I was 20 years old when my spiritual director told me, Either you are the most indecisive person in the world or its that God wants something special for you. With the passage of time, I think I can say that the two options were not mutually exclusive. I was an indecisive person, and in fact, God has shown me a love much greater than I deserve because he does want something special from my life. 

My name is Javier Cereceda and I am the third of five siblings. I was born in Madrid on June 13, 1970, and my parents chose the name Francisco Javier for me, because they had gotten married four years earlier on December 3rd, the date when the Church commemorates the great patron saint of the missions. My fathers name is Carlos. He is an industrial engineer and is one of the most generous, honest, hard-working, and loyal people I know. My mothers name is María del Carmen, and she has spent her life taking care of her family, watching it grow and keeping it united. She is a generous, noble woman with a huge heart who does so much; she forgot herself and dedicated herself to living for others. I dont remember a single circumstance in my life when she wasnt at my side. My siblings are marvelous people. With their virtues and defects (we had our fights), they were and are always growing in affection and unity.

Growing up in ECYD

My childhood was happy. When I was little, I was very blonde, and from an early age I wore big glasses. This combination must have been very noticeable, because I realized that many people looked at me. And I thought that I must be someone special without knowing it. I didnt know that the seed of the vocation was already in my soul, and that this seed did make me different and privileged. When I was 9 years old, we moved to a new house and I began going to the Everest School, the first school that the Legion of Christ had in Spain.

Living in my house was an excellent preparation. There I learned discipline, common life, a love for order and for things well done, fidelity to the given word, how to open up to the needs of others, constancy, responsibility in work and knowing how to finish what you start. Above all, I learned to love God and grow in my faith. My parents applied the saying that the family that prays together stays together, and every night before bed, we prayed night prayers together (as we got older, the kids grumbled a bit). Seeing my parents on their knees taught me to pray and love God. I learned to put him in the first place in my life. They didnt have to tell me to be like that. I saw it in their eyes. I learned it from their lives.

When I was 12, I joined ECYD, a youth group run by the Legionary priests. Ever since I was little, I felt a great love for the Blessed Virgin Mary. During many recesses, I went to the chapel to pray in front of her image for a few minutes, although I knew that it would cost me a spot in the teams for basketball in the patio. I spent unforgettable moments in those years that strengthened me in my faith. And as time goes by, they have made me understand how important it is for a young person to be able to share his Christian life with his friends and peers in daily life.

Called in a Garden

When I was 17, I went to the Regnum Christi summer convention that was held in Valencia that year. I remember it as if it were yesterday. While the others were taking a siesta, I was walking through the garden. And some meters from an image of the Blessed Virgin, I experienced sweetly in my interior, with a security that left no room for doubt, that God wanted me to be a priest. A new happiness, a new intensity that until then I had not known, filled my soul. Two days went by and I felt like I was floating from the happiness inside. Everything spoke to me of God and the world seemed to me like a paradise. But I didnt tell this to anyone. And little by little, the light started to go out. The convention ended, I returned home, and I spent the summer as if nothing had happened.

With the start of the new school year, that experience fell into forgetfulness. The everyday routine ended up covering it over. I finished the year and got ready for the university entrance exams. I passed them successfully and entered the Medical School of Madrid to fulfill one of the great dreams of my life: to be a doctor. From when I was little, I dont remember having wanted to be a priest, but I do remember my great desire to be a doctor. Facing that new university experience that absorbed my time and attention, I totally left aside the topic of the vocation. However, and this is something I credit to the formation I received at home, I never turned my back on God. I never told myself that what I lived that summer afternoon was just an illusion. And I always kept an interior light lit next to that mystery that sooner or later I knew I would have to resolve if I wanted to be fully happy in life.

Another Call, Another Flight

Wanting it and not wanting it, and without knowing very well how, I found myself spending the summer of 1990 in the novitiate of the Legion of Christ in Salamanca. I thought I was just going there to accept the kind invitation they gave me to not stay alone in Madrid studying while my family was on vacation. There were also 25 or 30 young men like me, but unlike me, they were deciding to follow Christ in the priesthood.

I spent some time there enjoying the atmosphere of charity where I was happy, and my interior situation of vocational discernment came back full force. But I wasnt able to give my yes. I didnt tell Christ no. It was more like a not yet. I didnt know the risks I was running, and today it scares me to remember many of the circumstances I lived through during those years and that could have destroyed my vocation. Whats certain is that I returned home, and like everyone who doesnt take a step forward toward God when he asks, I began to fall back.
 
I separated myself from my group of Regnum Christi friends, and although thank God I did not grow distant from my life of faith, I lived a little separated from the environment that would have helped me to make the decision I needed to make. The years went by, the call stayed lit, and I kept postponing my yes. I finished medical school and had to do military service, which I did as a medical doctor, and which gave me a lot of time to think. Now I see how God was preparing the terrain to help me see what my soul really wanted. After this period, resolved once and for all to settle the matter, with the help of my spiritual director I decided to give a year of my life as a lay co-worker in Regnum Christi.

The Yes that Brings Peace

Certainly, I thought I could give God that year and in exchange ask him to take away the vocational restlessness. But in his infinite patience with me, and in his great love, God used that rather selfish decision of mine to show me a horizon of joy, of interior peace and happiness that, truly, I had not imagined. That year, all my remaining interior barriers fell to the ground, and on June 2 (the 18th anniversary of my first communion), in front of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, supported by his grace, I gave him my definitive yes. I did it with all my strength, fearing a storm in my soul. The storm never came, and what I found after so many years of uncertainty was an enormous interior peace that I have even today.

I went to the summer candidacy program in 1997, exactly 10 years after the moment of Gods call to my soul. Now, another 10 years after my loving and trusting yes to God, he is granting me the great gift of the priesthood. In my years of religious life, I can say that I have been fully happy: Salamanca, Roma, Valencia, Mexico, Madrid. Happy as only a man can be who knows he is doing what God created him for. Since then, the Legion of Christ has been and increasingly is a growing part of me, just as I am part of her. I see the hand of God in her, and I also see a reflection of the life of Christ in her: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tabor, Gethsemane

Being a priest is a gift, and also an enormous responsibility, because you cant just be a priest. You have to be a holy priest. And I am far from that holiness God calls us to. But I am also decided not to deny him anything so that I can pursue the goal together with my Legionary brothers, of being alter Christus, another Christ.

Father Francisco Javier Cereceda was born in Madrid, Spain, on June 13 of 1970. He is the third of five children born to Carlos Cereceda and María del Carmen Vicente. He spent most of his school years in the Everest School of Madrid, run by the Legionaries of Christ. From 1988 to 1994, he completed his licentiate in Medicine and Surgery at the Complutense University of Madrid, and from 1994 to 1996, he combined the courses of a doctorate in Digestive Surgery with his military service. In 1996, he spent a year as a Regnum Christi co-worker in Rome, and in September of 1997, he entered the novitiate of the Legion of Christ in Salamanca, Spain. He studied philosophy and theology in the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. He carried out his apostolic work mainly with young people in Guadalajara (Mexico), Madrid, and Valencia (Spain).