Discernment Stories

Over the course of my life I have heard many vocation stories. Usually, those stories contain some deep spiritual moment or “firework” conversion – a moment in which a man hears the voice of God with enough clarity that he knows what God wants him to do with his life. The lives of the saints are often like that. God speaks from heaven and calls certain ones to serve Him in some miraculous and special way. My own story, however, is very different. 

I grew up on a family farm just outside the small town of Russia, OH, and my home life was not much different than others. My family was ardently a part of St. Remy Church, where I enjoyed serving Holy Mass and did so quite frequently – sometimes on a weekly basis. I attended a K-12 public school, played a few sports, and begrudgingly took part in the youth group. At the same time, I was very much inspired by the humble example of my childhood pastor. There was something very attractive about the way he lived his life and I was intrigued by it. Seeing him, the thought of being a priest had entered my mind on occasion – and I was open to entertaining the idea – but how could I? I had never received a call from God.

In my last couple years of high school those occasional thoughts did not disappear, and I wrestled with the idea of what to do after graduation. I knew that I had to make some sort of decision of what to do. I had visited a few college campuses, but to be honest, I was really only fooling myself. Eventually I had enough guts to admit to myself that my decision of what to do after graduation had to come down to this: I knew that I would never know for certain whether God was calling to be a priest if I did not go to seminary and at least try it out – and I did not want to be always looking back for the rest of my life wondering what might have been. 

So I entered college seminary in the Fall of 2013, and I could not have been more thankful or happy. For in seminary for the first time I really began to feel the call of my vocation. Seminary was the place where my vocation became alive because finally there was a peace in the depths of my soul. To be sure, there were still no “love at first sight” or “firework” moments. There was no miraculous intervention where God opened the heavens and called down to me. No, my vocation did not involve some definitive moment where I knew for certain of what God wanted me to do – never to look back. Instead my vocation was a gradual progression. And seminary gave me the tools to see this. It showed me how to open myself up to hearing the quiet whispers of the voice of God amidst the storms that had threatened the peace I desperately was searching for.

Growing up, I always thought that a priestly call would be very clear. I thought that there would be some moment when I would definitively know whether I had a vocation or not before I entered seminary. But this was not the case. God does not call us in the manner and time that we expect. He never gives us the answer to our questions, instead God provides “hints” along the way – small moments from time to time where we realize that there is something more to life and more to who we are. And this ultimately is what I realized in college seminary. The smallest thoughts of a priestly vocation that I had throughout high school was itself God’s way of calling me. God knew exactly how many hints I needed, and when I needed them, for me to take notice and follow Him. Often we think that we could maybe see ourselves being a priest, but we rationalize that God would explicitly tell us if this were the case. Certainly, God calls some to follow Him by using those “firework moments,” and certainly we all aspire to have such a call. But what if those few thoughts of seeing ourselves as a priest which come our way slowly and overtime is God’s quiet way of inviting us to just try it out? Maybe it’s not enough for us to know if we are called to be a priest or not, but is it enough to just get us to the next step of seminary?