This week is National Vocation Awareness Week, an annual celebration and promotion of vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life. On the invitation of a Facebook friend who has been telling her vocation story to married life and as a way of participating in the promotion of religious life and priesthood, I decided I would share my vocation story with you all in six parts. Those of you who have heard the story before know that there are several versions of different length! I know you are all busy people, so I’ll try and keep things brief but interesting. Cue the soundtrack (and yes, my favorite dog IS buried in the yard): https://youtube/watch?v=DQYNM6SjD_o Growing up I’d say I had a very normal life and upbringing, and as far as my Catholic faith went, it was also very normal. Church on Sunday with Sunday school beforehand was basically it; I don’t remember learning all that much about my faith. But the weekly exposure, along with my dad’s insistence on the importance of weekly Mass, planted the seed of faith deep, even if it did not blossom until much later. I didn’t “get anything” out of the Mass, and I considered myself Catholic the same way other kids at my school considered themselves Methodist or Lutheran; I was Catholic because that was the church I went to on Sunday’s in Tipton, Iowa. As far as “vocation” went, I had no concept of such a thing; the closest I came was to the usual “what I want to be when I grow up” sorts of things. Paleontology, being an astronaut and being a soldier in the Army all came and went by the sixth grade when, inexplicably—especially since I was firmly rooted in the “girls are yucky” phase of boyhood—I discovered an overwhelming desire to be a stay-at-home dad. It was also around this time that I developed a passion for classical music via Beethoven, which unlocked the whole concept of “beauty” for me and transformed what I read, what I wrote, what interested me and how I saw the world. After becoming friends with Sean Odeen I also dove head-long into Star Wars and didn’t really emerge from it until after novitiate. I have many, many fond memories of the years that followed. I also have some memories that, at the time, were incredibly painful but, in hindsight, are not so heavy. Being a hopeless romantic by the time I hit high school, having an intense love of beauty and an interest in medieval myth, especially King Arthur. Hence I eventually overcame the “girls are yucky” phase and entered into the “there is nothing more beautiful in the world” phase. In the interest of brevity I will save you the details, but suffice it to say that I fell very much in love several times and was roundly denied in each, to varying degrees of heartbreak. I hold nothing against these women; I’d have reject me, too, and I eventually came to see my own immaturity, idealism and their efforts to avoid harming me. Ah, the drama of high school. One particular incident my freshman year, however, would have a lasting impact: in an effort to more clearly define who I was and who I wanted to be and to push back against the culture of disrespect I saw in my school toward the young women—many of whom were my friends—I took my own oaths of chivalry. I saw the importance of integrity, in letting my words and actions speak the same thing about me and being far more familiar with King Arthur than I was with Christ the King, well, that’s the path I took. That desire to serve others, to speak the truth, to serve a king and something greater than myself, was very strong in me. Eventually I would go to the University of Wyoming to major in archaeology; I had no strong pull toward it, only an interest, and I didn’t much care what I studied so long as, one day, I could have twenty or more kids of my own to raise and play with all day. It was at the St. Pauls Newman Center just off campus that the seed planted by my parents would finally take root and begin to sprout with the help of a good priest, good friends, and family in the area. I came home that summer slimmer, hairier and loving the fact that I was Catholic, though my ignorance of the faith was still very strong. It was also that summer that something I had given up as impossible happened: a girl fell in love with me. So I began to date my first girlfriend ever, at the ripe old age of 18, going on 19.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 15:34:49 +0000