Cardinal José Cobo will preside over the diaconal ordination of ten young men in Madrid, including several adult converts and a 55-year-old teacher who left the classroom after asking himself what he was doing “teaching them English when what they really need is a thirst for God.”
The Cathedral of Santa María la Real de la Almudena will host this Saturday, May 23, at 7:00 p.m., the diaconal ordination of ten seminarians from the Conciliar Seminary of Madrid. The celebration, presided over by the Archbishop of the capital, marks the first degree of the Sacrament of Holy Orders for these candidates, who form the class that entered during the 2020 pandemic.
Among the ordinands, stories of adult conversion, prolonged periods away from the faith, and returns marked by suffering stand out. Álvaro Simón, 31, moved to Madrid from Zaragoza to pursue a master’s degree and ended up entering the Seminary after years of discernment. His beginnings were “rocky”: during the summer of the end of lockdown, his father passed away. “The suffering I experienced firsthand has been the subject that has prepared me to accompany the suffering of others,” he acknowledges.
Another candidate, Álvaro Solé, lived away from the Church after the death of a sister. His turning point came, paradoxically, on the day he lost his job: he heard the Gospel of the rich young man —“Sell all your possessions, come and follow me”— and decided to take the step. In a singular detail, his father will be ordained a permanent deacon just a month later, on June 20.
Family conversions and mature vocations
Alfonso Blanco did not grow up in a practicing household, but the conversion of his mother in 2013, when he was twelve, transformed the entire family. In prayer, the word “priest” began to arise insistently. The Virgin Mary, explains, helped him understand that “being a priest is helping Jesus in the salvation of souls”.
«In today’s society people need to encounter a God who forgives, who has come to save us, not to condemn us»
The most striking case is that of Óscar Jesús Conceja, who will receive the diaconate at age 55. An English teacher in a public school, one day he saw himself “as if in front of a mirror” before his students: “What am I doing teaching them English when what they really need, what they have, is a thirst for something else, for eternity, for God?” He does not consider his a late vocation, but rather that God had to “simmer him slowly”: “There are stews like me that take longer to cook.”
The ten ordinands —whom the archdiocese presents as “the Pope’s deacons,” because their formation coincided with the Jubilee— have completed their years of seminary in a period marked by the pandemic, lockdown, and, in several cases, family bereavements that have forged their vocation to serve the suffering of others.
Source: Archdiocese of Madrid