Jesus is real! Says new deacon who went from darkness to light

Before settling in Ireland, Bro. Esteban Beltran grew up in Guadalajara in a Mexican family which did not practice its Catholic faith. “We used to go to church for funerals and weddings and baptisms,” he said. “We never went every Sunday or for Christmas or for Easter.”

He grew into a depressed teenager who did not know or believe in God. Yet his joy is palpable as he recounts, with a rich laugh, how he encountered Jesus in a city of seven million people. “I always felt that I had to do something to be loved and I felt so alone.”

This loneliness descended at the age of seven, when both his mother and father, for economic reasons, moved to the United States, leaving him, and his siblings in the care of relations for eighteen months. “It was heart-breaking,” he said, “a very hard time.”

To help support his family, he sold ice-cream after school and then negotiated with a bakery to sell pastries as well. “They were laughing at this eight year old talking like an adult. But I sold them all.”

By age thirteen, with a passion for cooking, he was the main chef in a restaurant; three years later he was exhausted. “I was very, very depressed,” he recalls. “And I actually tried to eat all the medicine I have at home. I just wanted to have peace…and silence.”

“Nothing happened,” he adds with some amusement. “My family didn’t have strong medicine.”

Believe

A week later, drifting through the streets, he was feeling the pressure of work and study when he came to a rather large Catholic church. “It was totally empty – thanks be to God. Because I went to the altar and there was a big cross there and I started to be very mad.”

He shouted at the Crucifix. “How is it possible that you are real? If you are real. You are cruel. I was crying and I was desperate and I said, ‘Show yourself if you are real. Show yourself!’’’

“If you show yourself, I don’t mind what you ask me to do. I will do it, but show yourself.”

Hearing no response, he departed the church, telling Jesus:  “You see! I know you are not real!”

A few months later he received an invitation from a close friend to go to a house of prayer on February 10, 2006.  “Her brother was forcing her to go and she didn’t want to go by herself. I just said to her that I don’t even believe in God. Why do you want me to go to that place? And I just imagined a very boring place. And she forced me to go with her.”

On arrival, he angrily refused to enter the house. “I just felt something inside of me say, ‘Don’t go inside!’”

The girl pleaded with him until her older brother told him firmly: “You have to enter! I didn’t waste petrol on you!”

He was soon overwhelmed by the warm welcome. “For a long time in my life I didn’t feel loved like that…I just felt so special and now I can understand that the love of God was really there.”

“People started to pray, dance and clap their hands,” he recalled. “And I said ‘oh my goodness – what is going on here?’ And I said, ‘This is so fun!’”

These Catholics were members of an international charismatic community called Koinonia John the Baptist, which has a well-established community at The Braid, near Ballymena, Co. Antrim where Bro. Esteban now lives.

I don’t know if you are real or not but if you are real come into my life. I give you my life in exchange for your life”

And on that fateful night, he felt the prayer leader was speaking to him when he said: “The Lord wants you here and it doesn’t matter how you arrived here or whether you have been forced or not and I challenge you to say, ‘Jesus I give you my life!’”

Having heard the Gospel, the teenager closed his eyes and prayed for the first time in his life. “‘God of the universe, Jesus,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if you are real or not but if you are real come into my life. I give you my life in exchange for your life’.”

He recalls feeling the strong presence of someone there with him. “I then saw all my life pass through my eyes…I saw that in the hardest moments of my life that He had been with me and never left me alone and I felt a voice say, ‘I was waiting for you and I love you the way that you are’.”

“I just felt so loved and I thought, in that moment, ‘Oh my God – He is real, He is real, He is real’ and He has always been there.”

Looking back he laughs because he had believed this was a “normal experience” –  one that changed his life forever.

His new faith led to conflict with his family. “They told me they just want your money. God is not real. I said, ‘No, no Jesus is real!’”

Calling

Aged 17 he felt called to consecrated life in Koinonia.

After speaking one evening with one of the brothers, he remembered the angry encounter in the church. Still uncertain, and feeling frustrated, he opened his bible at random, asking the Lord to show him.

The words of Jeremiah leapt off the page: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…”

“If this word comes from you,” he then prayed, “Just give me peace because I don’t feel peace. And after the prayer, I felt fully at peace and I said, ‘Ok, you are calling me! And I said ‘yes’!”

He wanted to leave everything immediately – but had to wait another year before entering aged eighteen.

It was not easy. His father refused to speak to him for two years. “I am still here,” he said, “ because I still believe Jesus is calling me. When he came into my life it was so real and that is what keeps me going.”

Bro. Esteban has now served seventeen years with Koinonia – seven in Mexico, five in Rome studying philosophy and theology and now five years in. He had no English when he arrived and is now set for priestly ordination next year, having just been ordained a deacon by the Bishop of Down and Connor Alan McGuckian.

“I actually expressed a desire to enter the priesthood about three years ago,” he said. “I have a very strong experience of Jesus in my life and I always want to do only what the Lord wants me to do.”

His call has impacted his whole family. His mother followed by his father and his two sisters and three brothers have come to faith”

As a newly ordained deacon, he has been assisting  the local parish priest Fr Paul Strain with baptisms and funerals. “The call to the priesthood,” he said, “is not changing my original call to live for Jesus. It supports my call to share the love of God.”

His call has impacted his whole family. His mother followed by his father and his two sisters and three brothers have come to faith. “When my sister saw the change in my dad, she said, ‘what happened?!’”

“My dad had a strong experience of Jesus too. One day after that we were talking and my dad took my face in his hands and said, ‘Thanks be to God you didn’t listen to me because God is real and I am so proud of you’.”

His mother, Socorro, travelled to Ireland last month for his ordination to the diaconate. His father, Agapito, was tragically killed in a work accident at the age of 50. “I am sure he is in Heaven,” said Bro. Esteban. “ I saw him give his life to Jesus and evangelise others and forgive. He was free and it was lovely to see.”

Bro. Esteban has a special connection to Our Lady of Guadalupe whose feast is December 12 – and he is looking forward to his priestly ordination next July 4.