A Heart Transplant and Happiness

From Dunedin, New Zealand to Santiago, Chile, God wanted a heart of flesh and his power surpasses what we can think of or even ask for. I never seriously wanted to be a priest. But God did. And I couldn’t be happier.

Every story has a beginning… but we don´t know the end

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. John 15:16

I was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1987. While the third of four children, I am the older twin so I escaped being the youngest child by 10 minutes. My family was always religious by New Zealand’s standards.

I always had the examples of my parents, John and Teresa’s, living faith and search for Jesus. However, I must admit that my own living of the Faith was more external: one of fulfilling the rules but not of loving the person who is the centre and the meaning of being Christian, Jesus. But God takes care of these details over time.

Looking back, I only once thought of being a priest: briefly for something like three days. It was seeing the ordination of a young man to the diaconate that I thought, “that’s really noble and heroic”. But that thought quickly passed. There were other ways to be noble and heroic that we more attractive for me.

My parents were members of the Regnum Christi movement in the early 1990’s, and in 1998, a priest from the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Emilio Diaz-Torre, visited Dunedin and explained what ECYD was. It seemed like a good idea: a youth group of fellow Catholics doing fun activities together and I joined.

That year, my brother, Simon, went to a summer camp run by the Legionaries in 1998. There he was fascinated by something called an ‘apostolic school’, a minor seminary. He came back saying he felt called to become a priest. My mum thought it was just fleeting thought based on how fun the summer camp was. But, Simon soon proved to mum and the rest of our family that this desire was not. When he came back from the summer camp, Simon went to mass every day, rain or shine, whether with the family or by himself on his bike. He was serious about going and a year later he went to the apostolic school in New Hampshire.

The Apostolic School

You have seduced me, Yahweh, and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me: you were the stronger. Jeremiah 20:7

I had a Jeremiah experience. Being home-schooled, any distraction was always welcome. So, when in early 2001, the phone rang, I ran to answer the phone. It was Simon. That year he was going to graduate high school and enter the novitiate of the Legionaries. He asked if I wanted to go – and my hearing must have been selective as I heard ‘summer camp’ – to New Hampshire. I said of course: who wouldn’t want to go on an international adventure and miss a month-and-a-half of the school year (holidays in New Zealand are in December and January). He also asked my twin, but for different reasons, my twin said no. Then an application form arrived. It asked me why I wanted to be a priest. I realized that what I thought was a summer camp was really a summer program for guys who wanted to be priests. I remember very clearly my answer to that specific question in the form: I wrote ‘I don’t know, but I’m open to being a priest if God wants it’ – and left the rest of the whole page blank.

I went to the apostolic school with the idea of having a great time and then coming back. My mum, though, was crying on the way to the airport. I thought it was strange: I was coming back. But when I arrived there, even though the other guys didn’t always understand my English, I felt at home in a family with others from across the United States. It’s the only explanation I can give. I wanted to stay there and felt that I was called to be a Legionary of Christ. But this decision of a 14-year-old had quite a few years of discernment.

First years of Formation

In 2004, when I graduated the apostolic school, I entered the novitiate of the Legionaries of Christ in Cheshire, Connecticut. I remember those two years as ones of struggle: I knew in my depths that God called me to be a Legionary, but I didn’t want it. I recall that I asked to leave in 2005, and the instructor said ‘sure’. I wasn’t expecting that answer. I burst into tears: I knew that I would be leaving not because of a true discernment. And so I said that actually I didn’t want to leave. Later that year, the instructor told me something that has always stuck in my head. He said, ‘God wants you happy. You aren’t happy here. Perhaps you should leave.’ I burst into tears again. I knew why I wasn’t happy: I was trying to be perfect externally but not letting my heart be changed, holding onto little things that God was trying to have me let go of. The reason I wasn’t happy was me, not God.

But God has his ways. I made my first profession on September 2, 2006. Those last few months of novitiate were moments of great growth. The two years after profession, during humanities, the stage of formation where we study the liberal arts, was a period of peace. I was happy and was busy with a few different projects. I recall at the end of the studies, I was working on hooking up a conference phone and I met my future rector. I came out of the room and bumped into him. He was looking for the altars to celebrate mass and asked me in Spanish where they were. I said something like “Por el hallway, y debajo de los stairs’ because my Spanish wasn’t too good. He answered me, laughing, in English: “Don’t worry. My English is just as bad as your Spanish.” Little did I know that in two months, I’d be in his community.

After completing humanities, in 2008 I was sent to Rome to study philosophy and work in the General Directorate, the general headquarters of the Legionaries of Christ. I had a great time and really thrived in those two years. Part of that was because I was blessed to live with priests and brothers of many different ages and formation levels. It was also in Rome that I first learned about our founder’s double life, including that the serious allegations about him could be true, and that the Legion was going to have an apostolic visitation. I recall thinking: ‘Now is the perfect time to leave. No one would question you.’ But, again in the chapel, another thought came: ‘Great, but where is God in this idea? What does God want?’ And I felt again the certainty that God was calling me to be a Legionary… wherever that led.

Having worked in the secretariat, I was surprised to learn that for my apostolic internship I was going to Atlanta to be a secretary in the Territorial Directorate for the United States. I remember I made a bet with a brother who told me I was going to be a secretary. I said that I’d pray a rosary for him if I ended up going to a secretariat. I was sure I wasn’t. But God has his ways.

I was really busy as a secretary. I guess I did an ok job and was involved in a quite a few things. I felt that I was really thriving. As well, I was personal secretary to Fr Luis Garza, L.C. whose priestly example left a deep impact on me.

Perpetual Profession and Rome

I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. Ezekiel 36:26

After two years of internship, I made my perpetual profession on September 1, 2012 in Cheshire. Before making these vows I discerned quite a bit whether God was calling me to be a Legionary – in the midst of the Legion’s crisis. After much prayer and consulting other Legionaries, priests of other religious orders, and lay persons, I felt the certainty that, yes, I was called to be a Legionary. The initial moment of feeling ‘at home’ at the apostolic school had matured and weathered several storms to be able to know that this is what God wanted.

That moment of my perpetual profession was a lighthouse for me the following year. For there came another storm. The busyness of being a secretary and other reasons lead me to a few months of, what I found out later, was a slight burn out. They were a few months of some darkness and struggle. I think back to the relief I felt when I found out I was going to Rome. But I also learnt I was going to the International College, not the General Directorate: it was something new and massive with 400 seminarians and priests in different communities. While at first it was hard adjusting to the size and the lack of being busy, I now count it a grace to have gone to the College. It was a sort of new beginning. No longer focused on doing things for God, I was focused on being formed by God. There too, many brothers were placed by God in my path, one of a heart-transplant. For God worked on my heart.

The new heart was a transformation from trying to be a ‘perfect’ religious – one who fulfilled all with a lot of voluntarism – to at least striving to be a ‘loving’ religious, one who loved Jesus and my brothers; from being someone who tried to hold on, or be in control to being someone who tried at least to let go and let God guide me. I remember discovering Henri Nouwen’s books The Wounded Healer and Life of the Beloved. God spoke to me in them. Another important moment was when in the month-long spiritual exercises, I stumbled upon St. Therese of Lisieux and her spirituality, a spirituality some call the spirituality of imperfection. God also called me to experience him in new and deeper ways that with the help of my spiritual director, Fr Alex Yeung, L.C. I was able to discover and respond to.

I think it is so easy for an Anglo-Saxon to think subtly that God loves us if we love him. And we love him by fulfilling what he commands us. But we cannot deserve, let alone ‘win’, God’s love. We are loved – unconditionally – despite and through everything. This heart, from stone to flesh, is also tenderer and hurts more. But God wants a priest to be a man of God, a man with a heart of Christ that feels joy and pain.

In my last year of Theology, another important event took place. A brother and a good friend, Br. Anthony Freeman, L.C., suddenly passed away , just a few months before his diaconate ordination. His death and example had a deep impact on many Legionaries and on my entire generation.

God’s Ways

May Christ dwell in your hearts that, being rooted and grounded in love, you may have power to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19

After finishing Theology, I was ordained a deacon in my hometown by Bishop Michael Dooley on August 6, 2018. It was a very special and simple ceremony. Looking back over these 17 years since I left Dunedin, I recall what St Paul wrote in the Ephesians where he says that God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20). God wants each of us happy. And he is able to do this in ways far beyond what we can think of or ask for. These few months as a deacon in Santiago, Chile have emphasized this. God is so great he can change our hearts and so much more. He just asks us for our yes.