Deacon Jorge Ernesto Ubau López can remember the exact date that he knew the Lord was calling him to be a priest – June 22, 2003. It was while on retreat, he said, that he knew “the priesthood is the vocation the Lord has called me to.”
“The Lord saw something in me that nobody else but He has seen,” the 31-year-old Deacon Ubau said. “And my response was, ‘Here I am.’”
He will be one of four men whom Cardinal Donald Wuerl will ordain to the priesthood on June 17 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Deacon Ubau said that as a child he “was raised Catholic but did not give much thought to being a priest. At that time, my life was guitar, soccer and my friends.” He had planned a career in medicine and was enrolled in medical school to that end.
But, all that changed when he went on that two-day retreat in 2003.
“In the homily of the Sunday Mass on the last day, I received the announcement of the love of God in my life: that God loves me as I am, even with all the good and bad things that had happened in my life,” he said. “I looked at the Lord and realized how good He was to me and how many graces He had given me.”
By the end of that Mass, he said, “I felt the Lord was calling my name. God was calling me then to be a living witness of His love.”
A native of San Salvador, El Salvador, he attended a Jesuit-sponsored high school there.
His father – after whom Deacon Ubau was named – was a critic of the government who was abducted and murdered during the Salvadoran civil war. The war, which lasted from 1979 until 1992, is estimated by the United Nations to have killed more than 75,000 people. The U.N. estimates that about 85 percent of those deaths were caused by the Salvadoran military or government death squads.
Deacon Ubau was only a 1-year-old toddler when “my father went to the market and never came back. We still do not know where his body is.”
“The death of my father created a question mark in me – ‘Does God really love me?’” Deacon Ubau said. “It took me a long time to realize that the Lord did not leave us alone after the death of my father.”
The abduction and murder of her husband, prompted the future priest’s mother, Rosa Maria Lopez, “to come back to the Church after many years away,” said Deacon Ubau. “Then in 1990, my mother entered the Neocatechumenal Way.”
Founded in Spain in 1964, the Neocatechumenal Way is a Catholic movement dedicated to adult and family faith formation. An estimated 1.5 million Catholics belong to the Way in about 40,000 parish-based groups worldwide. The Neocatechumenal Way has also established more than 70 Redemptoris Mater diocesan mission seminaries around the world, including one in Hyattsville for the Archdiocese of Washington.
The Neocatechumenal Way, Deacon Ubau said, reaches out “to those far from the Church, those who do not know God and those who want to deepen their faith.”
“It offers a full life because it is a happy life, and we announce Jesus Christ not just with our words, but with our lives,” he said.
When he told his mother of his decision to become a priest, Deacon Ubau said he was a bit surprised by her reaction. “She told me, ‘You being a priest will not make me happy. You doing the will of God will make me happy.’ ”
“She never forced me into the priesthood nor was it her plan for me to become a priest,” he said. “On the contrary, she always made it known that the most important thing is to be a Christian in whatever vocation the Lord has called each one of us, whether as a married man or as a priest.”
He added that now, indeed, his mother is happy. In addition to his mother, Deacon Ubau also has a sister, Jazmin, who is married.
After deciding to enter the priesthood, the Neocatechumenal Way selected Deacon Ubau to attend the seminary in Hyattsville.
“I arrived in the United States on Dec. 12, 2004, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” he said. “I am very aware that the Blessed Virgin Mary is looking out for me.”
Since he was assigned to study in the United States, Deacon Ubau said that learning a new language was part of his preparation to serve the Lord – “My response to God was to offer myself, my native tongue, my brain to Him,” he said.
In addition to English, Dacon Ubau is fluent in Spanish, Italian, French and said he plans to use whatever language is necessary “to tell people something that can change their lives, that as long as they are doing the will of God, they will always be happy.”
Deacon Ubau, who has participated in every World Youth Day since 2005, said he sees his priesthood as “a call of the Lord to serve and to announce the love of God.”
While he has spent more than a decade preparing to become a priest, Deacon Ubau said that “the priesthood is not the goal. The only goal is heaven.”
“The goal is to be happy with a mature, intimate and sincere relationship with Jesus Christ,” he said. “The call to holiness is a call to happiness and only the Lord can show you the road to happiness.”
He added that everyone has a vocation and a call to be close to the Lord.
“You can be a saint by washing dishes, cleaning up after your children or working in the yard,” he said. “We should be happy with the vocation the Lord has given us.
Deacon Ubau will celebrate his first Mass as a priest on June 18 at 11:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Takoma Park, where he served as a deacon.
