Family’s religious fervor influences vocation to priesthood

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

A poor family in Colombia helped Worcester gain another priest.
So did the young man’s own family.
And Colombian missionaries.
These people were key influences on the journey that brought Deacon Juan David Parra Rave to where he is today – awaiting ordination to the priesthood for the Diocese of Worcester June 18.
The son of Jaime de Jesus Parra Sanchez and Luz Elena Rave Rendon, he was born on July 30, 1994, in Colombia, in the city of Angelopolis, in the state of Antioquia. He has two sisters.
“I’m coming from a very religious family,” says the transitional deacon. “My father’s parents … God used, to bring me very close to the religious experience.” His grandparents prayed the rosary and their house was a favorite site for home Masses.
“My grandmother, she always dreamed of having a priest in the family,” Deacon Parra says. “Three weeks before she died … we were talking about my vocation” while she was hospitalized.
“I want to be at your ordination” – even if taken in a hospital bed – she told the seminarian.
“Since she’s now in God’s presence, I’m pretty sure she’s praying for me from there,” Deacon Parra says. “She’s going to be so happy.”
He gives some background for his involvement in the Church.
His diocese, the Diocese of Caldas, adopted Sistema Integral de Nueva Evangelización (SINE), a comprehensive system of new evangelization. Small communities were created for prayer, Bible study, and catechesis, to form parishioners as disciples of Christ, then as apostles who did parish ministries.
“So I joined one of those communities when I was 10 years old, with my grandparents, and that process made me be very involved with the parish,” Deacon Parra says. He was an altar server, youth minister, and a catechist for his small community.
His pastor invited him to vocations discernment gatherings at a seminary.
“I said to the priest, ‘I love Jesus, I love God, and I love the Church, but priesthood is not my vocation,’” Deacon Parra recalls. He wanted to be a doctor or accountant.
But he went anyway, joining boys considering priesthood. The last two years of high school, they made mission trips.
“The first mission ... was a key point in my vocation,” Deacon Parra maintains. After receiving training, they went two by two to people’s homes.
“One of the days … I visited a very poor family” with about 10 children, Deacon Parra recalls. “We shared the word of God with them.” As he and the priest left, one of the children brought them cookies and drinks the parents had sent.
“I looked at the priest and I just started to cry: ‘This is what vocation means – to offer the word of God to those who are hungry and thirsty,’” physically and spiritually, Deacon Parra says. “This family was the poorest family we visited today, and they offered the small things that they had.” He saw God’s word fulfilled: this family reminded him of the widow in the Gospel who gave two coins – all she had – to God.
“That really helped me to see priesthood … is not something you choose because you want your name to be popular,” Deacon Parra says. “You are called to serve” people in need. “And also … the people of God have many things to teach you – about mercy, compassion, generosity. So after this experience … I began a serious process to enter into the seminary.”
Shortly before his December 2010 graduation from high school, he received an acceptance letter and in January 2011 entered his diocese’s seminary in Caldas, he says. His formation was at Seminario Mayor de la Santa Cruz and his academic work at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, from which he received a philosophy degree in 2014.
In 2015 he did a pastoral year, and in 2016 began studying theology.
“I was very happy in my diocese,” Deacon Parra says. But in 2016 he started “to feel … that God was needing me in another place,” he says. Colombians who were missionaries elsewhere influenced him.
“I think to hear them and realize how much different countries around the world need priests” inspired that feeling, he says.
In December 2016 he met Father Hugo Cano and told him about this. Father Cano, a Worcester diocesan priest, was back in Colombia visiting family. He later mentioned the Worcester Diocese’s program for international seminarians.
Deacon Parra recalls two priests telling him this could be an answer to his prayers.
“In August 2017 I left my country and I came to this country … with many fears, because it wasn’t my culture, my language, my diocese,” he recalls. “Those first months were very challenging. … I just wanted to go back to my country. …         
“However, I can see how God has been very supportive. … He always put someone in my life – parishioners, priests. … I feel relief now. I feel I’m in the place … where God was calling me.”
Being in the Worcester Diocese renewed his vocation, he says. He saw fulfilled Jesus’ words that those who give up family for him will gain more family members.
“I found many people in this diocese who became my parents ... my brothers and sisters … signs of God’s presence,” Deacon Parra says. “The only thing I have to say is thank you to God, also thank you to the Diocese of Worcester, the priests and people I have met.” He expresses gratitude too for St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, where he received his bachelor’s degree in theology and master of divinity degree earlier this month.
He asks for prayers that he and his classmates will be good priests.
“When we decide to follow God’s call, we don’t belong to us anymore; we belong to him,” he says. “To belong to him has been the most happy, joyful experience of my life. … To be with God, is to have everything. And, yes, it could be challenging, but we are never alone, because he’s always with us.”
Deacon Parra’s Masses of Thanksgiving are on June 19 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Fitchburg and 5:30 p.m. at St. Mary Parish in Shrewsbury, with public receptions following, and on June 26 in Colombia at his home parish, Santo Angeles Custodios in Angelopolis.