One night earlier this month, the Rev. Anthony Jimenez, an associate pastor at St. John of the Cross in Lemon Grove, had a moment of quiet reflection during a crowded parish event.
Ordained to the Catholic priesthood in June, Jimenez was watching as parishioners acted out the Nativity scene during a posada, a Latin American tradition that reenacts Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem in search of shelter.
“And I was thinking … what a privilege, and what an honor and what a blessing it is to be able to have that very deep-rooted, grounded experience with this community,” Jimenez said during a recent interview. “It just made me realize that one of the … cores of our faith is that God isn’t with us at a distance, he’s with us in the flesh. And I experienced it in that moment, with those people, with our community, and that to me was like, ‘This is what priesthood’s all about.’”
Jimenez is one of three new priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, along with the Revs. Brian Frulla and Jesse Lopez, who were ordained this summer and are now experiencing their first Christmas in their new roles. Jimenez and Frulla grew up in San Diego County, while Lopez, who is from Illinois, came to San Diego for college and returned here for his religious education. All attended seminary together at University of San Diego.
Though all three men made the decision to devote their lives to God and the church years ago, they entered the priesthood in June at a particularly interesting time. Last December, they were ordained to be transitional deacons by Cardinal Robert McElroy, who was then head of the San Diego diocese and is both a controversial and consequential figure in the Catholic church. Then, just two months before their ordinations, Pope Francis died and was replaced a few weeks later by the first U.S.-born pope, Leo XIV.
The trio was also ordained during a time of transition for the San Diego diocese, which had just bid farewell to McElroy — who was appointed by Pope Francis to lead the diocese in Washington, D.C., — and was awaiting the formal promotion of Bishop Michael Pham to lead the region’s roughly 1.3 million Catholics.
From left, Brian Frulla, Anthony Jimenez, Bishop Michael Pham, Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano, Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Pulido and Jesse Lopez are photographed after an ordination ceremony June 14 at St. Therese of Carmel Catholic Church in Carmel Valley. (David Maung / For the San Diego Catholic Diocese)
On top of all that, the trio is joining what has been a rapidly dwindling set of like-minded men. The number of priests in the U.S. has declined by more than 40% since 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center affiliated with Georgetown University.
But with their first Christmas as priests upon them, those external factors seemed not to matter to the trio. All three appeared focused on serving their parishioners as they took time over the last week to reflect on the joys and pressures of their new responsibilities.
“(Christmas) is my favorite season anyway,” Frulla said with a laugh during a recent interview at his assigned parish, St. Therese in Del Cerro, as he recounted the Christmas gatherings of his large Filipino-American family. “(Being a priest) is going to really charge and color how I celebrate this Christmas, because I get all the joy that I got before I was ordained, right? And then this special new gift, too, of being a priest, I get to kind of embed that in with all the joy of this season.”
The Rev. Brian Frulla offers communion to parishioners during Christmas Eve Mass at St. Therese Catholic Church in Del Cerro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Three paths to the priesthood
Growing up the child of two Filipino immigrants, the Catholic church was “just kind of in the blood,” Frulla, 29, said. Family gatherings, especially those Christmas celebrations in Poway where his maternal grandparents’ 11 children would all gather with their families, were often centered around religious holidays and milestones.
“It was a big family affair,” Frulla said. “That was kind of the context for my Catholicism. Family faith.”
Lopez, an associate pastor at St. Mark’s parish in San Marcos, had similarly fond memories of childhood Christmases. Each year his family traveled to Mexico, where his parents are from, to celebrate the holiday with his grandparents and other extended family members.
But the two took very different paths to becoming clergymen.
The priesthood seed was planted in Frulla when he was just 15 years old and attending Escondido High School. He had a particularly spiritual experience during a ceremony of the Holy Eucharist at a weekend youth retreat that prompted thoughts of joining the clergy. Six years later, during his final year majoring in chemical engineering at UC San Diego, Frulla felt a spiritual call to attend Mass every day for a month.
At the end of that month, and just 21 years old at the time, he “felt this deep call to go into the seminary.”
Lopez, on the other hand, “took the scenic route,” he joked, choosing a secular career out of college and chasing material success into his mid-30s.
“I was approaching life from the worldly ideal of it — wealth, status, success, possessions,” Lopez, 44, said. “That’s what I defined myself by.”
A number of things helped Lopez change his views on what truly matters in life, and at 37 years old he entered the seminary at USD.
Jimenez, who grew up in La Mesa attending St. Martin of Tours parish, took a similarly lengthy path to the priesthood as Lopez, though his pre-clergy jobs in education and the nonprofit sector were always focused on helping others.
“It was great work,” Jimenez said of his nonprofit job, which involved helping low-income people rise out of poverty. And it caused him to want to make a difference in the world.
“And I think for me, that calling really was through priesthood.”
The Rev. Brian Frulla, right, is one of three men who were ordained in June and celebrated Mass as new priests. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
First Christmas
For the trio of new priests, their first Christmas season in their new parishes started long before Dec. 25, with the beginning of Advent, which starts four Sundays before Christmas and continues until Christmas Eve. It is a period when Catholics reflect more deeply on the arrival of Jesus Christ.
“It’s really about opening up your heart and making space for God,” Jimenez said. During a recent homily, which is like a sermon, he used an analogy focused on the La Mesa home where he grew up, which happens to be just 2 miles from St. John of the Cross. His family’s first big project upon moving in was painting the home’s exterior.
“But of course you didn’t just paint over it — you had to scrape, and you had to refinish, and you had to sand, and only then do you paint,” Jimenez said. “And I think Advent’s a lot like that. You look within, and you look at relationships, you look at even wounds, you look at things that have gotten in the way of your relationship with God. And you do some sanding, but you let God do the sanding, not shame. Because shame just adds on more layers.”
Jimenez told the parishioners that he drove by the house recently, and it had an entirely different paint job.
“But I thought, isn’t that a perfect image for our interior lives?” Jimenez said. “We sand, we refinish, we kind of feel renewed, and then more layers come on, because that’s the way life is. But we keep doing it. We keep at it through our whole lives. And I think that Advent’s a lot like that.”
On top of multiple daily Masses, the trio has also been taking part in Advent penance services, in which priests from neighboring parishes gather to hear confessions. There have also been posadas, which typically occur each night for the nine days leading up to Christmas Eve, and other holiday-related celebrations and ceremonies.
For Lopez at his parish in San Marcos, there was also the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, which celebrates the day in 1531 when the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to an indigenous Mexican peasant. Celebrations that day began with singing at 4 a.m. and Mass at 5 a.m.
A few days later began a nine-day stretch of daily 4:30 a.m. Mass as part of a Filipino tradition known as Misa de Gallo, or “Mass of the rooster.”
The Rev. Brian Frulla celebrates Christmas Eve Mass at St. Therese Catholic Church. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Christmas messages
As their first Christmas arrives, each of the new priests took time to contemplate what the holiday means to them personally or what they will say during holiday services.
Lopez’s thoughts turned to those who may have strayed from the faith, the priestly role in bringing them back and the importance of Christmas in perhaps sparking that return.
“I think for those lifelong Catholics, for those who may feel distant from the church, for all our Christian brothers and sisters, I think Christmas more than anything is … a bridge for all of us,” Lopez said. “Christmas Mass places the priest in a unique role to be that bridge, and sharing our joy through service.”
Frulla was tasked with presiding over a Christmas Eve Mass centered around children and families. As he considered what he would say in his homily, his thoughts turned to the baby Jesus and the profundity of the belief that God came to Earth as a little child.
“There’s something beautiful about Christmas, we’re talking about the creator of the universe, the king of reality, all of that power, it’s contained in this little, vulnerable, innocent baby,” Frulla said. “I think that’s really encouraging for anybody who wants to be closer to God or who wants to reach the heights of the spiritual life or who just wants to do great things in general. That Christmas says, ‘Well, then think opposite, think little, think small, think humility.’ And God can do that, God can use that.”