“Born free, as free as the wind blows … born free to follow your heart.”
Singing a couple of lines as he began his homily for the Dec. 8 feast of the Immaculate Conception, Father Joel Lopez says he was hoping that Mary, born free of original sin, would come to his listeners’ minds whenever they heard that song.
“Sometimes I sing during my homily to make my point stronger,” he says. “I bring a bit of the secular in … so people will remember” the spiritual point.
This pastor of Christ the King Parish in Wonder Lake lends his voice to weddings and funerals and occasionally is invited to join in at concerts.
He likes to accept such opportunities and says, “When I sing on stage (it is) evangelizing for (the audience) to see a religious person … I hope it will remind them of faith.”
He adds that some people have come up to him after an event to talk, sometimes to express a desire to return to church. Father Lopez says he is, of course, happy to chat and encourage them in that goal.
His early accolades in the Philippines got him past his youthful need for recognition, he says.
“I don’t sing to be popular or for applause. I don’t need that,” he says. “(Music) is a gift. I have to use it to bring people closer to God.
“I find it effective.”
Father Lopez comes to musical ministry with some formal training. He studied voice in school in his native Philippines, and through recruiting agencies he applied to be a singer in Japan.
At the same time he was waiting to see if he would be approved for a visa so he could visit his parents who were working in New York. The U.S. visa came through while he was waiting for the promised music contract. He decided to visit his parents first and told his human resources manager that he’d be back in one to two months.
But his trip to New York took him in a completely different direction.
His father and mother were friends of Father Perfecto Vasquez, a priest from the Philippines who has served since 1998 in the Rockford Diocese. Father Vasquez had told his friends that the diocese was actively promoting vocations. That prompted Mrs. Lopez to ask her visiting son if he still was interested in becoming a priest.
“Since age 8, whenever I attended Mass, I found it attractive,” Father Lopez explains. “The altar attracts me. I would see myself there.”
Active in his parish as a youth, the future priest had participated in choir, retreats, recollections, catechisms and gatherings of seminarians and priests. It was, he says, “a combination of everything” that led him to ponder his mother’s question. After immersing himself in prayer and discernment, he contacted the vocations director in the Diocese of Rockford.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 2003. He has served at three parishes as an associate, at three small parishes as administrator, and he has been at Christ the King Parish as its administrator since 2014.
Father Lopez points to Manila Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as another Filipino cleric who loves to incorporate music into his ministry.
“Part of being Filipino is to be musically inclined,” Father Lopez says.
“It’s a gift. If you use it well, it will bring people closer to God.”