Fr. Joel Reynold P. Castillo (second from right in the picture beside) is a priest of the Diocese of Laoag in Ilocos Norte. At present, he is parish priest at St. Anne Parish in Piddig, an interior town with a population of 16,000 people.

Fr. Joel comes from a simple but happy family. His mother is an Aglipayan (a Christian denomination in the Philippines) while his father is a Catholic. In spite of this situation, his parents brought him and his siblings in the Christian faith. His parents are fond of priests because in his mother’s side of the family, there are two Aglipayan priests: his grandmother’s brother and an uncle. In his father’s side of the family, they have distant relatives who are SVD priests in Cagayan, so much so that their house became a second home for the SVD missionaries.

In the town where he grew up and attended elementary school, catechism was also a subject. It is here that he became close to the Church. After receiving the sacrament of Confirmation in sixth grade, he received a picture of Saint Martin de Porres, holding a broom. He read St. Martin’s life and said to himself, “I didn’t know that one can be a saint by simply sweeping the church.” So he became close to the Church by helping out in the cleaning.

He entered the high school seminary of Laoag, and when he was in his third year, he met the Focolare’s evangelical life of unity. It was the first time he heard of the idea of “living the Gospel.”

Then he was invited to the Mariapolis summer gathering of the Focolare in Tagaytay and a few days before it, he stayed in the Priests’ School for Asia, a center for priests and seminarians who are living the spirituality of unity. Upon his arrival there, he was impressed by the great joy with which the seminarians welcomed him. He was surprised because it was as if they had already known him for a long time.

At the Priests’ School in Tagaytay, he was given office work. At that time, he was asked to put correction fluid on a songbook they were making. He was doing this job when all of a sudden, Fr. Toni Weber, the head of the school, visited them. When Fr. Toni saw what Joel was doing, he said: “It may be a small thing to do, but try to do it out of love for those who will come to our summer gathering.” “It was a simple encouragement,” Fr. Joel shares, “but with that I understood what it means to love as Jesus did.”

In the Mariapolis gathering, he saw many people coming in buses and cars with a good number from Cebu and Mindanao. He doesn’t remember much of the talks, but instead he can he recall the experiences and stories: the story of Chiara Lubich, the war in Trent, the story of people who found God in their lives. There was also a fireman who shared about how he chose God before anything else, even in his daily work in the fire station. There was a professional, a married person, the young people who were so brave to tell the big crowd that God loved them and so they made a choice of God.

One night, his mind was not at peace. Questions came to him like: “Why is it that I have not heard of these beautiful things before? I was told to pray, to go to confession, to read the Bible, to nourish my vocation, I was told to obey the seminary rules to become a priest. But no one told me to choose God.” But though he was troubled by these questions, he felt a great joy inside. He wanted to choose God like them…

After that summer gathering, he stayed for a few more days in Tagaytay. In their morning meditations, he heard about God who is Love, to love him is to do his will, and his will is to love our neighbor. And at once there were opportunities to live it in the simplest moments of life like in the kitchen, in the garden, and in cleaning the house. He confirms, “I felt at home with the life of unity. This was what I was looking for.”

He kept on living the way of unity even in the seminary with some seminarians who adhered to this life. One of the big steps which he took was detachment from money. He stopped buying luxury items and instead contributed the money he saved to worthwhile projects.

Fr. Joel continues, “The ‘choice of God’ became real in difficult moments, like when my seminary in college had to close. I was looking forward to graduation in philosophy which never happened that year. During those days, the choice of God became stronger in me. I went to Tagaytay that summer and a priest consoled me: ‘Do not worry, God loves you, philosophy is not God! Try to choose God again!’ True enough I was able to finish my studies in philosophy and theology later on.”

With gratitude he cherishes his adventure in the life of unity: “Now looking back at my life as a priest, I’m happy for having discovered the spirituality of unity. It has helped me to build bridges whenever there were conflicts in the parish or in confronting the sorrows in the life of a priest. To always believe in God’s love and to experience it always – this has encouraged me to be truly grateful to him in my life as a Christian and as a priest.”

Jonas Lardizabal