“Adoring the Lord, my infatuation reached the highest point of my human possibilities and the desire to respond to his love with the total gift of my being became a need of my soul,” he says in this interview with the portal of the Archdiocese of Seville.
On Saturday, June 25, the Royal Chapel of Seville Cathedral hosted the Eucharist for the consecration of virgins by Elisa Heredia Roldán (1987), a native of Los Molares, Seville. The ceremony was presided over by Monsignor Juan José Asenjo, Archbishop Emeritus of Seville.
IN dialogue with the weekly of the Archdiocese of Seville Elisa began by remembering that the Ordo Virginum it is a vocation that is born in a diocese, detached from a particular religious congregation and whose mission is to serve precisely the diocesan pastoral.
How and when did you become aware of your vocation? How has the journey of discernment been?
Since my adolescence I have felt the call of the Lord to consecrate myself to Him, but I did not know how, because no form of consecrated life or charism that I knew coincided exactly with what I lived, felt and wanted to achieve. Adoring the Lord, my infatuation reached the highest point of my human possibilities and the desire to respond to his love with the total gift of my being became a need of my soul. It was then that I decided to go talk to my pastor, the Archbishop of Seville, at the time Monsignor Asenjo.
What help have you had in this process?
In the books on the Order of Consecrated Virgins that he gave me, I finally found my vocation. The Church confirmed my charism and has given me everything I needed to be able to recognize and realize my truth and my own identity in this precious vocation. I have had the great privilege of having been accompanied during these years by wonderful priests who have been supporting me and leading me by the hand on this path towards my consecration.
In these moments, what does it mean to live your vocation?
Consecrated virginity is a gift that God has given me, a call from the Lord to be totally his forever and to which I, freely and out of love, have responded with a generous yes in which I have given him my entire life. To live spousality with Christ is to feel one with Him. To live in Him, by Him and for Him, totally possessed by his love. It is communing with his heart, assuming his same feelings and sharing his lifestyle, surrendering completely to his will and with a tireless zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. It is also to feel myself as an eschatological image, anticipating the reality of the definitive communion with God to which all humanity is called to live in eternity and as a witness of the greatest love.
What would you say to those people who are considering their vocation and for fear give up or postpone starting the path?
I assure you that there is nothing in the world that can make you happier than carrying out God’s plan for your own lives, because it is in Him that your truth is hidden, the truth that will make you truly free and happy in the future. heart. Let them not doubt, let them consider the happiness that awaits their total dedication to a faithful God who loves them madly and who calls them. “Come and you will see”. The Lord trains his elect and promises that they will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. In love there is no fear, says Saint John. It is worth leaving everything to win the One who is everything. That they be brave and above all that they do not walk alone, that they always seek accompaniment within the Church.
What novelty do you discover today, about your charism and spirituality?
The total, irrevocable and definitive dedication to God today in a society so secularized, eroticized, in which selfishness, individualism and materialism predominate.
Pray in season and out of season?
I ask the Church in Seville to keep me in mind in prayer, so that, with the help of God’s grace, I may faithfully and holy live the beautiful vocation that the Lord has given me in the Church. For my part, I commend the Lord to the Church, that He reigns in our hearts and united, each one from our respective vocation and election, we can praise and serve him with joy and joy, with all our love, as his holiness and majesty deserve. .