Above All, God Will Provide

Deacon Gabriel Cisneros Campos, Notre Dame Seminary

We all want to be like our favorite hero, the one who is invincible with superpowers that other heroes don’t have. A hero does not necessarily need to be Superman. There are heroes without capes. They could be your coach, your science teacher or your physical education teacher. It could be your dad or mom. I always wanted to be like my dad, he was the model of a hero that I wanted to be. He was strong because he would pick me up with one hand, and when we played arm wrestling, he always won. He knew a lot about mechanical things and construction. Even when I grew older, and my physique changed, and my mentality about things in the world was different, my father continued to be my hero even though we no longer shared the same ideas. He noticed my change, and he was always attentive. Contemporary heroes no longer caught my attention, Superman, Batman and the others moved to the plane of fantasy and the unreal. I believed that there were men who really flew like Superman and who lifted an entire house with one hand. It was then that my father told me about a person I knew but not completely, everyone talked about him in books, magazines, movies and all the priests, nuns and catechists. “Jesus is the true hero of the history of mankind” they said. Jesus… I do know him, well… in part. At this point in my life I did not attend church regularly, I attended with my friends and because I knew that at Mass I would see the nice girl who caught my attention. I had no idea of the sacramentality, of the sacred and much less of the mystery behind Jesus. I was listening to Mass but had no idea of everything that the celebration entailed. For me and some of my friends, it was boring to go to Mass. It never caught my attention to be part of the group of altar boys or people who help in the church. And much less be a priest. Time passed, the years accumulated, and without realizing it, I turned 30. I stopped attending Mass - my parents never forced me to go - and I did not receive a religious education. I did not take communion because I did not prepare for that moment... until a new preparation course for the sacraments was opened and I was invited by the Director of Religion of the parish. I enlisted to prepare myself. At first I was embarrassed because I was already 30 years old, and I wondered what others would say about me when they saw an older person taking the sacrament courses. Sometimes shame is an obstacle to knowing Jesus, society before us now is against the Truth. So I signed up and took the courses. While that was happening, I met Saint Martin de Porres through a film. His humility and love for Jesus captivated me and I adopted him as my Patron, as my favorite saint, my hero who helped me meet the true hero, Jesus. It also influences the testimony of the priest of the community a lot, a man who wore boots with his cassock. I asked myself why he always wore boots, so one day I asked him, and he told me that they were work boots. He, himself, worked in the construction of the parish together with the construction workers, and they were building some rooms for catechesis in the church property, and construction workers did not mind getting dirty - that caught my attention. I thought that the priests

did not get dirty or even get involved in these activities. Time passed and I finally received Communion. It was a special day that I confessed and received Jesus. But like all adult adolescents, I had aspirations, and one of them was to get married and have children. I met a girl with whom I got along very well. After a while I asked her what she thought of marriage. Her answer was negative. At least in the next five years, we had already known each other for four. So I stepped back. It was then that I asked God to show me the way. Religious life caught my attention because of Saint Martin de Porres, so I thought about entering a monastery. But there was a problem, I had dropped out of school a long time ago and to enter the seminary I needed to have finished high school. I got discouraged, then I talked with the priest of the community who recommended that I study at the minor seminary. I followed his advice, but not before attending the parish, serving in it and attending the sacraments. I was finally accepted into the minor seminary despite my age.

SEMINARY LIFE

Life in the seminary is an adventure to which Christ invites you so that you get to know him from a different perspective because in the seminary you stop doing the things that you were regularly accustomed to - to dedicate yourself to study and prayer. As for pastoral activities: First, you have to follow a schedule, this schedule helps you manage your time. We also take classes in the morning. Before classes, we say morning prayer, also called Lauds. Every day we have an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in both the morning and afternoon. After class at 10 o’clock, we have the Eucharistic celebration. After the Eucharistic celebration, we went to the dining room for lunch. You also usually take classes in the afternoon. After lunch we have time to study until Vespers, which is said every day. After the prayers you can manage your free time, whether you can use it to exercise, which is very important, or use it to do your homework. Regularly the schedule is the same from Monday to Friday; the weekends are a little different because on Saturday and Sunday we attend different parishes as part of pastoral training, some attend schools. On Sunday afternoon we have an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with solemn vespers - all this in a fraternal atmosphere. The seminary has its alumni association. We have a president who represents us before the rector, we have a vice president and a treasurer, we also have a seminarian who is in charge of the spiritual area, another seminarian is in charge of the social area. Each class has a representative in these areas. The seminary formation helps us to balance the four human dimensions: the intellectual dimension, the human dimension, the spiritual dimension and the pastoral dimension. Each of these dimensions is fundamental to discernment for the priesthood. During the course of the semester we have important cultural activities. We also have the presence of important personalities, they can be important theologians or philosophers who make presentations to all the students. For me, being formed in the seminary has been very important for my discernment, but the support of my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters, who encourage me to move forward, has also been important to me. The support of our family is essential to be able to give a positive response to the call that Christ makes of us in this vocation. The formation, the support and the prayers of all the people will help us to discern, whether for life as a priest or as a religious or it may be that we are called to married life. The important thing is to serve God from our reality. If God calls you to the priesthood, don’t be afraid to respond, God will provide.