The best gift a priest received: join his parents in marriage

Fr. Cristián Lerma was born in a simple family of Tuluá (Colombia), with a mother closer to the church than her father; However, the testimony of the priest and his deacon brother achieved that gradually the Father approached Christ and decided to join in marriage to his now wife.

In conversation with Ewtn, Fr. Cristián said that his parents arrived from Guapí, a municipality of fishermen in the Colombian Pacific. Three women and three men were born from the union.

The family atmosphere and their parents’ marriage

During the dialogue, Fr. Cristián remembers that he has always seen his mother “closer to the Church, closer to belonging to Church groups, to attend the Mass”, but the same did not happen with his father.

In addition, he points out, his mother always wanted to marry, but social custom indicated that the initiative should be taken by man. “My mother has wanted to marry, but my dad nothing, nothing to do, nothing to do with the church.”

However, the testimony that Fr. Cristián and his brother Jesus – currently deacon – gave in the home. Seeing how “we entered the Church so much and see that later we were both ordered,” he ignited in his parent the desire to know the Catholic faith, until he took him to take “the initiative to ask my mother marriage.”

Fr. Cristián celebrated the sacrament of his parents’ marriage on December 14, 2024, with the participation of his brother Jesus, as a deacon. For the priest, this “was to experience God’s mercy for the Lerma Hurtado family. The Lord was merciful to my family.”

The discovery of his vocation

However, the discovery of the priestly vocation of Fr. Cristián was not immediately. He said that after receiving confirmation “I did not want to know anything about church” because it related it to school, in which I had to learn many things, such as prayers.

“My brother Jesus, who is greater than me, who is a deacon, invited me to the youth group of that same parish in which I made catechesis (for confirmation),” he said. However, he initially did not accept because he believed “that it was the same as confirmation.”

“The curious thing was that I saw in that youth group something that captivated me, and there were very beautiful women, and I decided to tell my brother that yes, that I will enter the youth group because I thought it was the opportunity to have a girlfriend,” he recalled.

But once inside, “the thing changed totally because the way they prayed, the way they gave the teachings, was totally different. It was an experience of young people for young people and that changed me.”

Within the group he was encouraged to serve in spiritual retreats, within which he found “with a reality of young people quite difficult: drug addiction, vices, abortion, a very sad thing.”

The confrontation with these realities prompted him to “want to take these young people to God. There he began all this adventure. I thought: ‘I want to dedicate myself to work with young people’, but I did not think about the priesthood.”

However, the withdrawal coordinator told him that he did vocation and financed him the entrance to the preseminary. “There began this whole process and finally entered the seminar, with the motivation of wanting to give my life to the Lord for young people and that is what I have done since I said yes to God.” He was ordained a priest on December 2, 2023.

The video in which he is seen crying with emotion for his priestly ordination was viral on his Instagram account. Fr. Cristián described that moment “as an ‘instant of heaven’. It was a divine experience. ”

Finally, the Colombian priest gave this message to young people: “If we look at the shadows, defects, what we have lost, errors, we are going to fill with pessimism, pain and anguish. You have to look at what we have, what we can, the positive, the dreams. Do not lose hope, know that everything is possible.”