Thirteen years is a long time, but not too long; a life that begins but still – if God permits – has much to go through. And of course, everything certainly depends on perspective.

For example, for my niece, I have less time to live than she does, since she is barely four years old, and from my grandparents’ perspective, well, they are already in their nineties and are just waiting for my ordination as a priest so that, to put it simply, along with the elderly Simeon, “now Lord, according to your promise, you may let your servant go in peace.” I have a life ahead of me, and they only an eternity.

Anyway, thirteen years have passed since that invitation to the candidacy in Monterrey, Mexico. I flew from my beloved El Salvador to my dear Mexico, the land of La Morenita del Tepeyac. My dreams were gestating in the little thumb of America, and my life was born in a small town with extreme climates in Santiago, Monterrey.

I left my home on an intuition, trusting a word from a friend of mine whom many apparently know, and who for some strange reason invited me to get to know him better. He invited me to spend a few weeks with some of his other friends, called Legionaries of Christ.

Yes, not everything started with the Legionaries of Christ, but it was in that home where I finally understood that He had a dream for my life, He had the power to give life to my childhood dreams.

I certainly never dreamed of becoming a priest, but I did love talking to Jesus every night and telling Him… well, asking Him for two or three favors. And Jesus always fulfilled me, always. There was nothing I asked of Him that He did not give me. I know it sounds a bit like Aladdin’s lamp, but no, it’s not the same. Aladdin has a genie as a slave with the power to grant three wishes. As a child, I had a Friend who never granted wishes, but always responded in one way or another to each request.

And so I grew with Him but without Him, with Jesus because I knew He was always with me, and without Jesus because I was a child and then a teenager… and with this, I have said everything. Now I look back and seeing how good Jesus was to me, I can only sigh and long for one day to be a little bit like Him.

I went, I saw, and I stayed in that beautiful house called the Novitiate of Santa María de la Montaña.

Certainly, I was not fascinated by the food, because even what I didn’t pick, I picked; much less the very non-coastal, spring-like climate. I stayed for a simple reason: the Legionary Priests I met embodied with their ups and downs that Jesus Friend I had grown up with. I felt at home, I realized I was with my family, with the friends of my Friend.

And so it was, tears and laughter; crises and certainties; companions and friends; priests eager for holiness and priests as weak as I am. Love and loneliness, as I believe is the life of every person, with the hope that everyone in the world will someday, in this life, have an experience of Love. Thirteen years where I feel the hundredfold in every person Jesus has placed and continues to place in my life.

I am son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend, Legionary of Christ, and soon, all of that, but as a Priest of Jesus Christ.