Joaquin Rafael Roces

My faith path is Roman Catholic, but I have an ecumenical and universal background. As a Catholic I have served my parish as a Eucharistic Minister, Lector and served as a lay minister in the Youth and Prison Ministries from 1997 to the present.

My universal experience began as an employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 1999 to 2006, I worked in 6 Native American Reservations in Nevada. I participated in several of the religious ceremonies and sweat lodges over my 6 year tenure. I have also studied Buddhism under a yogi and Lamat Marut from 2002 to 2006. I learned the asanas and teachings of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. Many of the meditative and yoga practices I have incorporated into my prayer life. From 2009 to 2010 I worked with the University of Nevada and the US State Department to develop and implement a youth leadership exchange program between Algeria and Nevada. In that time I travelled through out Algeria and Tunisia, and prayed with local families in mosques through the region as well as the mosque here in Reno. This experience my travels across the globe has taught me that there are many roads to Jerusalem. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all Abrahamic traditions with shared scriptures and traditions. The Christian Old testament is essentially the Jewish Torah, and the Quran and the Prophet Mohamed taught that Christians, Jews and Muslims are all children of the book, and recognize both Jewish and Christian scriptures as canon.

There are many historical records of Buddhism as a religion whose scriptures, doctrine, saints, monastic life, meditation practices, and rituals were comparable to those of Christianity and of Nestorian Christian communities in close proximity to traditionally Buddhist communities.

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat is a Christianized version of the story of Siddharta Gautama, who became the Buddha. In the Middle Ages the two were treated as Christian saints, being entered in the Greek Orthodox calendar and in the Roman Martyrology in the Western Church as "Barlaam and Josaphat".

In addition, I have a brother who is gay, and numerous friends in the LGBTQ and Wiccan community. And currently as a certified peer recovery support specialist working with individuals with mental health and substance use disorders, as well as the homeless community, I believe that these communities are often shunned by the Catholic Church as well as other major institutionalized orthodoxies. It is in these communities that I seek to serve as vicar. These marginalized communities have a fundamental divine right to not only the sacrament of marriage but to express their faith in a safe place and without persecution.

As I prayed and meditated on how my vocational life would look like, I was struck not by the differences but by the similarities that all faiths hold as truths. I was guided by the :"Great Commission" of Christ that commanded that the gospel be brought to "all nations." There were no exceptions or exclusions. As the Buddha also taught about seeking the middle path between the extremes - that is my Way, my Tao, and as the Great Sufi teacher, Rumi, once said, "Beyond all right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there."