I am originally from the United States, born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents from El Salvador. When I was two, my father died. My mother and I later moved to San Francisco, where she met my stepfather, whom I consider my father because he raised me as his own. I have two half-siblings and a large extended family in California.
When I was 13, I joined the Neocatechumenal Way in my local parish. Before this, I had very little background in the faith. In fact, I had been baptised in the Episcopal Church—my parents thought it was Catholic! God certainly has a sense of humour, because today my mission is to serve the Church in this country and its people.
My family instilled in me very good values, especially the importance of hard work. But, through no fault of their own, they could not give me what they themselves had not received: the Gospel, the Good News that God loved me as I am. That Good News came to me through people God placed in my life, particularly through the Neocatechumenal Way. It profoundly changed my life and, in time, became a source of grace and help for me and my family too.
At 16, because there was uncertainty about my earlier baptism, I was baptised and received into the Catholic Church. Through all these events, God began to reveal a calling in my life, born from the gratitude of discovering that I had been adopted as a son of God, especially as someone who had lost his earthly father so young.
At 18, I found myself confronted by Jesus’ question in the Gospel: “Who do you say that I am?” I had finished high school, I was in a relationship with a lovely girl, and yet something was missing. During a youth pilgrimage, I said yes to the calling and began a period of discernment. Eventually, in Rome, I made myself available to be sent anywhere in the world.
In December 2010, I arrived in London. After ten years of formation, including periods of mission in the Holy Land and Mexico, I was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Westminster on 19 September 2020. My first appointment was at St John Fisher in Harrow North. Then in Enfield.
Looking back—the loss of my father, my family, my journey of faith, the people God placed in my life, my vocation, my priesthood and now my arrival here—I can only bless the Lord Jesus, because He has been faithful.
Perhaps this is also something of what the Gospel invites us to do. We can easily decide who another person is before we really know them. We can bind them to their past, to something we have heard, to our first impression, or even to what we find about them online.
But God does not look at us in this way.
He sees our history, certainly, but He also sees what His grace can make of that history. He does not simply bind us to our past; through forgiveness, He sets us free.
So, as I begin my time here among you, I ask you to pray for me, as I will pray for you. May we learn to know one another not simply through what we have heard or what we think we know, but as brothers and sisters whom the Lord has placed together.
I am very much looking forward to meeting you and to serving all of you here in Bishop’s Stortford.
May the Lord bless you all.
Fr Axcel