To My Boys: September 24, 2020
Good morning!
I wrote yesterday about the Belen Youth Mission trip and one of the experiences I had when I was a student. Here is another.
There is a story in the gospel of St. Mark I’ve always found challenging. Jesus is back in his hometown of Nazareth after spending time walking around Israel preaching, performing miracles, and gathering disciples. Then this happens, “When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (3:21). Can you believe it, right there in the Bible, under our very noses is a phrase that tells us Jesus was accused of being a crazy man?
I have often had to preach homilies at masses where this has been the gospel reading. There I am, facing a Sunday congregation, waiting for me to say something filled with theological and spiritual wisdom. People hope that when I open my mouth, rivers of milk and honey will flow out of my priestly mouth, and what I have to work with is, “he is out of his mind.”
That’s it, a six-word phrase uttered two millennia ago by a handful of Jews claiming that the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Lords was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I have to stand there and deliver a homily that tries to help people understand that Jesus was considered to be a few bricks short of a load.
Actually, I remember being called crazy once. It happened as a sophomore in college. A couple of years after having graduated from Belen, when I had established very strong friendships with guys that are more like my brothers than anything else, a group of us decided it was time to recharge our “men for others” batteries and head down once again to the DR with Fr. Eddy Alvarez, S.J. for the Belen Youth Missions.
By the time this trip took place, I had already been discerning my vocation to the priesthood and had even applied and had been accepted. The thing was that only Fr. Eddy and the “crazy guy” up in the sky knew about it. The reason for the silence was that Fr. Eddy, who also happened to be my spiritual director, insisted that it was best to keep it quiet. This way, the discernment process could happen without major interruption. It was good advice. It gave me an opportunity to really take my time without feeling pressured one way or the other. The discernment process was sincere and unbiased: God and me, me and God.
I was slated to enter the seminary in August and eventually, people were going to find out. I wanted to break the news to my friends personally. Fr. Eddy and I agreed that on the last night of the mission trip he would not preach a homily at the mass so that I could tell the group about my plans.
There we were, a small group of about 20 of my closest friends sitting on the floor of a little schoolhouse in the middle of the Dominican outback. It was pitch dark with only the faint glow of a candle burning in the center of our group. Fr. Eddy introduced the topic by stating there was one among us who was entering the seminary to become a Jesuit priest.
There was silence.
I could tell, even in that darkness, that everyone was amazed at the news. They figured that if it was one of us, the most likely candidate was Ralf Anrrich ‘87. To this day, Ralf continues to be one of my closest friends. He has always been a very spiritual and religious guy. While at Belen, he led every retreat, gave every talk, went to daily mass, and towed the moral line. In high school, he was our group’s conscience and fewer stupid decisions were made by us as a group because of him.
The group turned to him slowly as they waited for him to speak. In the silence of the night, the only sound was that of the crickets chirping in the distance. I too looked in his direction and even jokingly elbowed the guys sitting next to me saying to the one on my right, “I knew it all along” and, to the one on my left, “I could tell a mile away that Ralf would eventually make the move.”
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I stood up and confessed. “It’s me,” I said, “I’m going to be a Jesuit priest.” What followed was not surprising. José “Gogo” González ’87 grabbed me by the shirt and told me to sit down. Michael Morejón ’87 scolded me for not taking the moment seriously. Cesar Lago ’87 expressed amazement that, even at a time like this, I would joke around about something so important.
It was Fr. Eddy who had to intervene and tell the group that I was entering the seminary and not Ralf. People were flabbergasted. And then it came. One of the guys broke the shocked silence, turned to me, and said: “You’re going to be a priest? You’re crazy.”
The funny thing is, he was right. Think about it. A young man in today’s world who leaves his family and friends to follow Jesus as a priest has to be crazy. In a materialistic world that measures success by the amount of money you make or the kind of car you drive, you have to be crazy. In a sexually promiscuous world where a womanizer is considered a “stud” and being celibate is considered “outdated,” “impossible,” “unnatural,” or even “depraved,” you have to be crazy. In a world where freedom is equated with a license to do anything to anyone for any reason, you have to be crazy.
Yet, that is exactly what I have been called to do and it is exactly what I am: crazy.
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.