Putting it all in the hands of God

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

He wanted to be an engineer. But what did God want?
Discerning the answer took him to his diocesan chancery – to work with prisoners, prostitutes and homeless people – and to a rural parish.
These were steps along the road to priesthood for Deacon Julio Rafael Granados Alvarado, who is one of seven transitional deacons to be ordained priests June 18 at St. Paul Cathedral.
Deacon Granados, son of Hidalgo A. Granados and Nelly Alvarado, was born Dec. 8, 1992, in Colombia, in the city of Santa Marta, in the state called Magdalena.
Noting that Dec. 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, he says he’s been affiliated with the Blessed Mother since birth. He consecrated his vocation to Our Lady of Guadalupe. After his ordination to the transitional diaconate last May, he went to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico “to give thanks for her intercession.”
He’d started discerning that vocation before graduating from high school in 2009.
“At the bottom of my heart I felt that I was called to the priesthood,” Deacon Granados says. “However, I also wanted to be an engineer.”
Since age 15 he’d been a sacristan at his parish, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, in the Diocese of Santa Marta. He told his pastor, Father Wilman Fernandez, now deceased, of his plan to study industrial engineering, then see if he still felt the priestly call. But Father Fernandez encouraged him to go straight to seminary.
“I started to pray more fervently,” Deacon Granados recalls. “I … put everything into God’s hands … putting aside my own desire.” After making a retreat in September 2009, “I realized I wanted to be a priest.”
Father Fernandez invited him to attend a vocations retreat, after which Deacon Granados prayed more earnestly to be accepted into seminary. Around November 2009, “I got the letter,” he says. “I was very, very happy.”
He read the first three lines and learned that he had to respond quickly or his spot would be given to someone else.
“As soon as I saw that, I called the seminary and said, ‘I’ll be there January 28, 2010,’” he recalls.
“My mom was very happy,” he says. “My father was a little upset” about the prospect of his son becoming a priest. (Now Deacon Granados’ sister Hilda Granados is also pursuing a religious vocation – with the Misioneras Siervas del Divino Espiritu.)
When Deacon Granados read more of his acceptance letter, he learned his family had to pay tuition and monthly fees they couldn’t afford, or he had to find a sponsor.
“If God answers your prayers, it’s a sign that he’s calling you,” Father Fernandez assured him. “He will provide everything. Calm down.”
The pastor had the prospective seminarian ask at Masses for parishioners’ support.
“Many people helped me a lot,” Deacon Granados recalls. One couple became his sponsors.
“I realized God was really providing everything,” Deacon Granados says. “And I did think that this vocation was coming from him.”
His father and some of his siblings questioned why he wasn’t going to college, why he’d be far from family, in a place and institution unfamiliar to them, he says.
Nevertheless, Deacon Granados went off to the state of Antioquia. He received formation at Seminario Siervos del Espiritu Santo and studied at Seminario Nacional Cristo Sacerdote and Universidad Catolica de Oriente. He did a preparatory year of catechesis and discipleship, studied philosophy and theology and had mission assignments to bring the Gospel to cities and rural areas.
Those experiences demonstrated the important role priests play, showing people God’s love and mercy, he says.
“In 2016 I did my pastoral year,” he says. “I spent six months in a rural parish in the middle of the mountains,” working in the church and teaching philosophy and religious education in a high school.
“If I wanted to leave the town on my day off, I (had) to wake up at 4 a.m.,” he recalls. The only public transportation – a brightly painted bus – left at 5 a.m.
The next six months of his pastoral year, Deacon Granados worked in the diocesan chancery’s social work office, which assisted prisoners, prostitutes, the homeless, and others.
After that, he left seminary, figuring that if he became a priest, he wanted it to be for life. He felt he needed time to make the right decision.
He returned to his family, then worked for a priest friend in a parish. He also taught philosophy and religious education and led a pastoral program at a public high school.
But he kept thinking about being a priest.
In February 2017 seminarians for the Worcester Diocese, whom he’d known in Colombia, contacted him on behalf of Bishop McManus about coming to prepare for the priesthood in Worcester.
“I said, ‘no’ because I didn’t think I would be able to learn English,” Deacon Granados recalls. But as he prayed, he realized he should be open to serving wherever God wanted him to.
He arrived here in August 2017.
“It was all new for me,” he says. At first it was hard being unable to express his feelings in English, which he studied for two years at Clark University. In the fall of 2019 went to St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, from which he received his bachelor’s degree in theology and master’s of divinity last week. His summer assignments were at St. John Paul II Parish, Southbridge; St. John, Guardian of Our Lady Parish, Clinton; and St. George Parish, Worcester.
Deacon Granados credits God for helping him succeed in seminary, and with denying himself, leaving his family and finding a spiritual family in the Worcester Diocese. As people here were present to him, they taught him the importance of being present to others, he says. By doing that, he hopes to show people Christ’s face.
“I do think that the priesthood should be a joyful life,” he maintains. “That’s what I hope to live, with all the struggles … that I might face.” He likes a quote from the martyr St. Lawrence, “Sheltered under the name of Jesus Christ, I do not fear these pains, for they do not last long.”
Deacon Granados says priest friends from Colombia are to concelebrate the ordination Mass and his bilingual Mass of Thanksgiving at 10 a.m. June 19 at St. John Paul II Parish, which is followed by a public reception. His family cannot come, but he hopes to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving July 2 in his home parish in Colombia.