As a teenager he was lazy but one day he thought about discerning his vocation to the priesthood: "With the vocation crisis in the Church, if no seminarian vocations come from Christian families like mine, where would they come from?".
Jacobo was born in Madrid on Christmas Day 2002. But his life has been very international. Because of his father's work they moved to Mexico when he was a baby. Then to Panama, and when he was six years old he arrived in Kenya where he stayed until he was twelve years old. "Living those childhood years in a country like Kenya left a deep impression on me and I loved it."she says. Later they moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he lived until he finished high school.
"The experience of living in several countries, although difficult, has helped me a lot to open my horizons and get to know the rich world in which we live. However, one of the most difficult aspects of this international life was finding groups of friends with whom to share the same faith. That's why my mother was always looking for Catholic summer camps for us to make friends in our homeland, but until 2018 I didn't end up liking any of them."Jacobo relates.
That year, her mother was in San Sebastian de Garabandal (Cantabria) where the Virgin is highly venerated and possible Marian apparitions are studied. Her mother met a group of young and smiling nuns from a congregation she did not know: the Servants of the Home of the Mother.
"We were invited to spend Holy Week in Madrid with other Hogar de la Madre families, and I remember that I loved it. From that same summer, I started attending the camps, and in 2020 I made my first commitment to Christian life (prayer, sacraments, etc.) in the youth movement of the Hogar de la Madre (HMJ)."says this young seminarian.
In her last year of high school, she participated in a retreat in Spain organized by the Servants of the Home of the Mother for young people.
"This four-day silent retreat changed my life, for it was the moment of my conversion. The Servants followed the method of St. Ignatius of Loyola, with meditations and long moments of silence before the Blessed Sacrament. It was in these moments of silence that I realized that my Christian life was not coherent.. I went to mass on Sundays, I did my daily prayer time, but all of it dragging my feet and a little forced. I realized how much the Lord had done for me, and how little I had done for him.".
After this conversion, he decided to take his spiritual life more seriously and by God's grace he began to attend daily Mass.
Jacobo is a candidate of the Servants of the Home of the Mother, an International Public Association of the Faithful, with pontifical approval of the Holy See, with three missions in the Church: the defense of the Eucharist; the defense of the honor of Our Mother, especially in the privilege of her virginity and the conquest of young people for Jesus Christ. Precisely in this last mission many young people, lay people and seminarians of the Servants of the Home of the Mother are very involved and committed and several of them have studied in Rome, in the University of the Holy Crossthanks to the support of the CARF Foundation.
After finishing school in Geneva, he managed to enter the University of Comillas ICADE in Madrid to study a Double Degree in Law with Business Analytics.
"I realized during my second retreat that I had begun to study a career without asking the Lord what he wanted me to do with my life. And I thought that with the vocation crisis in the Church, if vocations were not coming from Christian families like mine, where would they come from? ? So in those same exercises I made the decision to spend a month of discernment living with the Servants at the Mother House, in the countryside in Cantabria, Spain."he tells us.
After finishing his first-year exams, he spent the month of June 2022 in the Cantabrian countryside. "It was a tough month because the Servants were living a demanding schedule for a lazy young man like me!"he exclaims.
Although he tried to open himself to the possibility of a vocation during his prayer times, he reached the end of the month without a certain conclusion.
"However, I thought I had found a good solution: the following year I would continue with my discernment, spending another month with the servants after my second-year exams.".
On the last day of his stay there, the Superior of the Servants proposed that he stay at home for a year to complete his discernment.
"The truth is that the proposal was a surprise, and inside I said no: I had had a hard time adapting to the rhythm in Madrid and making friends and I was not ready to move again. Besides, leaving my career and my major school (Moncloa) seemed crazy to me. However, the Superior asked me to be open to the Will of God, and to ask Our Lady for light, because I was about to go on a pilgrimage of young people to Medjugorje, also with the Servants of Charity."Jacobo explains.
It was in Medjugorje that she asked for light for this decision, and all the sacrifices she made were offered for this intention, but she did not see it at all clearly and was very afraid.
"Arriving at the end of the pilgrimage, climbing the Cross Mountain and praying the Way of the Cross, I was certain at one station that the Lord wanted me to give him this year of discernment. This moment was accompanied by much peace and joy, and although it lasted only a couple of minutes, this grace was enough for me to be able to tell the Superior of the Servants that I accepted his proposal. Although it was difficult for me to give up my plans, I returned to Cantabria in September of that year."he says.
That course of 2022-23 was very important for his spiritual and human maturation. He was living with other young boys of his age who were also discerning. There was a very good atmosphere and he was very happy. Some entered as candidates of the Servants, others continued their discernment in other communities and others went home.
Jacob decided to discern his vocation and realized that he was not progressing in his discernment while he was comfortable with the Servants. Therefore, he decided to spend a month in May 2023 in a Benedictine monastery in France called Fontgombault to discern if he should become a monk. It was there that he heard the Lord's call to be a Servant of the Mother's Household. He entered as a candidate on July 1, 2023 and his first assignment was to the community in Rome, after a summer of camps.
He is now in Rome with great joy, at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, where he has begun to study the first year of philosophy with a view to the priesthood, in addition to continuing his second year of law studies at the UNED.
"I am very grateful to the CARF Foundation for giving me the opportunity to study in a university with such good facilities and well trained professors. I pray for you!"he concludes.
Gerardo Ferrara
BA in History and Political Science, specializing in the Middle East.
Head of the student body at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
