Another wedding, this time with God

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

For their 38th anniversary they renewed their marriage vows – at the groom’s first Mass as a clergyman.
It was a surprise for them, and a first for his family, who couldn’t attend their wedding in Korea. Even the bride’s mother hadn’t attended the wedding, but her devout Catholic father supported them.
This is the story of Juan Jesus Guzman – one of nine men ordained a permanent deacon Saturday at St. Paul Cathedral – and his wife, Misa, who once thought he should be a priest. At his ordination Mass she was by his side – in traditional Korean dress.
Deacon Guzman, 65, said when he was growing up in Puerto Rico he was an altar server and member of the Legion of Mary and a youth group, and helped around the church.
At Inter American University of Puerto Rico he was in the ROTC. He joined the American Air Force and was assigned to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, then Kunsan Air Force Base in Korea. While in Korea he joined the choir at the base chapel, where his future wife was choir director and organist.
For 30 years her father, Paul Yi, did office work at the base and “every time he finished work, he went out … and evangelized every family,” Mrs. Guzman said. The area was populated by Buddhists and people of other beliefs.
“We had Sunday service at our house,” she said. A Korean priest from their parish in the city came to their house twice a year for Mass and confessions.
Her father, with help from the base, orchestrated the building of a bungalow, where religious services were  held, and eventually built Ok Pong Catholic Church, the first in the area.
When building the bungalow, the main carpenter, a Korean, ran to her family’s home one morning, showing wounds he received in a fight with the devil, she said. He said he’d awoken to a terrible smell and seen a horned creature who opposed the Christian project.
Mrs. Guzman also told about her mother’s devotion: “My mom really wanted to be a (religious) sister. Her mother forced her to marry my father.”
The couple sent Misa, their oldest, to the convent.
“I left; she was disappointed,” Mrs. Guzman said. “I was not even a nun; I was in training to see if I could be. … I was not ready to be a nun.”
It was the only time she disobeyed her mother – besides marrying an American – she said. Older Koreans viewed their girls’ interactions with the American servicemen negatively, because, during and after the Korean War, women had prostituted themselves at the base to earn income, she explained.
So, Mrs. Guzman said, “I was very reluctant to go out with an American guy.” And Mr. Guzman was so quiet and polite she thought maybe he should be a priest.
But, Deacon Guzman said, “I had some help from her father” in pursuing the vocation of marriage. His wife said she feared dishonoring her devout father by dating an American, but her father said, “You won’t find this good a man in Korea.”
Deacon Guzman said marriage preparation was intense, because the divorce rate between Korean women and American servicemen was high.
“We dated only 10 months,” Mrs. Guzman said. They married at the base chapel on June 6, 1981, before his one-year tour of duty there ended.
After their honeymoon her mother wanted to see them. Mrs. Guzman was still angry that her mother wouldn’t attend the wedding, but Mr. Guzman wanted to meet her and said, “You don’t know what she’s thinking.”
What they found was a gathering her mother planned – a feast and a Mass celebrated by a Korean priest, who prepared his first homily in English for the groom.
“Ever since then she loved, loved Juan,” Mrs. Guzman said. Not an English-speaker, she asked her daughter repeatedly to tell him she was broken-hearted for opposing their marriage.
Mrs. Guzman said her parents and siblings later moved to California, her mother died there in 2002 and her father now lives with her and her husband in Southbridge, spending hours praying. (She and her husband and their sons had moved there after his discharge as a major from Los Angeles Air Force Base in 1997.)
On Sunday, the priests at St. John Paul II Parish in Southbridge surprised them by having them renew their wedding vows at Deacon Guzman’s Mass of Thanksgiving there, the couple said.
Mrs. Guzman said that was important because her husband’s siblings, niece and nephew and their spouses, who hadn’t been at their wedding, were there. They’d come from Puerto Rico and New Jersey for his ordination Saturday.
“Saturday was another wedding in a way,” Deacon Guzman said. “It was a wedding with God, and it was very special. Then on Sunday it was special” renewing the vows that brought – and kept – him and his wife together.
“It’s a miracle to me to meet Juan – such a great man,” Mrs. Guzman said. Who would know he’d become a permanent deacon?
Deacon Guzman said he inquired about the diaconate in 1997, but his wife wanted him to wait, since their children were young. A few years later he saw an announcement for it, but he still needed to be home for the children.
Five years ago their associate pastor, Father Juan G. Herrera, “asked me if I’d considered the diaconate program,” Deacon Guzman said. He thought he was too old, but learned he wasn’t.
“I talked to my wife and she said, ‘yes,’” he said, explaining that  wives’ permission is essential to pursue the diaconate.
“I have grown spiritually,” he said. “It’s a good program. I’d recommend anybody to take it if they have the call.”
Asked how it feels to be a deacon, he said that he’s been involved in Church so long that at first he didn’t see any change. But, when giving his blessing, “then I understood that I have a new responsibility, something special I can do for people.”
“God wants to use him,” his wife said. “I want him to fully give himself to answer to God. I am fully behind him.”