How God Called Me to the Priesthood

Before I begin with Homli today, a few Sundays ago I shared with you that I was making this special uh pilgrimage trip to uh Lourdes.

And it was an amazing trip, a beautiful journey, a beautiful pilgrimage, and I promised that I would lift all of you up in prayer, which I did every single day there at the grotto of Our Lady of Lords.

Don't know if you know, but Pope Leo, our current Pope, was just there.

He was there yesterday and today, Saturday and Sunday, the same place where I was just a few weeks ago.

I just also want to thank you for your your prayers because uh on my uh ride back on the plane I caught a bug and uh I got sick on the way back with the flu.

I'm not 100% yet, but I'm I'm I'm uh most of the way there.

So thank you for those who prayed for me.

Uh on this priesthood Sunday, as uh Deacon Jim was just mentioning, what I'd like to do is just share with you uh a very brief uh version of my own vocation story of how God called me to become a priest.

And uh hopefully it's edifying to some of us here today, maybe inspiring for some families to consider priestly vocation in their own family.

My dad fought in the Vietnam War, and he fought with the South Vietnamese during his time, and in the course of the war, he was uh captured by the North Vietnamese and placed in jail with horrific conditions.

He had a great devotion to Mary, prayed the rosary very often, asked for intercession, and on the special feast of the Assumption, August 15th, when they were doing their regular uh roll calls for the prisoners, uh, he was called forward and um he was simply let go.

So from uh that place of prison, he was let go, uh went back to his home.

When he got home, he uh discovered that uh his mom, my grandmom, uh, had passed away.

So he was not able to be there uh for when she passed away.

Uh the situation then in Vietnam was very dire.

The fall of Saigon, the capital, and everything like that.

And so he made the decision to flee the country, as did uh millions of other people in Vietnam.

Probably some of you lived through that experience of the millions of people fleeing from the country, um, considered the boat people, right?

The fleeing and then coming, especially here, the United States, Philippines, and other places.

Well, he finally arrived here in the United States, uh, met my mom.

The first place that they met each other was right here at St.

Joseph Church.

Yeah.

His uh uncle had a house nearby, and for their first date, before they went out for dinner, they met here for Mass, for a visual mass.

The first place they met was here at St.

Joseph Church.

And uh before my dad made his trip uh from Vietnam to the United States, he uh prayed to a great saint.

Vietnamese people have a great devotion to St.

Martin de Poros, especially for safe travel, because uh death was a very real danger on those trips.

So he prayed to St.

Martin de Poros, made it here, met my mom here at St.

Joseph for the first time, and when they had their first uh child, my dad thought about his uh prayer, his intercession of St.

Martin de Poros, and so named me after uh St.

Martin de Poros.

That's how I got my name.

Now, growing up, I grew up in a very religious family.

Um, we went to church every Sunday.

My grandparents sometimes even took us to go to Mass during the week.

We prayed the rosary every night.

My dad was a lecture, my mom sang in the choir, I was an altar sir.

We were a very faithful religious family, very devoted.

Um I have a distinct memory of my dad.

Uh every day after school, he would take me and my siblings uh to church.

And we would pray.

We would pray in front of the images of Mary, we would, and he would pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and I remember he would get down on his knees and we'd get down on our knees and we'd pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

And I remember during that time as a kid, I hated it.

I hated going to church.

I wanted to go home, I wanted to watch Jackie Chan adventures on TV.

That was, why are we going to church?

I have a distinct memory of him every day, every day going to church down on his knees, and that image would kind of be burning my mind and would be a seed for my future vocation.

I'm gonna fast forward to uh college.

I entered UC Irvine as a freshman, uh studying business administration with a specialization in marketing.

And I had my uh career trajectory kind of ahead of me.

I thought I was gonna do management, marketing, I was doing something in business, be a CEO.

I I had this kind of dream set in front of me.

And during college, as many young people do, I began to drift away a little bit from my faith.

It's a very common.

Um new ideas, new people, new you should want to explore all these new things, and it's so easy to drift away from faith, which is what I did.

I drifted away from my faith.

During this time, uh God sent to me a good friend.

He was not Catholic, uh, he was actually a non-denominational Christian.

And he began to ask me a lot of questions about faith and about my Catholic faith.

For example, he would say, You're a Catholic, right?

I guess.

Um, okay, the Bible, okay, is the Word of God.

Do you like read the Bible?

And not really.

Says, okay, you Catholics, you confess your sins to a priest, right?

Just like Dick and Jim was saying earlier.

It's like sometimes.

I was like, why do you do that?

And you would ask, uh, okay, you go to this mass thing, and then there's this Eucharist thing, and it's like, that's this piece of bread, right?

It's just the symbol.

I don't know.

And I didn't know how to answer any of his questions.

None of his questions, and I felt so ashamed.

I didn't know how to answer any of his questions.

But something happened in me when he started asking those questions.

It kind of triggered something in me.

It almost felt like when he was asking me those questions, it almost felt like he was kind of attacking my kind of religious cultural heritage, how I was brought up with my family, so religious.

It felt like an attack.

And so what happened was instead of going further away from my faith, like some kind of defensive instinct rose up in me.

And I wanted to get back at him.

I wanted to find answers to his questions.

And it wasn't even because I wanted to know more about my Catholic faith, it's because I wanted to win the argument and save my pride, you know.

And so I started to do some research, to read, study, listen, learn.

And I learned a lot of very interesting things with the questions that he was asking me.

For example, I learned, did you know, that for the first like 400 years of Christianity, there was no Bible.

There was only a church.

And the different letters that we hear, like in Mass, they were kind of here and there and everywhere, but there was no compiled Bible as of yet.

It was only after 400 years that the Catholic Church put together the books of the Bible and compiled it into what we have as the Bible today.

I didn't know that.

And I discovered that.

And it found that a lot of the doctrines that are found, if you read the Bible really deeply, it's very Catholic.

I know his question, for example, about why do you confession to a priest?

Where do you find that in the Bible?

I discovered in the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 19 to 21, Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to his apostles.

John 20:19–21

He says, Whoever sins you forgive are forgiven.

Whoever sins you retain are retained.

And they pass that power all the way down to today with the priests of our age.

And finally, his question about the Eucharist.

So, what is the whole Eucharist thing about?

You know, isn't it just a symbol?

Is it a piece of bread that's there on the altar?

Now, you guys are good Catholics, right?

Um, of course, naturally.

What do you think?

Just a piece of bread, just a symbol?

No.

I learned something extraordinary that I did not know.

And maybe just because I I did not listen in my catechism classes, and that maybe that might have been the case.

I don't know.

I learned something extraordinary.

That when the priest says the words of consecration over the bread and wine at the altar, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, no longer a symbol.

I didn't know that.

And so I started to discover all of these teachings.

And what happened was I experienced an intellectual reversion back to my Catholic roots.

That intellectual reversion became a conversion of the heart.

And then I started to live out the Catholic faith on my on my own terms, not because my parents said, not because my grandparents said.

I wanted to do it for myself.

I started to go to Mass, confession, retreat, started to change my life, make new friends, build new habits.

I took a 180 turn in my life, and my parents were looking at what happened to our kid?

What happened to what happened to him?

Even my friends were like, What's going on with you?

You're not the same person that we what's going on?

And I didn't even understand what was going on in myself.

Or during this time, uh, I also started to go to adoration.

Just like my dad.

You know, he would take us as kids.

I'd come and pray church by myself.

And something started to bubble up in me.

I didn't know what it was.

Only now do I understand that it was the beginnings of a calling, of a priestly vocation.

Now that time I started to go to mass very early in the morning, 6.30 a.m.

I know I was crazy, 6.30 a.m.

at Mass during the weekday, so I could arrive at my 8 a.m.

Mass, 8 a.m.

class at UC Irvine.

I would sit in the back and I would look up at the altar, and then I would see the priest there, and he would say, say, Behold the Lamb of God.

Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

And I thought to myself, I know what the Catholic Church teaches.

And I know what my friend says, which is true.

Is what the Catholic Church teaches, is that true?

That that's no longer a piece of bread, that's really Jesus that's there on the altar?

Or is what my friend's saying, is he right?

And he's saying it's just a symbol, it's just a piece of bread, it's no big deal.

I wrestled with it for a long time.

Until one day I was given a very special grace to simply believe.

When I believed that Jesus was truly there in the Eucharist, I became overwhelmed with a sense of how much God loved me.

Like tangible sense, like I knew God was real, I knew God loved me.

I knew He was present in my life, I would start to cry.

And the sense of peace that filled my heart when I believed and I knew God loved me was so strong that I would leave church some days and I said, Lord, if you took me today to heaven, I'm ready.

I'm ready to go.

I know how much you love me.

This peace, I've never felt this kind of peace ever in my life before.

It's like everything was just complete.

If you want to take me now, I'm ready to go.

He obviously didn't listen to my prayers.

I'm still here.

Well, when that priest said those words at the Mass, I felt an inner sense that Jesus was saying to me, Martin, one day I want you to stand behind that same altar and say those same words that so convicted your own heart.

You know, in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist says those words, behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

And it says, His two disciples follow Jesus.

I said to Jesus, I want to follow you too.

In 2012, I graduated from UC Irvine with my bachelor's in business administration marketing.

That same fall, I entered the seminary to begin formation to become a priest.

Seven years after that, 2019, I was ordained as uh the first class to be ordained in the Christ, the newly renovated Christ uh cathedral in Garden Grove.

My first four years was a parochial vicar at Santiago de Compostela.

And my friend, you remember my friend who asked, challenged me with those questions?

Uh we connected before my ordination.

By then he had moved.

And I said to him, you know, it's your fault that it's your fault that I'm I'm I'm on this path, I'm being ordained as a priest.

He says, I know, I know.

Well, four years I spent my first parish there.

Then I spent one year at St.

Cecilia's Procovicar, two years here as the administrator of St.

Joseph, and now by the grace of God, I get to be the pastor in the same place where my parents met for the first time over 35 years ago.

That's my vocation story in a nutshell.

To God be the glory.

I would have never thought.

I didn't want to be a priest.

I had my career trajectory set in front of me.

But God had a different calling from my life.

I hope that's edifying for uh some of you here today.

And maybe serve as an inspiration for some of our families, and maybe there's a priestly vocation in your family as well.

Please pray for me today on this priesthood Sunday, as well as for all priests, that we might follow Jesus and that God might give us many more priests after the heart of Christ.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.