The author of "Steps by Steps" and his background

The beginnings. Roman Catholic education. Born in Colombia, South America, in 1922. My whole education was Roman Catholic: family, high school with the Jesuits (6 years), Scripture, theology and philosophy at a Roman Catholic seminary (6 years); and then Catholic university in Bogota, Colombia, and Rome. Ordained as a Catholic priest in 1945, and then I started ministering in different parishes and positions, in Colombia.

From Scripture and prayer to faith. I was very religious and devout person, in a Catholic way; but I was very devoted to the Scripture in a non-Catholic way, to the New Testament and Paul in particular. I was seriously concerned about my own salvation; I was afraid of being damned. Reading the Scripture in prayer, I started "discovering" that I was already saved; and I found that even some liturgical texts confirmed that. When did this happen? It is difficult to say, because the knowledge and understanding was progressing, "step by step!" For sure that fifteen years after my ordination I had understood the effectiveness of faith for salvation, because I remember that at the time I preached a retreat to young women, under the subject "Let us have faith in FAITH".

The Holy Spirit, my real teacher. By the grace of God, my understanding of salvation and faith was growing constantly. Some books I read, and some contacts I had in Europe (I traveled there several times), helped my understanding; but I must say that the Holy Spirit was my real teacher and guide. In order to allow the Lord and the new understanding of salvation to come into my life, I had to disregard almost all my previous familiar and formal mentality and education. And this is the difficulty for Catholics to convert: their education, their mentality nurtured from childhood.

When did I find the Lord? I think that Jesus has been my Lord and Savior during my whole life; He has been the number one in my life, always; but not always with the same meaning and effectiveness. The complete trust and certainty of salvation came later in my life.

Jairo, the heretic. At the end of the 50's Pope John XXIII elected me as a peritus in liturgy for the preparation of the Second Vatican Council, in Rome. By the middle 60's, I was director of a pastoral institute of the Latin American Bishops (CELAM), traveling and teaching in Latin American countries, but by the end of the decade I was fired because I was teaching "heresies" everywhere. I challenged the bishops with the Bible, but they didn't accept my challenge, and I was left without any ministry (any job) and it was forbidden for me to teach; I could do nothing. It was then when I decided to come to United States where there is freedom of speech, and to teach the gospel there. But my future was completely uncertain; I was just in the hands of the Lord.

The only Lord, Jesus. When I came to United States at the beginning of the 70s, I got married with a spiritual and intelligent American lady I had met several years before in Puerto Rico. Did I renounce the Catholic priesthood? First of all, I didn't believe in priesthood other than that of all the believers. I believed in ministries, and I didn't want to renounce my vocation and ministry. Secondly, I didn't renounce anything, nor ask "dispensation" from the pope as it was customary, because I didn't accept any other authority for being a Christian and for the ministry than that of the Lord. Such excommunications are of no value. The Lord gave us a gift from our marriage: a daughter.

The Catholic Living Church. I started looking for a church to belong to and to minister. Some of them asked me to be reordained, which I didn't accept, and I became disenchanted with most of them. So, I decided to start a Christian congregation based on the Bible, with some Spanish speaking Catholics of San Jose and Salinas, California; we named it "The Catholic Living Church," which was true, to attract the Catholics. It grew to about 150 people, but, without any place to worship and meet, and without any resources, I felt the need of some assistance from the institutionalized church.

The supremacy of the Scripture. At that time I met a priest from the Episcopal Church, who offered me support for our congregation. I learned then that the Episcopal Church affirmed the supremacy and sufficiency of the Scripture. Based on this principle, I asked to be received as a priest of the Episcopal Church, without the need of being re-ordained. They also accept married people as priests. (I still do not feel comfortable with the title "priest;" minister or servant seems more appropriate.) I didn't agree with everything that this Church is doing, but I could minister freely and preach the gospel freely. I did it for six years at "Iglesia de San Pablo" in Salinas, with about five hundred families on the records.

I had to quit the ministry. I wanted to continue my active ministry until the fiftieth anniversary of my ordination, in May, 1995; but, when I became 72 in 1994, I was asked to quit because of my age; this is their policy, which seemed absurd to me —nobody would ask Peter or Paul to do that,— and I had to retire... This is my third year of retirement.

My new ministry. So, I decided to write, in Spanish, the "Step by Step with the Bible", a collection of four volumes. Vol I, The New Testament, is the basic and fundamental one, which contains the whole synthesis of the Christian message; this is, simply, God's plan of salvation by Jesus Christ, as it is revealed in the New Testament. The other three volumes of "Step by Step with the Bible," are: Vol II, The Old Testament in the light of the New Testament; Vol III, Paul, the Christian, the apostle, his message; and Vol IV, Jesus of Nazareth, His deeds, His words.

An inspiration of the Holy Spirit. On Easter of this year, 1996, I had an inspiration: Put your books in the Internet, in English, for the English readers. And here I am doing that. The Steps are being translated and adapted to English speaking people week after week.

If you've heard of the Bible but don't know to read it or understand its message, please see this guide. As you can read in the Introduction, the collection Step by Step with the Bible does not have the same level of comprehension from the beginning to the end; Vol I does not require a scriptural background to begin; the most uninitiated, —those who are just able to read,— without any knowledge of Scripture or Christianity, are enabled to understand the Bible. Once they have studied the first two volumes, they are able to understand the third and fourth. The collection is not for Biblical scholars, rather for those who want a basic understanding of the Bible, and of God's message through the Bible.