By Theresa Carson
On May 24, Most Rev. Robert Lombardo CFR, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, presided over the priestly ordination of six Divine Word Missionaries at Holy Child Jesus Church in Chicago. The Society of the Divine Word Chicago Province presents a series about the newly ordained priests. Today, we present Father Martin Herrera SVD.
Father Martin Herrera SVD embraces his profile as an Enneagram Type 8: The Challenger, an assertive, protective personality who seeks autonomy and harbors a deep sense of justice and loyalty.
Although initially hesitant to follow his vocation to the priesthood, the desire for justice compelled him forward.
“They always say that to fix the Church you have to be in it,” Father Herrera said. “If I don’t want to see injustice, then I have to be within it. The Church should be on the level of the people. That’s what Jesus did.”
When asked about his vocation, he said, “At first, I denied it.” He loved going to church for the architecture, the bells, the beauty of the physical church.
The seed of his call grew slowly and unconventionally.
“I ran, but I couldn’t hide,” he said with a smile. “I always ran away, but there were little hints.”
When he was a youth, his public high school required 40 hours of public service. He noticed that his Chicago parish was dusty and dirty, so he asked if he could clean the church to fulfill the graduation requirement.
“They got me in and never let me go,” Father Herrera said with a glint in his eyes.
Years later, after the associate pastor of his parish passed away, he met a deacon who came to lead a prayer service. The deacon asked for Father Herrera’s contact information so he could give it to a vocation director.
“We couldn’t find a piece of paper in the whole church, so I wrote my phone number on a napkin,” he recalled. “Either because of my bad handwriting or a fold in the napkin, the vocation director couldn’t read the phone number.
“But, that didn’t stop (vocation director) Father Adam MacDonald. He’s worse than the FBI,” Father Herrera joked.
To find him, Father MacDonald went to Facebook and messaged several Martin Herreras.
Father Herrera said with a laugh, “When he found me, he asked, ‘Do you know how many Martin Herreras are in Chicago? A lot.’”
At that point, Father Herrera had not heard of the Society of the Divine Word, but after several invitations, he agreed to meet.
“I didn’t apply; they signed me up,” he said wryly.
He visited Techny, motherhouse of the Chicago Province. The residents impressed him with their welcoming ways, he said. Their intercultural ways felt familiar.
Interculturality is a part of Father Herrera’s heritage. A middle child of three, he grew up in a Mexican-American family in a Polish enclave of Chicago. Even as a youth, he adopted Polish Catholic traditions.
Then, he received an invitation to visit the congregation’s college.
At the time, he was a manager for a large office supply company. Each time he received an invitation, something interfered—a management meeting, inventory, another manager’s vacation. The invitations kept coming, so Father Herrera prayed for a sign.
“Don’t ask God for a sign,” he mused. The sign arrived quickly and impactfully. His company merged with a similar corporation, and longtime managers received pink slips.
After 14 years, the company fired him.
“That destroyed me completely,” he said. “It felt like a bag of bricks hit me. My identity was wrapped up in that job.”
He said he felt that God was saying try the seminary.
When asked about the impact that formation had on him, he spoke of his Cross-Cultural Training Program (CTP) in Bolivia and his time as a transitional deacon.
Bolivia tested him.
“It was very difficult,” he said. “I met the devil, but I also met many lay saints. Without them I think I would not be here, especially the women.”
He marvels at these women who work for the love of God and their people. “They are the spine of the Church,” he said. “They do it without recognition or title. Their influence has changed lives.”
He also spoke of the personal effect they had on him.
“They rescued me,” he said. “They had the compassion to talk with me as a human person. They protected me like Our Lady of Guadalupe under her mantle. Like mothers. They invited me for tea and bread like the women in the Bible. They are very unknown, but their presence is life.”
In contrast to CTP, his time as a transitional deacon left him with some of the best memories of his religious life.
As a transitional deacon, he served Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in San Diego. At this Hispanic, Vietnamese and Anglo parish, he worked with Father Binh Quang Le SVD, who was ordained at Techny in 2018.
He said he appreciates Father Binh’s collaborative style and admires his approach to priesthood. Father Binh puts his whole heart and soul into his ministry, he said.
“He’ll stay up until three in the morning, working on his homilies,” Father Herrera said. “Then, he’ll be up for 5:30 Mass.”
Father Herrera recalled the time when Father Binh told his transitional deacon that if he broke down at Mass to please know that it was because his mother had died.
“She had passed away two hours earlier,” Father Herrera said. “I thought, ‘This man is still celebrating Mass.’ That’s how dedicated he is. I’m not merciful. I need to learn from him.”
He continued, “Priesthood is not power; it’s service to everyone.”
For his first assignment, Father Herrera will go the Southern Province and serve St. John the Evangelist parish in Gulfport, Miss.