Jacob's Love Story Home
Tonight is March 6, 1999 about 12:10 am PST. Awhile ago thoughts about a very significant spiritual change during my college years came back to my memory. It was my last year at Saint Mary's Catholic College for men only back then. Fortunately we did study theology, and one priest was very instrumental in helping me to think for myself. Father Cummings, a Redemptorist priest, asked us in class one time: "Why do you go to church if you don't believe in it?" Then I somehow picked up the Bible and read John 4:24 "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth". Thoughts followed like, "You can worship God anywhere, in the fields, in the hills, outdoors!" And so God's Voice opened a whole new door for me to walk through spiritually, I was no longer bound to the walls of a "church" building! Wow! When I told my parents that on the way home from college at the end of that school year of 1967, they really hit the roof in anger, like I must have become a heretic! My confessor, Father Charles Moore - an ex-district attorney of Santa Cruz County, Protestant turned Catholic, and genius IQ Stanford University graduate, then the SLO Cal Poly Newman Center chaplain for Catholic students - already had been counselling me through my late teen junior and senior high school years, preparing me for other changes in my life. It was on account of his fatherly loving manner that I was kept from killing myself at 17, especially because of sexual guilt feelings.
This very same year I was sent a draft notice. It was a very trying and stressful time because of the Vietnam War. During the summer of '67 after my induction on June 19 had been postponed due to my application for Conscientious Objector status which had been denied by the local Selective Service Board, I met with Fr. Charlie and Dumar Omar Ramirez to get some counsel for my life's career direction. Dumar was a kind of born again Venezuelan who was very enthusiastic. He simply told me, whatever I decide to do, to do it now! It was a choice between becoming a social worker or a Catholic priest. The next morning in the morning sunrise, I decided to call the Roman Catholic Chancellor's Office of the Monterey-Fresno Diocese at Fresno, California to tell them I wanted to be a priest. They just asked when I could come. After signing out at St. Mary's College in Moraga near Orinda east of Oakland, I arrived at Ryan Seminary Preparatory College where I was accepted by the Jesuits without question.
Since my views on the RC were already changing, I really had no intention of remaining celibate. I had stayed out of the minor seminary at 14 because I wanted sex! However by 20 years of age I wanted to become a married priest. It seemed to be the best way in the System to help people and to show love for others. Father Cummings back in theology class at St. Mary's told us that he had a divorced girlfriend with children. One day while witnessing and giving out literature in South San Francisco in 1974 or 75 I met him and his wife and maybe some children. I excitedly told him how much he had helped me at St. Mary's by that question about going to church if you don't believe in it.
By 1974 I had been a missionary for Jesus for two years. I found Him Who I worship in Spirit and in Truth with all my heart, and love to tell others about Him, Jesus, Lover of my soul. However, I have not yet found a "soul mate", a woman to love, to be my helpmeet, a wife, lover, friend, and constant companion. But I have found lots of Brides of Christ! Yiiipppeeee!!!