EVANGELICAL, ECUMENICAL,
FULLY CATHOLIC
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: DR. EDUARDO ECHEVERRIA
You were born in Mexico, in 1950, immigrated to New York City with your family in 1952, and became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 1993. You were raised Catholic, but only responded to the Gospel by committing your life to Christ later in life. What was the context of this commitment?
It was at L’ Abri Fellowship, in Huémoz sur Ollon, Switzerland, almost fifty years ago in the summer of 1970, that I first committed my life to Christ as Lord and Savior,“ the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
L’ Abri Fellowship, an evangelical Protestant community where people live, study, and work, was founded by Francis A. Schaeffer, along with his wife Edith, more than a half century ago. It was at L’ Abri that I began to understand the Christian faith as a way of life rooted in the truth about reality, about the meaning of life, and communion with God the Father, in Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit. It was also at L’ Abri that I began to understand that living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ entailed the sanctification of the whole of life, including the life of culture, particularly the intellectual life.
Your walk with the Lord took you through various expressions of Christianity. Finally, in 1992, you became fully reunited with the Catholic Church. Please tell us something about this journey.
Now, this understanding of the Christian life, which I first learned at L’ Abri Fellowship, was deepened in the paths I took on my journey ahead into full communion with the Catholic Church in 1992. One path was the Augustinian and Reformed, or Dutch neo-Calvinist, tradition of historic Christianity. Another path, which deepened my understanding of the historic Christian faith, especially the antiquity of the Church, of the Liturgy, of the sacramental life of grace in Christ, the Church Fathers, and the idea of doctrinal development, I found in the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman and John Paul II.
I went ahead into full communion with the Catholic Church twenty-two years after discovering Christ, by grace, when the Lord Jesus led me to re-discover his Church.
28 Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Fall 2017