Seminarian Justin

My name is Justin Ordoveza. I am a Seminarian from Our Lady of Refuge. I am in formation for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I have been in formation for the priesthood since 2011 and took two years off for health reasons. Just recently, I was at Saint Anthony Parish in San Gabriel, California, on my internship year. It’s a middle-class parish with a variety of ethnic enclaves surrounding it. It’s a trilingual parish, consisting of English-speaking, Vietnamese-speaking, and Spanish-speaking communities.
I was prepared to experience a normal internship. Internship is a time where you experience life in a parish. For the first half of the year, it was a normal parish experience. Then, as we all know, COVID-19 hit, and the parish experience was drastically different. At that time, I set up Livestream for my parish and helped the parish transition from our former ways to the stay-at-home order and then into the slow, new normal that we know now.

Throughout my time at St. Anthony's, and especially during the COVID-19 crisis, I really saw people's desire for community and for Christ. People desired the sacraments more than ever during this pandemic. To see their faces once they took communion after three months at home was awe-inspiring.

My parish experience at Saint Anthony's was fruitful, but it always reflected on my experience and my home parish here at Our Lady of Refuge. I have always received support, and I have loved this community since I attended Our Lady of Refuge School. I always received unwavering support, whether it was when I was sick or when my mother was sick. The parish community of Our Lady of Refuge rallied around my family and me and really brought Christ into those experiences where I needed Him to be.

Thank you so much to this community. God willing, I will be ordained in the near future. It’s a common saying among Catholics that a healthy parish produces Seminarians. And it is my honor that I am one of many from Our Lady of Refuge.