A beautiful testimony from a former Methodist pastor.
My name is Javier Arturo González Valdez. I am a native of Mexico City, where I still live; I am currently 34 years old and single. I was born into a family that was Catholic by tradition rather than by conviction, comfortably middle class. My father is an electronics engineer and my mother a homemaker. I am the elder of two brothers.
From childhood I began to show signs of a deep religious devotion. I loved going to church and praying, and I used to build little shrines in the garden of my house to play at being a priest, dragging my brother and my cousins into those curious games. No one in my home was inclined toward religion; no one taught me to go to Mass or to practice devotions—it all welled up within me as something natural. From the age of five I had the desire to become a priest; it was my greatest longing, to be able to serve God, whom I had learned to love so much. But there was a great problem in my life. I had a serious case of dyslexia, which is a learning disorder, so I did quite poorly in school. My father had earned excellent grades throughout his entire academic life, so I was an embarrassment to him. For that reason both my father and my mother beat me frequently, especially my mother. I was a child who suffered severe beatings all through his childhood. God and my vocation were the only things that sustained me. My father had plans to send me to Rome to study if I kept up my desire to be a priest, but he doubted I could manage it because of my learning problems.
At the age of nine, I felt the desire to make my First Communion. The experience of Catechism was wonderful. I had an extraordinary catechist who taught us to love Jesus deeply. She prepared me, and the long-awaited day arrived. For me it was one of the most beautiful days of my life.
From that experience my parents understood that they had to do something to help me, so they sent me to an educational specialist to treat my problem. She taught me how to study, and it was then that an interest in reading and knowledge was born in me. I devoured the volumes of the encyclopedias. It was as if a new world were opening before my eyes. I developed an excellent memory. My grades at school improved enormously. In all of this I clearly saw the hand of God. I could hardly wait to finish high school so that I could enter the seminary.
When I entered middle school, I met one of my teachers, a Pentecostal evangelical, who kept inviting me to his meetings. He had heard about me because my classmates called me “the little priest” on account of my desire to be a priest and my way of being, so different from theirs. Under the weight of his constant insistence I finally attended. What I saw that afternoon impressed me. I was only 13 years old; anything would have impressed me. I saw the love and unity of those people, their kindness and sincerity. Their way of praising God by clapping and raising their hands was not foreign to me, since I had attended “charismatic Masses,” but the fervor and commitment of those people were greater than anything I had seen up to that point in the Catholic Church. So I began attending a weekday Bible study, but on Sundays I kept going to the Catholic Church. I made very good friends among the Pentecostals, with whom I began going out for coffee and attending camps and retreats. Then came the time for them to confront my Catholic faith. They began to attack the fact that I had religious images, that I venerated the Virgin Mary and the saints—saying that all of that was abominable idolatry and superstition, things God abhorred; that the Mass was false and superstitious; that the Catholic Church was the great harlot of the book of Revelation; that the pope was the antichrist; that Catholic devotions were Babylonian; and asking where in the Bible the words rosary, scapular, votive candle, Mass, or Pope appeared, etc., etc. They bombarded me with Bible verses left and right. At that time I had neither the weapons nor the knowledge needed to defend myself. Their arguments seemed very convincing to me at that moment. Besides, I truly cared for my new friends. So, with all the sorrow of my heart, I abandoned the Catholic Church. They made me destroy my images, the rosary from my First Communion, my candle, my prayer book, and a small cross that a Franciscan missionary friar had given me (because that group was extremely fundamentalist and even rejected the cross of Christ). I now repent of all of that, especially because of the memories of my First Communion, which had been such a beautiful experience.
I never agreed to be rebaptized (a common practice in that group) because I reasoned that my Catholic baptism was valid, even though the group’s leaders said otherwise; but they respected my decision. In truth, I had never had a bad experience in Catholicism—quite the opposite—but they had convinced me that they alone possessed the truth. This group was truly hard-line. Everything was bad; everything was sin. They would not even have church buildings, so we met in homes or in party halls. They did not celebrate Christmas or Holy Week, because those were traditions of men. The worship was noisy; people jumped and clapped to the rhythm of the music while shouting “amens” and “alleluias.” They convinced my mother as well, but my father kept his distance. My brother was small, so he also attended this group with us.
My desire to be a priest was eclipsed; now I was to be a pastor, if God should call me. However, this group did not believe in seminaries—those too were things of men—so they would know when the Lord called me to the ministry; the only condition was that I had to be married. Married! That had never been in my plans. I had never pictured myself with a wife or children, because I wanted to be a priest. Since childhood I had known that God had called me to be celibate, that it was a gift God had given me—not that I had any sexual deviation, but simply that my calling was to chastity. So I secretly placed this matter in God’s hands. I thank God that to this day He has kept me in this state, not by my own strength, but by the gift that is in me.
Since there was no possibility of entering the seminary, I had to think about a career. Ever since I was a child I had also loved history, so I enrolled in the History program at the UNAM.
In my third semester I took the course “History of Spain,” and it was there that I encountered and came to know the woman who has most influenced my life: Teresa of Jesus. The professor of the course was a Spaniard, and when he spoke of that saint he told us how she had influenced spiritual thought not only in her own country but throughout the whole world. He spoke to us of her writings, her life, her ecstasies and mystical experiences. He spoke of her for only one class, but that was enough for that enigmatic woman to catch me in her nets of love. To my classmates (most of them atheists and Marxists) it meant nothing; it seemed to them the story of a neurotic, fanatical woman. But it had stirred my deepest spiritual fibers. I ran to the university library to read some of her poems, and I was struck by “I live without living in myself, and so high a life do I hope for that I die because I do not die.” Enraptured, I contemplated this woman’s passion for God—an overflowing passion, full and free, a passion I had never known or even imagined. From that moment a very special relationship began, to the point that I used to call her “my sweetheart.” I had never heard of her while I was in the Catholic Church. When I had been a Catholic I had several saints to whom I was devoted, such as St. Jude Thaddeus, St. Martin de Porres, and St. Rita of Cascia, but I had never heard of St. Teresa of Jesus.
My encounter with St. Teresa and my university studies made me more critical of the religious group to which I belonged. I realized how ignorant my leaders were, and that the group had the shape of a sect rather than of a church. So I began to question them about many things. The matter went so far that they told me to choose between my degree and the church, so I left that group. They branded me a miscarriage, a rebel, and a heretic. The love they had shown at the beginning vanished. I had been in that Pentecostal group for eight years. My departure from the group came at a difficult time, because it coincided with my parents’ divorce. My father cut off all financial support, and my mother filed a lawsuit against him, which she won after two years. I had to leave my degree program for lack of money, but a friend recommended that I enroll in a highly regarded theological institute here in Mexico City with a Methodist background. I knew the Methodist Church as a very prestigious and serious Protestant church, and I also knew that I needed to prepare for the ministry, so I began attending classes at the institute. There, one of my classmates invited me to attend the services at his church. He belonged to the Assemblies of God, a church of Pentecostal stamp but much more serious and organized than the group I had been in. I attended for two years, but I did not like it either, so I began attending the services of the Methodist Church.
I graduated from the Bible institute in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in theology. Given my grade average, I obtained a scholarship to study in the United States at a seminary to earn a degree in theology and ministry. I was in the state of Texas for two years. During that time I attended the United Methodist Church in the United States. Methodist theology was quite convincing to me. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had been an Anglican priest, and so he retained many Catholic elements such as the liturgy, the use of symbols, the Eucharist, vestments, infant baptism, the liturgical calendar, the lectionary, the ministerial orders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, etc.
I felt much more at home in this church. In the United States I was ordained a deacon and served in a Hispanic congregation. Around that time we were visited by the brothers of Taizé. They are monks who live in community in Taizé, France, of Protestant origin, though they now have monks from the Catholic Church and the Eastern churches. They taught us the prayer of recollection, contemplative prayer, the value of silence, and prayer and meditation before icons, among other things. All of this awakened in me those spiritual longings I had kept repressed, and I understood that God was calling me to live a spiritual life in complete freedom.
I graduated in 1997 and returned to Mexico, where I had to continue studying for my ordination as a presbyter of the church. I was sent to study at the Methodist Seminary of Mexico City. The Methodist Seminary is part of the Theological Community of Mexico, which is made up of the Methodist Seminary, the Anglican Seminary, the Lutheran Seminary, the Presbyterian Seminary, and the Baptist Seminary. This multi-denominational environment helped me greatly to broaden my vision and to become acquainted with the ecumenical efforts in Mexico.
In 2000 I was ordained a presbyter of the Methodist Church. I taught courses at the seminary in the History of Christianity, Liturgy, Systematic Theology, and Spiritual Theology.
Throughout all those years I drew ever closer to the spiritual teaching of Mother St. Teresa of Jesus. I have read all her writings several times, as well as Teresian classics such as the “Teresian Studies” of Tomás Álvarez, “Time and Life of St. Teresa,” the “Teresian Heritage,” etc., to the point of having a good Teresian section in my personal library. My interest in St. Teresa led me to approach and understand the mysticism of Carmel. I have come to know and read St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Edith Stein (I will never forget how moved I was when I learned of this woman’s life and of her encounter with the truth when she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Jesus), Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, Anne of St. Bartholomew, etc. I have read other mystics (Ignatius of Loyola, St. Bernard, Catherine of Siena, Francis and Clare of Assisi), but the mysticism of Carmel is the one that has captivated me most.
When I turned thirty I began to pray that God would allow me to go to Ávila when I was 33 years old and attend the feasts of the saint. From then on, extraordinary things began to happen in my personal prayer life: supernatural joy, the prayer of quiet, tears, and similar things. I began to have a dream in which St. Teresa would come with a candle in her hand, take me by the arm, and lead me down a long corridor that opened onto a garden; then the dream would end. The Teresian phenomenon in my life led me to undertake serious study of the Roman Catholic Church—its doctrines, its history, its organization and spirituality. Many of my prejudices against Catholicism gradually dissolved. I also read testimonies of Protestants who have converted to Catholicism, such as Cardinal John Newman and Scott Hahn, among others.
My strong closeness to the Catholic Church, my devotion to St. Teresa, my taste for the liturgy, my choice of celibacy, and the like made me a target of criticism from my fellow ministers and from many laypeople, who accused me before the Methodist Church of being “too Catholic.”
Nevertheless, God grants a “determined determination” to fulfill His will, which is pleasing and perfect. I also knew that only “obedience gives strength.”
So the saint began to lead me into “many trials,” in which I felt very alone and misunderstood. I was determined to return to the bosom of Holy Mother the Catholic Church, the only one founded by Christ and His apostles, but I did not know how. I earnestly begged God for someone who would help me and understand what was happening in my life.
I was finally able to reach Ávila, having turned 33, and precisely during the feasts of the saint. There I came to know Father Fray Enrique Castro, O.C.D., at that time a professor at CITES. He was the answer to many tears and prayers. He helped me take the step of my reconciliation with the Church. It was difficult to explain to my superiors in the Methodist Church the reasons for my reconciliation with the Catholic Church and my consequent resignation from the Methodist ministry. They could not understand how it was possible for me to give up a “successful” ministry in the church (at that time I was pastor of a congregation located in one of the best areas of the north of the city, with a parsonage, a car, a good salary, and benefits); I also held several administrative responsibilities within the denomination, in addition to being a professor at the seminary.
Certainly my financial situation since my reconciliation has been difficult, but I would not trade for anything the joy I now have in my heart and the ability to live my faith to the full.
Shortly after that trip to Spain, Father Enrique returned to Mexico, and our friendship bore fruit. He was named pastor of the Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, “La Sabatina,” which is where I currently attend.
In a natural way I have taken up again my desire to be a priest, but now within the blessed Order of Carmel. The perfumes of Carmel have won me over, and I intensely desire to belong to Carmel (my family), for it is there that the Lord has shown me I will find the place to live out my contemplative and priestly vocation.
I pray to God, and I entrust myself to the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and of St. Teresa of Jesus, that they may obtain from God my greatest dream and longing: TO BE A DISCALCED CARMELITE! May God bless you abundantly.
In the love of Jesus and Mary,
Javier Arturo González Valdez (aspirant to Carmel).
“May we all deserve to love You, Lord; since we must live, let us live for You.”
St. Teresa of Jesus (Exclamations XV, 3).
Author: Javier Arturo González.
