My Vocation Story

Looking back at my life, it makes sense that God guided me to the priesthood. It wasn’t something I considered until relatively later, but the people and situations that I encountered all seem to point that way.

I was blessed to grow up Catholic in Steubenville, Ohio. My family went to Mass every weekend, my parents encouraged us to pray before bed, and the Faith was something that was always there. Growing up in a Catholic elementary school and then high school gave me every opportunity I could want of learning about what I believed and practicing it.

When I was in high school, however, my main focus was on music. I had been in the band since 5^th grade and, for those few years, it was the center of my life. Most of my friends were people I met in marching band. Most of my time was spent in practices, performances, or hanging out with other band members. It wasn’t a bad time – besides friendships, those years gave me a great appreciation for the beauty of music and the great joy that could come from playing it.

As high school graduation grew nearer, my choices for college were largely defined the same way. I wanted to study journalism (to write for a newspaper or magazine) and I wanted to continue playing in a school band. Mount Union College met those criteria and, when I toured the campus for the first time, I knew that I wanted to go to college there.

My years at Mount Union were probably the most formative ones of my life. I went there with my own plans, but God had even better things in store.

My roommate during my freshman year was another guy from Steubenville named Josh. We had gone to high school together but weren’t that close. I did know that Josh was a serious Catholic and that seemed like a good kind of person to live with.

One evening, Josh asked me if I wanted to go to a Bible study with him. I’d never been to a Bible study, but, “Why not?” I thought. It was a non-denominational Christian group with students of various ages meeting in one of the dorm room lobbies. There we met several other freshmen guys who lived in our dorm; in fact, several of them lived right around our end of the hallway.

I didn’t know it, but God was doing something. Those guys became some of my best friends. Over the rest of the year, we all got involved with the Christian community on campus. MUC wasn’t a very religious place, but I found friendship and support in that group of Christians. We ate together, we prayed together, we played a lot of ultimate Frisbee together. I played drums in two different praise bands and joined the Christian service fraternity on campus.

Living with those people showed me the Body of Christ in action. It was really the first time I had friends who weren’t Catholic. That had an unexpected consequence.

Catholics were the majority on campus as a whole, but a minority within the active campus ministry group. There were, however a few of us. Josh and I became involved in the music ministry for the Sunday night Masses held on campus as well as the Catholic campus ministry group that did some catechesis and charity work. What made my faith as a Catholic really grow, though, was engaging with other Christians about what the Church really believed.

Growing up surrounded by Catholics in my family and in my schools, I never really had to explain myself. Now I had friends who would question what the Church taught (or what they had been told the Church taught). To respond, I had to learn. I read books and blogs on apologetics. I asked priests and others to help me understand things. While I was gathering material to try to explain Catholicism to my friends, I was becoming more and more convinced myself.

Now, I never doubted Catholicism. I had just taken it for granted. When I started to explore the beautiful symmetry and reason of the Faith, I was blown away. This had to be from God – not human could come up with something so amazingly complete. I was proud to be a Catholic and thankful that God had brought me to a place where I could appreciate it.

The next step, for me, was diving deeper into the Catholic spiritual life: making trips to the perpetual adoration chapel in town, going to daily Mass with some Catholic friends, and praying the rosary while we walked around campus. God was speaking to me through those treasures of the Church.

Then, in the middle of my junior year, I went to the March for Life in Washington, DC for the first time. It was a life-changing trip.

First, I experienced the Vigil Mass for Life in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Everything about that evening was beautiful. The church itself is breathtaking; but the liturgy was just as amazing. The entrance procession of seminarians, deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals lasted half an hour – and I didn’t get bored. The Mass itself lasted hours – but I didn’t get bored. We couldn’t even really see anything without the help of a TV screen – I still wasn’t bored. I was just excited and in love with being Catholic. As I fell asleep that night, praying the rosary on a gym floor with hundreds of other pilgrims, I felt a great sense of peace.

The next day, after going to Mass with thousands of young people at the Verizon Center, we finally made it to the March. That in itself is a powerful experience, but one image still stands out for me: a group of some kind of Franciscans walking barefoot. It was January in DC and, like every year I’ve gone since, the weather was not friendly, but there they were, walking for life with no shoes on.

I can’t tell you when the idea of priesthood popped into my mind during that trip, but when I got back to my dorm room, it was there. The next day, while talking to my brother on AOL Instant Messenger, he mentioned that he was thinking about the priesthood – suddenly I knew that I was thinking about it too.

From that day on, being a priest just made sense to me. It seemed to fit.

I had assumed that I would eventually meet the right woman and get married; however, when I thought of myself as a celibate priest, it felt right.  There was no great struggle or blinding light from the sky – it was just there.

During the rest of my time in college I sought advice on what to do next. I looked into religious orders, I talked to a seminarian I knew, and, during the summer before my senior year, I got in touch with a spiritual director.

The more I prayed and thought about it, the more convinced I was that God was calling me to be a priest. He had gotten me more and more involved with the Church throughout college – to the point that I considered that the focus of my life; now I felt called to give everything to Him and to the Church. At the end of that summer I sent an email to the vocation director of my diocese ...

... and didn’t get a reply. I had been back at school and sort of just treading water with that calling or a few months when I finally heard from a member of the diocese’s vocation team.

From there things seemed to speed up: I filled out applications, visited seminaries, took psychological tests, and, by graduation day, I was accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese of Steubenville and a student at St. Vincent Seminary.

To fast forward a bit: I am now a priest. My time in seminary was one of continued prayer and discernment, but that call to give myself completely to God and the Church (especially the Church of Steubenville) never went away. Through the tribulations of formation – six more years of school. Six! – I felt more and more confirmed in what I was doing; so now I can say that I am still very happy to be a priest.

All along, I’ve had the support of my family and friends. I know many potential priests don’t have that, so it makes me appreciate it all the more. Everyone from my parents to my protestant friends encouraged me in seeking what God wanted me to do with my life.

It’s been a little over two years since my ordination as I write this. In many ways it’s hard to believe that my life is what it is. The priesthood is a beautiful, challenging life. There are good days, difficult days, and sometimes very difficult and very good days – but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

God does amazing things in His people and I have the great privilege to play a part in that. Celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, comforting and anointing the sick, preaching, ministering to students and prisoners – how could I ask for anything else?