Ansel Beluso's Life Transformation

This life story of Mr. Ansel Beluso was published on PhilStar a long time ago. I am re-posting this to help people struggling with same-sex attraction realize that there is more to life than their sexual struggle. It is a sad fact that everywhere you look around nowadays you see so many 'confused' individuals going through life wondering what is it all about for them. Whoever you are, whatever your struggles in life may be, after reading this story, I hope you will find it in your heart to believe that in this life nobody is beyond God's grace and redemption, and that His supreme love for us will always be greater than the enormity of our sins. You can run away from God, but you cannot change His love for you. And as He relentlessly pursued Ansel, He will do the same for you and He will never rest until you are back into His fold. Come home now. God is waiting for you at the gates with open arms.

ANSEL BELUSO, Former Entertainment Writer and Showbiz Talk-Show Host

I am writing this in the waiting lounge of the Munich airport while waiting for my connecting flight to Lucerne. I just came from Barcelona, the first leg of my trip to six European cities on a special mission for Couples for Christ. From Lucerne, I’ll be riding a train to Milan, from Milan to Marseilles, and from Marseilles to Rome. Then, off to Vienna to meet with the different committees formed to take care of the documentation and some of the creatives of the 10th anniversary of the CFC mission in Europe.

I finished my prayer time earlier and right now my spirit is giddily swimming in the liquid magic of God’s palpable love in my life. Imagine, gold and silver I have none but I roam the streets of Europe with joy in my heart and a smile on my face. To think that barely five years ago I was a raging 'bading', reeling in the homosexual pains that I didn’t even have the sensitivity to realize I had.

Yes, for all the four decades of my checkered life then, I had come to accept and embrace and live out the homosexual orientation, basically because I thought that was the only way for me to gain my freedom. So clueless I was then about the evils that my rabidly gay lifestyle actually wrought on the world in which I lived. At the time, I thought that being gay was just that – being gay, which meant being happy.

The pursuit of happiness was the chief purpose of my life then. And I thought I was a success. In my career, I was the creative director of several top-rating TV shows and I even became a showbiz talk-show host. In my love life, I enjoyed the juiciest flesh around and conditioned my mind to believe I loved them and they loved me back.

Back then, sex was a commodity that didn’t run out. Every weekend, I’d hie off to some nearby province to taste the native delicacies. At one point, I participated in an orgy. I remember also having had sexual relations with six brothers pimped to me by their own father.

Each time I look back on those days, I cringe – both at the enormity of my transgressions and at how totally unaware I was then of how much I was offending God.

All I thought was that I was just having a good time. Besides, I rationalized, the boys whose innocence I purloined badly needed the money I gave them – I was simply sharing with them the blessings of my material prosperity!

Everything changed when that prosperity I believed was there forever began to dissipate. There was no earthquake but my world tumbled down. It just happened that, one day, I found myself without a job, without money, without a boy toy, without friends. And what did I have lots of? Debts. A humongous mountain of debts. I was a hapless victim of the check-rediscounting monster that rapaciously ravaged many showbiz personalities then.

A telephone ringing sent shivers of fear up and down my spine because creditors harangued and harassed me even at the unholiest hours. There was one time I hid inside my bedroom closet, shedding quiet tears, as a loan collector abused my doorbell.

I began to turn to God – not even because I believed He could save me but simply because there was really nowhere and no one to turn to anymore.

I had lost the appetite for going home even when the work of the day had long been done.

For one, my home was a living hell. For another, I was deathly afraid of debt collectors waiting in ambush somewhere. And I discovered that the adoration chapel was the only place open during those murky, dark nights. I went there – at first, not really to pray but to rest my weary bones and even wearier heart.

Then, the adoration chapel became a place of solace. I learned to cry – no longer to myself and at the world that, I felt, had betrayed me but to God!

This went on for several agonizing months. My phone was cut off. My electricity was disconnected. At that point, I knew with a clarity beyond any doubt why some people contemplated killing themselves. As for me, I don’t know if it was my Catholic childhood which prevented me from thinking about terminating it all or I was just too much of a coward to get the nozzle of a gun inside my throat and say goodbye, cruel world.

Then, Couples for Christ happened in my life. They wanted somebody to help them put up their TV ministry. It was the start of a romance with the Lord that has continued to this day and for the rest of my days.

In His Steps was the title of the 30-minute TV show I did for Couples for Christ. It was about the amazing stories of individual transformation of people from worldliness to a life with God. They weren’t the "I used to smoke three packs but now no more" type of stories but truly extraordinary tales of how the Almighty proves His might in the lives of those who allow Him to move in them.

A self-confessed gun-for-hire who first took a human life at 14 found Jesus behind prison bars. A top-ranking official of the Alex Boncayao Brigade who mouthed the communist ideology like Bro. Mike Velarde spewed bible verses. A junkie who could neither start nor end the day without shabu. A chronic philanderer who made life Calvary for his wife and children. They were just a few of the people we featured on the show, and how they forsook their past ways to follow the path of Christ and gain the fullness of God’s promise of prosperity and joy truly boggled my mind.

They all had several things in common that I also wanted to have – a ready smile that does not disappear as soon as you smile back; a humility that uses active silence as a potent weapon against the vexations of the world; an inner conviction to respond to a higher calling instead of to a baser instinct.

Slowly, I learned what it meant to have a personal relationship with God, and how repentance and faith go together as the twin towers standing outside the portals to a life of genuine freedom and happiness.

I began to desire God. As I hungered and thirsted for Him, I ate and drank of Him. And purely by grace, I saw the Lord!

Today, I have slain my homosexual demons. The past still revisits me once in a while but it does not enslave me anymore. I have a great God who empowers me with His strength to vanquish the temptations of the world and the Evil One.

I now have a wife and two children and my heart throbs with the peace and happiness that have been forged in the bosom of God’s love. Words are so puny and inadequate to even just approximate the profundity of the joyful bliss that now dwells in my heart.

And I now dedicate every breath I take, every waking moment, every toil of my life to glorifying my Lord! Over and above my tasks as a full-time pastoral worker in Couples for Christ, I have decided to respond to God’s call to start a psycho-spiritual program for the pastoral care and spiritual nourishment of active homosexuals who struggle to step out of the enslavement of their flesh.

I have taken the first, small steps. There are five in my core group right now: Mike Perfecto, Rollie de los Reyes, Antonio Alvarez, Milo Granados and Tony Santiago – and we are asking God to bless GOLD, which means Gentlemen of the Lord, together with our offer of commitment to help those still in the darkness from which Jesus has already saved us. Aside from the family ministries of Couples for Christ (particularly Singles for Christ and Youth for Christ), we hope to introduce the program to other Catholic charismatic communities as well. Another long-term goal is to spread the Word to female homosexuals.

The harvest in God’s vineyard is plentiful. I thank the Lord for calling me and giving me the opportunity to work in His vineyard.

I’ll be in Rome during Holy Week. I hope to express my prayerful thanksgiving to God at St. Peter’s Basilica. And I ask God for the opportunity to personally receive His blessings through the Holy Father Pope John Paul II’s Easter Sunday message at St. Peter’s Square. Life is beautiful.


Want to hear him speak? Watch this video: