The Venezuelan native is a long way away from his home city of Barinas, close to the Andes, and many years have elapsed since fear of a very concrete kind gripped him as a younger man.
Victor Lujano was 19 when he stepped forward at a gathering of the Neocatechumenal Way to say he felt called to ordained ministry but for five years afterwards, he was plagued by a mysterious neurological illness which caused occasional convulsions.
Deacon Lujano was ordained to the diaconate for Perth by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB at St Gerard Majella Church in Mirabooka last Friday July 27th.
With treatment in the area being at a somewhat nascent stage, his greatest fear was of needing to undergo brain surgery if the prescribed course of medication failed to provide the hoped-for relief.
The medication did cure his ailment and Deacon Lujano took it as a sign, that with the Lord, he needn’t fear the future.
“It was a word from God, not to be afraid,” Deacon Lujano said. “After that I knew that was a call for me, when he healed me from that sickness.”
God had also provided his with meaning in his teenage years, he said, when he struggled to understand and deal with his parents’ separation.
After years of turmoil, he came in contact with Neocatechumenal Way catechists when he was 16.
“Little by little, I began to discover – because before I didn’t understand the separation of my parents, because everybody wants a beautiful family, everyone wants to see the beautiful (happy) children, I didn’t understand that. Little by little, the Lord was making things clear, in my history,” the Deacon said.
He was 24 when he was finally healed of his neurological illness, but was waylaid in his vocational journey by the joys of youth, working instead in his brother’s mechanics business, while also studying at night to complete the studies he had missed at high school.
“That call of God was there, in the separation, the sickness. Being a young fellow you have not so much emotion to go [and join a seminary].
“You enjoy the life of going to the cinema and the discotheque but after a while there is an emptiness there,” he said.
“It was enjoyable and wonderful to go to my friends’ houses but it wasn’t enough. God was calling me to do something serious, in that sense,” he told The Record.
In 2004 he went to Rome and travelled on to a Neocatechumenal Way gathering at Porto San Giorgio, with around 300 other men.
There, they volunteered to be sent to any one of the 70 or so Neocatechumenal Way seminaries throughout the world, with the specific seminary being decided by lot.
He was chosen for Perth along with (now Father) Benny Calanza and two other men who have subsequently returned home.
He said he sees priesthood as being much more than merely mechanically administering Sacraments.
“You are called to bring this good news to the people.
As a priest, it is true you perform the Sacraments, that is part of the priesthood – but you have to care for the people you are guiding as their shepherd; we need to care for people as well,” Deacon Lujano said.
“[It is] trying to give what the Lord has done in your life; to present how the Lord has helped you. It is hope for them and not just for you.”