My name is Robert Lucero. Before joining Stone to Flesh Community, I was a part of St. Paul the Apostle’s paish in Chino, CA Cross+Trainer retreat ministry, and lived in Australia as a NET missionary for over a year. After coming home from Australia, I discerned that I needed to put more time and energy towards school and other things, and eventually stepped away from active ministry.

Transitioning back home from NET Australia was difficult. I sought to find community and establish brotherhood like I had back in Australia. However, my dreams of finding community and brotherhood dried up within a few years when I couldn’t find men who wanted to share the same vision and mindset as me. I tried young adult groups in different parishes but as good as they were, none of them seemed to be able to provide what I was looking for. I always felt as if something was missing. In the midst of all of this, I felt God call me out of a relationship with my then girlfriend, and had a falling out with my father that affected my entire household. All of these things greatly impacted my faith. Slowly, I gave up on my goal to seek a community I could call home. This lack of community and brotherhood left me feeling disappointed. Little by little, my prayer life continued to dwindle, and my intimate connection to Jesus became fragile. Prayer left me more and more bitter each day. I was spiteful because everything was happening in my life, and argued in my heart with Jesus constantly. Praying and practicing Catholicism became less about me having a relationship with Jesus, and more about the “motions” of being a “good” Catholic. I had fallen apart.

In December of 2017, some friends and I were gathered together in their living room to pray the rosary. At the end of it, I had a sudden burst of joy. I wanted nothing more than to run around, jump, laugh, cry, and yell about God’s goodness. I was completely caught off guard as I hadn’t felt much joy in years, let alone joy like that. Up until that moment, I thought I would never feel like that again. The hard and difficult things I was going through were still present in my life, but suddenly out of nowhere was supernatural joy. It was the best I had felt since returning home from Australia. I knew this was from God and could not deny it. At that moment I decided that if all of this joy and peace was still possible for me, and God still wanted to share it with me, then I would pursue God with everything I had left. Within a few months, the same group of friends discerned that we should pray the 54 day irresistible rosary novena together for the Lenten season. Other friends felt in their own hearts that I should journey with the Lord in this same novena without me even mentioning my prior discernment. I was nervous to commit because I already had a weak prayer life, I didn’t enjoy praying the rosary, and 54 consistent days of prayer was so many more days than I thought I was capable of. But I did it. What started out as 54 days, eventually turned into a whole year. The rosary became a bridge between my heart and God the Father. Bead by bead, I was letting go of a lot and surrendering my life to Jesus all over again. I began to really listen to the Holy Spirit the way I would before, and because of this I was led to sign up for Stone To Flesh: School of the Heart. I had no idea what I was getting into. All I knew was that I had made up my mind to pursue the Lord with the Rosary almost a year ago, and this was where that pursuit had led me.

From the get go, School of the Heart (SOTH) was a brand new experience. Admittedly, I was skeptical if I had made the right decision. The criteria and the schedule demanded a lot from every student, and I wasn’t sure if I could commit to the whole year. Like most people in new settings, I felt different and a little out of place. I had close friends in the community but they weren’t in the class with me. This left me unsure over whether or not I’d ever genuinely fit in, but I felt a conviction from the Holy Spirit reminding me that I was here because I had said yes to God, and not yes to fitting in. Amazingly, this served to be a blessing because it set me up to get out of my comfort zone, and invest in a more diverse group of people than I might have initially. As I journeyed with Holy Spirit into SOTH, I was very surprised of how much the formation and material provided was similar to what I was given during my missionary training on NET. Week after week, we would learn teachings of the Early Church Fathers, and meditate on material from the Doctors of the Church. If the material itself didn’t already do it, Iwona never failed to challenge us in prayer, faith, and identity at every event. The Catholic in me who had been searching for a young adult community that would stimulate my spirit was having a great time, but the unresolved bitterness I was carrying was still making it difficult. As I was learning and relearning what it meant to live a life surrendered to God through SOTH, I was becoming convicted that I didn’t trust the Lord. I hated knowing how little I trusted Jesus. The atmosphere of SOTH forced me to decide between my fear or the Lord, wounds or healing. By His Grace, I chose the Lord; I chose healing. Today, I’m thankful for the community and people I have met through this amazing school, and I’m also grateful for the intimacy I found in the Lord.

Rob Lucero is also a writer and poet. His latest poem:

Bigger Dreams

I wanna Dream a dream that gets nonbelievers believing things
Blind eyes seeing things
Deaf ears hearing things
Mute mouths shouting things
Dream a dream where we treat dreams like telephones and
Let’em ring
Loudly
Like freedom
cuz I wanna a dream a dream that dares people to answer their call in life

Like, Hello THIS IS ROBERT DREAMING
Maybe that’s stupid
I think I’m Courageous
I think I’m worth it
I like dreaming

I want to dream a dream that reigns supreme in the scheme of things
Even when it seems like everything is a scheme against my dreams
When the devil’s claws are pulling at my seams
I want the material of my dreams to demand me to be the cloth I am cut from
And not be worn out so easily

I want to dream a dream
Nightmares get nightmares about
Like A dream so impossible and scary
Night terrors die trying to live up to it
I want to dream a dream
The type billionaires will trade me their lives for
Pay me to have for them
Because I want to dream a dream money can’t buy
But I can sell people on

I want to dream a dream God couldn’t laugh at
that Jesus would come back for
A dream the Holy Spirit would treat like a playground
One my faith will use as a canvas and I’ll paint a masterpiece with every color of my prayer
The kind that would inspire mountains to apologize and say
“excuse me”
“as a matter of fact, Jump on my back”
“Use me”
“Choose me”

I wanna dream a dream brighter than a mind dreaming a dream about Vegas in the dark ages
A dream with lines too long
for pages
Write its blue print out on
blue skies
Rent out airplanes to write my plans out on air planes
Make the sky my floor and the heavens my ceiling
Make God my minimum and nothing my limit
A dream stars wish on shooting stars to have
And black holes aspire to be as deep as
One so out of this world only aliens will understand
A dream so big it’ll give the galaxy stretch marks
I want to dream a dream too good to be asleep for
Too great to just be awake for
A dream so great you have to BE ALIVE FOR
the kind of dream that demands you to be bigger
want more

I want to dream a dream that won’t come true until my great great great great great great great grandkids start figuring out the final pieces
Because this is a dream that’ll go beyond my imagination
Carried on throughout multiple generations
A dream that will be the D in our DNA
I will have a blood line of
Dreaming N’ Achieving

I want to dream a dream the dead dreamers come back to life for
Just to tell us this is what they died for
Sit there and cry for, hours
Detailing the dreams they sacrificed in order to make our futures bright

I want to dream a dream as Loud as the volume the walls of Jericho couldn’t cover its ears from
Years from, now it will still be noise deafening the ears of doubters and music to the ears of rebels
An anthem to those whose faith is their foundation
I want to dream a dream that becomes the song the caged bird sings
As well as the wind beneath its wings the moment it finally decides to be free

Because this is the kind of dream prisoners fashion keys out of and unlock themselves from themselves with
Then their spirits will know the truth that their bodies aren’t cells
But cells that together form anointed vessels
Because this is the kind of dream that gives you permission to be your best self
Your truest self
Your Fullest self

I want to dream a dream adults can make capes out of
And we start to look more like the heroes our children need and know us to be
I want to dream a dream that shows me how to be a power ranger again
Pokémon master
Usher 2pac
Jordan
Spider man
Iron Man
Any man the child in me looked up to as a hero
Thundercat thundercat thundercat

OOOHHH
I WANT TO DREAM

And you’re not ready

As a voluntary missionary at Stone to Flesh Community, Rob co-led STF SOTH in Riverside in 2019/20 and serves as a leader of Gatherings.