“I had everything but I didn’t see it,” said Hernandez, 32. “I had a beautiful family but I was not satisfied because it was always difficult for me to accept the weakness of anyone and I have in my family a lot of weaknesses. It was difficult for me to accept those weaknesses especially the weaknesses of my father.”

Raised in Medellin, Colombia, with five older sisters, Hernandez always felt the pressure to love his father but for some reason he just couldn’t, not until finding the Our Father.

“I could not give to my father the love that he wanted from me,” he said. “The Lord had to do something for me really to rediscover that joy.”

What the Lord had Hernandez do first was discover a deep love for Him and for spreading the Good News.

“I started to discover something I was not expecting in my life,” he said. “It was that pearl, that treasure that we as Christians are meant to find and discover was hidden in the things I rejected the most, the things that I despised the most. Those things were the people who were living with me, especially my father. The Lord gave me His mercy and He enlightened me, allowing me to reconcile with my father.”

So at 19 Hernandez embraced his father with a kiss and “told him how much I loved him for the first time.” From there Hernandez’s capacity to love grew as God began calling upon him.

“The Lord called me to follow him into the vocation of priesthood,” said Hernandez, who was ordained for the Archdiocese of Toronto at St. Michael’s Cathedral on May 10.

He is assigned to St. Mary Immaculate parish in Richmond Hill.