On May 30, Archbishop José H. Gomez will ordain three new priests for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
In the days leading up to their ordination, we’ll be introducing them all. Los Angeles, meet your new priests!
Age: 26
Hometown: Lancaster
Home parish: Sacred Heart Church, Lancaster
Parish assignment: Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Northridge
When David Zamora was in high school thinking of potential careers, he thought he wanted to be a doctor.
That obviously didn’t happen, but as he was lying prostrate on the altar during the ordination Mass for him to become a transitional deacon in 2025, he said he heard God say that he wanted Zamora to “be an instrument of healing.”
So he’ll end up being a doctor after all, just the spiritual kind.
Looking back, Zamor’s vocation seems a natural fit, considering how much time he spent in church growing up. Born in South Gate, the family later moved to Lancaster, where Zamora did about everything you could do at Sacred Heart Church: He was confirmed there, taught OCIA classes, was a sacristan, lector, and an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, plus also involved in a prayer group.
“I was at church pretty much every day and I don’t mean that like it was a brag,” said Zamora, 26. “It was the place where I felt like it was home.
“I felt like it was in my element when I was around God, when I was at church, when I was doing his work.”
Zamora said he felt called by God at a young age, but like many others before him, he didn’t fully understand what it meant. Being one of six kids born to loving and devout parents, at first he thought he was being called to be a husband and have a family of his own.
But as he really started thinking of careers in high school, he kept coming back to God.
“I think I was trying to appease God and say, ‘I’ll give you this much’ until I realized he said, ‘I want all of you. I want everything,’ ” Zamora said. “I didn't realize how freeing it was to say yes.”
Another guiding light came in the form of the seminarians who would intern at Sacred Heart, many of them having had full careers before discerning a vocation to the priesthood.
“They had basically all the things that I thought I wanted and that wasn’t cutting it,” Zamora said. “Only God was enough to really satisfy that longing that they had.”
So at 17, right out of high school, he entered the seminary.
When he first joined, he thought it was going to be rigid, with nothing but prayer and school. But as he learned, there were a lot of fun times, a necessary bonding of a brotherhood, and plenty of spiritual lessons along the way.
Being introduced to the spirituality of his fellow seminarians helped Zamora ask himself a key question: Who is Jesus to me?
“That was so formative for my discernment because that’s ultimately what I want to do as a priest is let people know that Jesus wants to know who they are in a very unique way.”
Zamora also received an example in how to say yes to God in a familiar place: His own father, Miguel, who began the diaconate formation program a year before his son entered the seminary and is now a deacon at Our Lady of Grace Church in Encino.
“Before he was ever a deacon, as a father, he did a very great job of making sure that my spiritual needs were met, but also that I lived out my life as a good Catholic man,” Zamora said. “He was a good example, a constant man of prayer, a man of constant love and devotion to the Church.”
Besides being able to borrow his father’s vestments — “I think I'm the only one in my class that has all the Dalmatic colors,” Zamora said — he’s looking forward to something else he can share with his dad.
“I think the joke is that when he asks for the blessing to proclaim the Gospel, you go up to the priest and you say, ‘Your blessing, Father,’ ” Zamora said. “And I’m going to say, ‘Of course, father.’ I’m going to give him a blessing in return.”
Zamora believes he’s meant to be a priest in a city and an archdiocese with so much diversity and unique facets to the universal Church. Nowhere was that more evident for him than at St. Philomena Church in Carson, where Zamora did his internship. He was struck by the many cultures there, especially the Filipino ministry.
“And it wasn't just Filipino,” Zamora said. “There were Samoan, African American, Spanish-speaking. And I think that huge diversity that we had at St. Philomena just really inspired me to say I’m not a priest for one group, it’s for everybody. I’ll learn whatever it is I need to in order to work with them.”
