Not to say so many seminars, and talk shows, prayer events, Adoration, Rosary, Vespers. Movement Communities, groups, talents, congregations, take part in all kind of events. Groups from all part of the world took part in many events. Can you imagine? There are so many ways to express our love to Jesus in the Church. You can name it. Not to say that each country brought their color of the culture.
There were so many young people crazy about their faith and love to Jesus. They do crazy things for Jesus; want to be a witness of the love of Jesus in different ways. They all work together for the same project. You know what young people do when they were crazy about things? They can be very creative. I saw a young man shaved his hair with a shape of a World Youth Day logo; teens paint their nails with the World Youth Day logo. Other guys paint their chest with the face of JP II, We were singing, laughing, everywhere in the city: in the subways, buses, terminals, streets, cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, and every corners of the city.
So, how World Youth Day gave an impact in my life? World Youth Day made me realize that the Church is like a garden and we are all the flowers. When we are part of a group, sometimes we think that our group is better than the others. That was my way of thinking before I experience World Youth Day. World Youth Day opens my eyes, that in so many things, things are so different in so many ways, colors and kinds, and they are all beautiful in its own way. Every person, every group, every way of expression…. We are all unique. We are all beautiful in our own way, in the Garden of our Father. That way in harmony we should always love our God, The Creator.
Participating in World Youth Day have a big impact on me, the message from the Holy Father was so strong in inspiring my life journey as a young adult. These are message from Pope John Paul II in my first WYD that always stay in my heart:
1. Dear young people, in such a world is it hard to believe? Is it hard to believe in the Third Millennium? Yes! It is hard. There is no need to hide it. It is hard, but with the help of grace it can be done.
2. It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness, He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.
3. Today you have come together to declare that in the new century you will not let yourselves be made into tools of violence and destruction; you will defend peace, paying the price in your person if need be. You will not resign yourselves to a world where other human beings die of hunger, remain illiterate, and have no work. You will defend life at every moment of its development; you will strive with all your strength to make this earth ever more livable for all people.
4. In saying "yes" to Christ, you say "yes" to all your noblest ideals. I pray that He will reign in your hearts and in all of humanity in the new century and the new millennium. Have no fear of entrusting yourselves to him! He will guide you; he will grant you the strength to follow him every day and in every situation.
The last thing, Pope JP II quoting from St. Catherine of Sienna, “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire”
My life after World Youth Day surely never be the same. The whole World Youth Day experience and the message of the Holy Father stamped in my heart. The time I heard that quotation from Catherine of Sienna, it was in Italian, translated to English by one of a friend. I remember it was literally translated: “If you are where you should be, you will set the whole world on fire”. This word “where you should be” gave me the courage, to be open and trust to Him. It influence my decisions in my life, the way I decide where I should go, which career I should choose, which place should I live, what is God’s mission in my life. The message of the Holy Father gives me inspiration and courage, to follow Him where ever He leads me.
Since that time, my feet took me to Canada, return to Bandung, move to Jakarta, and now I live here in Bali.
In my single life, I believe that God knows the best for me. It is not easy to face the challenge as a single person in these days. I try to continue to follow Him, using my time and energy to work and serve as a single person. Every person has their mission according their state of life too. My singleness is a grace and a testimony to others that we do not have to worry. Sometimes in our culture, women tend to get marry for a status, and later on regretted the decision. But I believe, when God allows me to be single with His Company, He will be my guide, and show me all the way. That way I live in peace and joy, not in anxiety.
I’m proud to be Catholic, and I’m very blessed to be part of it! Gloria.
Bali, 19 April 2010
Cecilia Sutjiadi
39 years old, an Executive, Bali, Indonesia
Proficiat Cecilia. Terima kasih atas "sharing" anda. Semoga banyak jiwa dan hati yang terbaharui. Semoga makin banyak orang yang merasakan kasih sayang Tuhan melalui kehadiran sesamanya. Meski berbeda agama, suku, bahasa, budaya dan warna kulit, tetapi semuanya adalah ciptaan Allah dan dicintai oleh-Nya. Perbedaan itu ternyata dapat menambah rasa syukur dan rasa kagum akan Allah Sang Pencipta yang maha kuasa, maha bijaksana dan maha pemurah. Perbedaan bukan untuk dipertentangkan dan dijadikan alasan untuk bermusuhan dan membunuh.
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