Miranda understood that the vocation she loves and values comes from the hand of God, since she understands that Medicine is not just a profession, but a ministry.
Mario César Miranda Torres, internist doctor. Photo: Archive of the Journal of Medicine and Public Health. Fabiola Plaza.
Despite having a prestigious career as a doctor, soldier and teacher, he did not hesitate to respond to the call of the Señor to study in Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico and become a shepherd Lutheran Church of Caguas for 12 years.
However, this son born and raised in the Puerta de Tierra neighborhood of San Juan has brought hope through prayer in more than six decades of service to others, calming the afflicted spirit of his patients and their respective relatives at times of pain and uncertainty.
“I had always participated in religion since Puerta de Tierra in a Lutheran church. It was there that I developed the qualities of a youth leader and later I was a leader in Puerto Rico and then at the national level. Part of the duties they gave me was to interview the pastor candidates. I was already a doctor and knowing the church well, I had to determine who was called to be a pastor and who was not. Fortunately, they sent me good candidates”, recalled the eldest of four brothers born in the marriage of Mario, César and Isabel.
“One of the concerns was that Lutheran pastors had to go to the United States to study and when they had great careers and practically had to separate from their family to go study in a language that many did not know. I talked and we established a contact that Lutheran students might start in the evangelical seminary in Puerto Rico and then they might go to university. I enrolled and following that I said ‘come on, if this is my thing,’ confessed the 86-year-old internist.
So it stayed five years in academic preparation to pastor a church without closing his medical office or giving up his obligations in both the health field and the military.
But his greatest satisfaction is having always had the support of his family made up of a wife and five children, including two sets of twins and another being who was born from the heart, since he was adopted.
“I am no longer pastoring, but I am as a retired pastor, I am as a member of a church, now I am a parishioner. But, it has been a pastor’s experience for 12 years in Caguas. To leave here, from Bayamón to go to shepherd in Caguas, plus the office and meanwhile, I was in the Naval Reserve. I had four things at the same time at one time. I don’t know how I did it,” he said, noting that he finished his theology studies in 1985, when he was 50 years old.
“I was studying at the evangelical seminary, the other was that I was a member of the Naval Reserve, then the office and I had a church assigned in Caguas. As I did? First, my family, which has been extraordinarily supportive, so I’m extraordinarily lucky, I haven’t had any problems with my family supporting me in all my tricks, because I’m careful, I’m a trickster”, confessed the former ‘commander officer’ of the Roosevelt Roads Naval Reserve unit in Ceiba.
Miranda Torres recognizes that the call of God He has opened many doors to his life by deciding to serve him through The vocation for which he prepared himself from his youth.
“I understand that the medicine It is not just a profession… medicine is a ministry and that ministry is the one to which God has called you and tells you ‘this is it’. It has opened many doors for me in particular… how does an individual from the neighborhood become a doctor? So, I look back and say ‘Lord, you have something for me’. The Lord wants me to do this, but it is a call from this, but it is a call from him to serve his children. So, that’s when I entered as a pastor, “said Mayra Cora Camacho’s husband, whom he married following being widowed following 49 years of marriage.
“At all times I have had a family that supports me, with a church that reinforces my faith at all times and with my prayers and my direct spirituality with the Lord in which I have to listen to the Lord’s mandate. What does he want me to do?” he added.
On the other hand, he related the importance of praying for his patients, although he admitted that he does not do it with all of them, in addition to singing choruses spontaneously.
“When you are seeing patients, you see how they start and how they get older and how they lose capacity, and finally when they die. You realize that they need support and that support you have to give them. Now, in these times of the pandemic, even more so, when you have very serious patients,” said the University of Puerto Rico graduate.
“I treated COVID patients and those patients have no one to support them, someone to ask how they are? So what can we do with them? Well, we can pray with them. I do not pray with everyone, but I look for the opportunity that the patient, you notice that he has the need and it comes naturally. So even though I have a voice that is not very good, there are a lot of choruses and we sing and that makes me feel like I am following in the footsteps of the Lord,” he continued.
He also admitted that during his 63 years of experience as a doctor internist has seen many miracles; confession that he often quarrels with science.
“I have seen miracles and, in fact, one of the COVID patients I saw and said it was a matter of three or four hours, and the patient woke up from it and is happy with life and was discharged. I simply put it in his (God’s) hands because the medicines we have for many of the conditions are there; so you have to have the help of the Lord so that you can be an efficient doctor and then, without trying to attribute miracles to yourself, but rather the Lord intervenes, ”he revealed.
“So, if I pray with my patients and I pray with one of their families, I explain to them that it is the will of the Lord, if he thinks fit. And I also explain to him that for there to be a miracle there has to be some purpose in that miracle. I bring up the resurrection of health, ”he argued.
In the framework of the solemnity of the Holy Fridaythis retired physician and pastor spoke of the passion and crucifixion Jesusand his explanation of the life of human beings waiting for a miracle to save them from the danger of death.
“With Jesus an event occurred and the power of the Lord was demonstrated, but he died, which was not a permanent thing, but the Lord had a purpose for that miracle. If the Lord has a purpose for his relatives, then he will keep him alive and he will let us know what the purpose is and we learn from that purpose, “he said.
“The crucifixion is central because it is the sacrifice and so it is something you can see, he died for us. So, when he rises, the Holy Spirit leaves us to watch over and be with us as he is with me at all times, with you. So the crucifixion is not just an event, but it has to be accompanied by the resurrection; it is the one we celebrate on Sunday,” he concluded.
