I didn’t realize it at the time, but as a kid, I think a lot of people hoped I’d be a priest one day. I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone, but my calling is to my domestic church at the WRC Estate with my lovely wife in beautiful Shawnee, Kansas. But I was struggling in Math class in 8th Grade, and my teacher said I could get extra credit if I wrote a report on the priesthood and interviewed a priest about his calling.
My dad suggested a fun young priest at a neighboring parish who was also the Vocations Director to the Archdiocese; I nervously called up the rectory and asked to schedule an appointment. A couple days later, I was greeted by the priest and invited to his office to ask a handful of questions that I had scribbled on a notepad. I don’t remember much of the interview, except that I messed up the tape recorder and didn’t record the interview, but I did have some notes scrawled that I could use for the essay. But more importantly, I passed Math class. Most importantly, I remember a powerful lesson that he gave me about God’s call: it is quiet.
He told me that the calling to the priesthood is subtle. The Holy Spirit fills you slowly. It doesn’t have a specific voice, and it’s easy to overlook or put out of your mind. When the Lord speaks to you, he’ll put a small inkling into your mind—just a passing thought to consider becoming a priest. And you can “change the subject”, and get back to Super Mario Bros. or to the baseball game, and that thought goes away. Except it does not go away… You’ll be tooling down the road one day and cross the railroad tracks when you have a fleeting notion to be a priest. And you can ignore that thought and do something else instead; but it’ll crop up again later. Sometimes much later-- like years later, it’ll sit in your craw and pop up when you’re not expecting it. That is God’s voice, that’s what it sounds like. And I’ve found over the years, He doesn’t just talk to us about priesthood. He calls us back to his Church, he calls us into the confessional, he calls us to our vocations—even if it’s not a vocation of the cloth.
I’ve got a friend who I believe is waiting for his “Saint Paul” moment. Saul was a pretty bad dude, a Pharisee who earned his fame in the days after Jesus’ resurrection by persecuting, arresting and executing Christians in the earliest days of the Church. Remember, it was dangerous to be a Christian in the early days of Christianity. And Saul was one of the reasons it was so dangerous. He famously joined the mob who stoned St Stephen the Martyr in the 6th chapter of Acts of the Apostles. And one day, when Saul was taking a band of vigilantes to break up and arrest a Christian gathering, he was struck by lightning, thrown from his horse, and laid on the ground while hearing the voice of Jesus calling him to be one of the greatest apostle in the history of Christ’s Church.
Most of us don’t hear directly from God quite like that.
Is that what my friend is waiting for? I don’t know. I don’t know how to tell him about the Call, either. I don’t think he reads this young blog, and don’t think I’d ask him too, either. Personal ramblings aren’t exactly the forum fit for evangelization. And I can’t hear his call for him. But I pray for him constantly, that one day he’ll know the power and peace of the Lord. I think he’d actually like St. Paul a lot, the apostle could teach him quite a bit; here’s hoping one day he’ll listen to that little whisper in his ear.
