Two Priests and Friends Have Guided Him to Ordination

Father Elvin Rivera

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Father Elvin Rivera has vivid memories of the day he left home to begin his new life as a seminarian.

“It was like a scene from a movie almost,” he recalled with a laugh. “I’m with my family and we’re very sad about the fact that I’m going to leave home for the first time ever... And I walk down and (Father Jean-Paul Soler) is standing by his car like to take me to the military or something. And I’m like, I’m leaving, I’m really leaving! That hit me like a truck. I just started crying.”

Father Rivera expects the tears to flow again when he is ordained in a little more than a week. But this time he says they’ll be tears of joy. All fears and doubts have fallen away. “My mom says she’ll bring a bucket,” he quipped.

Father Rivera credits two priests for bringing him to the point where he is about to dedicate his life to God—the aforementioned Father Soler, a close friend and mentor who gave him the lift to St. Joseph Seminary that day, and Father Joseph Espaillat, director of the Archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry.

He views Father Espaillat as a spiritual “father figure.” It was Father Espaillat who first saw Elvin Rivera as potential priest material. He asked the teenager about it during a youth retreat for Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish where the young Rivera was very active. There must be something in the holy water at Queen of Martyrs because it has produced a bumper crop of priests and religious. Father Rivera said he could think of three other priests as well as both religious men and women.

“It was my junior year, so I was 16,” he recalled. “We were walking down the street, we were with the youth group having a field trip or something and he called me over and put his hands on my shoulder and said, ‘I hear you’re thinking of becoming a priest.’ And I was like ‘yeah, very much so.’ And I sort of remember what he said. He said, ‘OK, I’ll take you every step of the way.’ So from there, he literally kind of took me under his wing.”

While he considers Father Espaillat a father figure, he considers Father Soler a friend. “We hang out. I go to his rectory all the time, laugh, have fun,” he said. “He was ordained the same year I entered the seminary and was assigned to my parish.”

Father Rivera said his immediate family has been very supportive of his decision, though he acknowledges that among the extended family there were some raised eyebrows. He comes from a close-knit Dominican family. He has three brothers. He also says his friends have been quite supportive of his decision.

“Growing up a lot of them would kind of point out to me, ‘you definitely need to enter the seminary,’” he said with a laugh.

He realizes he is entering the priesthood at a difficult time in the life of the Church with dwindling numbers of young priests and controversy on a number of issues.

“Every single guy here in the seminary knows that we’re not going to go into like a world of flowers and butterflies. It’s going to be hard. You’re going to be rejected,” he acknowledged. “And you know what? That’s fine. We’re the Church militant and we’re going to fight this battle and get to heaven and take as many souls as we can with us.”

Father Rivera will celebrate his first Mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Sunday, May 24 at 3 p.m. Father Jean-Paul Soler, pastor of St. Denis parish, Yonkers, will be the homilist.