Father Strassburger
finds Valley parish
a great place to start

By R. DANIEL CAVAZOS
The Valley Catholic

    EL RANCHITO — The spiritual journey to priesthood isn’t always preordained or announced with a voice from above.
    Father Brian Strassburger can affirm that a calling can emanate from within.
     “The way God works and moves in us isn’t always outside of us,” the Denver native said.
His life journey has taken him across the United States — and around the world — serving God and humanity. It was in South Africa while working as an Augustinian volunteer that a young man who once thought he would be a high school math teacher and basketball coach realized something else was calling. In South Africa, he was working like never before in his life, and yet, he said, “It was never easier to get up in the morning.”
     Father Strassburger found purpose and meaning, and heard a calling from within.
   “I’m thinking of becoming a priest,” he told his Augustinian spiritual adviser in South Africa.
      The skies didn’t open nor did his phone ring with a magical call. He didn’t need such fanfare after all. A religious vocation had been revealed to him, a calling he previously believed to be only for a select few. He had put such a possibility in a box, out of reach, but now it was becoming clear what God’s will was for him.
     “God speaks to us in our hearts,” he said.

A Priest’s Formation

     Father Strassburger’s formation as a Jesuit priest began in 2011.
     He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. As a Jesuit, he studied philosophy and international development at Fordham University in New York after previously ear ning an undergraduate degree from St. Louis University, a Catholic and Jesuit institution. He spent two years working in Nicaragua for a nonprofit Jesuit organization. He returned to the United States to do his theology studies at Boston College.
     After 10 years, his formation was complete and he was ordained as a priest in New Orleans on June 12, 2021. The new priest’s first assignment finds him on the Military Highway in El Ranchito, just due south of San Benito. Father Strassburger is the parochial vicar for the San Ignacio Loyola Church. He called it “a great place for my early priesthood to be formed.”
     He has been impressed by the warm welcome of the parishioners and being in the embrace of the close-knit community.
     “I’ve been in big cities where you can never really be one of them because you’re not from there,” Father Strassburger said. “But here in the Rio Grande Valley, people want you to be part of their families and of their community.”
     He describes the Catholic identity in the Valley as being “very strong and thriving.” Jesuit priests are called to serve in “the margins where the needs are great.”
     A parish along the Rio Grande with the border wall in view might seem to fit that definition, but Father Strassburger sees it differently.
 

     “If you look at the faith here, it’s not at the margins,” he said.
     In El Ranchito, he said, “belonging to parish really matters.”
     Father Strassburger has another mission in addition to being a priest for the San Ignacio parish.      Twice a week, he ministers to immigrants in Reynosa and McAllen in working with Catholic Charities. He celebrates Mass and delivers hygiene products, blankets, winter gloves and other donated items to immigrants. In doing so, Father Strassburger and others involved in these efforts are following the example set by Jesus Christ in the New Testament in helping those most in need, giving a hand to travelers making a journey through our homelands.
​​​​​​​     It fits in well with Father Strassburger’s values and outlook of being a servant priest. “I don’t think of my priesthood as an exalted state,” he said. “I try to live my priesthood as a pastor and help those I serve to stay close to God.”