Pedro de Andrés Leo is a deacon of the diocese of Madrid. Although born in Madrid, Pedro has lived almost all his life in Guadalajara. He is the fourth of a Christian family linked to the Neocatechumenal Way. In the parish of St. Nicholas of Guadalajara he walked in the first community and already in Madrid, he continued his journey in the parish of San Sebastian, Atocha Street, in the sixth community.
Pedro finalizes his formation at the Diocesan Missionary Seminary Redemptoris Mater - Our Lady of Almudena before his ordination as a priest on May 6 and spoke with Omnes about his vocational process, the importance of prayer and the support of his community.
How did you discover God's call to the priesthood?
-In me, the restlessness for the call arose gradually. At the age of 14, when I entered my own community, I seriously considered becoming a priest for the first time, as a joyful response to the unconditional love of Christ for me, which had been announced to me. However, this first impulse did not take concrete form because of my refusal to enter the Minor Seminary due to my shyness.
As the years went by, a strong question appeared in me: "Lord, what is my vocation? What do you want me to be? For me this question was fundamental, and it appeared in me thanks to my community, where we celebrated the Word every week, the Eucharist in small community and we had a monthly fellowship. I have to say that, without the witness of faith of my brothers in community, especially the young families and the priest, the question of vocation would not have appeared in me.
I finished high school and, as I did not know how to answer this question, I decided to enter university. That summer, 2012, I went with my parish and another parish in Madrid on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where I placed the question of vocation at the feet of the Virgin, because I did not know what to do.
After a year of great transcendence in the community in which the Lord gave me, through obedience to God through my catechists, to reconcile myself with my history and to want to be a Christian, to be a saint, I went to the WYD pilgrimage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, after speaking for the first time about my vocational concerns with a priest, the Lord called me in a Eucharist: "I am the Light of the world, he who follows me does not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life". These words of Christ (Jn 8:12) were for me the true vocation: God was calling me! It was no longer I who sought to know what his will was for me, it was he himself who spoke and called me. Full of joy and nerves, I got up to go to the seminary for the vocational meeting with the initiators of the Way, Kiko and Carmen, in Rio de Janeiro on July 29, 2013, the memorial of St. Martha.
After a year of vocational discernment in the company of several priests and other boys who had risen, I went to a retreat for new seminarians with Kiko and Carmen in Porto San Giorgio (Italy), where I was sent to the Seminary. Redemptoris Mater of Madrid, which I joined on September 29, 2014 and where I am being trained.
The charism of the Way is that of the Kerygma, the first proclamation, with a strong call to mission. How is this missionary vocation lived already in the time of preparation for the priesthood?
-We live this vocation with great joy and gratitude to the Lord, because we know that we have not deserved anything and that everything is a gift from him. Spontaneously, the availability for the mission is born in us thanks to the fact that, during the time of formation and as a fundamental part of it, we do the Way in a community as one more brother, participating in the celebrations of the Word, the Eucharist and the Conviviality (what we call in the Way tripod) with families, singles, young people, older people, priests... We are one more Christian who follows Christ in the Church. From this relationship with Christ, who loves us as sinners, comes zeal for evangelization, for the mission.... ad gentes.
In addition, for two years, we are sent to the itinerant mission as a fundamental part of formation. There, as members of a team of catechists or accompanying a priest in evangelization, we have the grace to participate actively in the proclamation of the Gospel, so that our missionary vocation is strengthened and confirmed by the Lord.
A simple question... Are you fully happy?
-Today I can say yes, I am happy. The source of this joy and happiness is not in goods, not even in human securities. Happiness comes to me from intimacy with Christ. He is the one who called me, the guarantor of my life. Obviously, I live all this in precariousness, like everything else in the Christian life.
"We carry this treasure in earthen vessels," says St. Paul. That is why every day prayer is a fundamental part of my life, through the liturgy of the hours, prayerful reading of Sacred Scripture, spiritual reading, contemplative prayer....
In this precariousness there are times when fears of the future arise, but it is with Christ that I can leave my land and my kindred, like Abraham, to the land that he will show me, where he is already waiting for me and where he will unite me to his cross, which is the source of evangelization.
