17 November 2020
By Raj Rajasingam
This weekend is the anniversary of the turning point of my faith journey. 20 November happens to be my baptism and confirmation day.
My parents, both teachers in Christian schools, were practising Hindus. My sister and I grew up attending temples and saying prayers at home. Though we attended the Christian school, no one approached us to talk about Christ or His love and mercy. Conversion was never mentioned.
It was my classmates in the Methodist high school, who were Anglicans and Methodists, who used to come to my house in the afternoons after school and share bible tracts with me. They would ask me questions and try to explain the Gospels to me.
In 1978, I arrived in Sydney to complete high school and met up with two other Malaysian Chinese Students, who were not Christians. I remember that on the first day of walking into the gates of the university, I was given a bible by Campus Crusade. The persistence of my classmates in Malaysia, who shared the Scriptures with me, instilled in me a hunger for God’s word. I was faithful to reading the Scriptures every night for the next seven years, even if I got home after midnight!
Over time, I lost track of my two Malaysian Chinese friends. It was many years later that we were able to reconnect through the internet and discovered the path that God had led each of us. My sister invited me to a Pentecostal church and eventually I moved to the Anglican church where I was baptised and confirmed in 1988.
I was chosen by the Anglican church to go to Taize in 1989. I ended up spending eight months in Taize, being sent by the brothers to Scandinavia and Poland to speak to young people and adults, sharing my faith and what God had done in my life. It was during my stay in Taize, that I met my future wife, Roslyn, a Catholic. I was received into the Catholic Church, we married in 1991 and have been blessed with two boys.
As a husband and a father, I have continued my thirst for God’s Word and take time each day to read scripture and spend time in prayer, and regularly attend retreats and teachings. I have always looked for opportunities to serve and share God’s love in various ministries within the church such as altar serving, ministry of the Word, social justice, ecumenical and interfaith events and the Vinnies Van.
In my involvement with Couples for Christ Australia, my passion is to encourage Catholic families to be grounded in God's love and mercy and having Him at the centre of their lives and to then share this with other families. We meet weekly to pray, discuss scripture and faith related topics and fellowship with one another. I regularly give talks on prayer, scripture and evangelisation.
There is a need to be courageous in sharing the Good News. You will never know when the grace of God or the Holy Spirit will guide and lead a person to Christ, but we have to step out in faith. The courage of my Christian classmates to share God’s Word led me to discover God’s love for me. But it was up to me to cultivate my own courage and recognise the presence of God working through me.
As my life journey continues, I trust that the Holy Spirit will guide me to reach out to others who need to hear and experience God’s love.
Raj Rajasingam is a Plenary Council Delegate for Broken Bay. Raj is an active parishioner of the Cathedral Parish of Hornsby at which he exercises a range of ministries. He serves as the National Missions Director of Couples for Christ Australia. He has considerable national and international experience in programmes of Evangelisation and works extensively in lay formation throughout Australia. He also brings his rich multicultural experience to bear on the matters before the consideration of the Plenary Council.