Vocations Awareness Week: Some of My Journey

This Sunday ends our Vocations Awareness Week, but it no way ends Vocations Awareness, that is something that must go on each day.  Fr. Michael Romano, our Vocations Director has been doing a wonderful job in the recruitment and development of 18 young men who are now active seminarians moving towards ordination.  I remind him over and over again that Coach K did not make Duke what it was overnight, but slowly and steadily built it into a juggernaut and that he could do the same for priesthood in our Diocese.  However, Fr. Romano is not alone in this, we too must help.  We can help by simply offering to a young man, “Have you ever considered the priesthood,” or “I think you would make a wonderful priest.”  Praying for vocations is also needed, but along with those prayers active recruitment as I just mentioned.

When I think back on my journey to priesthood I realize now there were so many signs and so many people, by God’s Divine Providence – and grace, that led me to enter Seminary.  Some I have shared with you already and to go over each one would be redundant.  My parents were a great influence, not because they ever asked me to be a priest, but through their prayer life, which was daily rosary, catechism, morning and evening prayers, and sharing bible stories, my local priests from Fairview whom I use to really wonder and be amazed at.  I use to think, “What made them become priests, why would they choose that life?”  That reflection on them was really an inner reflection of myself, i.e. what do you want.

As a young boy I loved Church and I was really in awe of the Mass, all the colors, sounds, smells, what the priest was wearing, his movements, the signing, the reading, all of it was incredible.  By the time I reached thirteen to fourteen years old Mass began to lose its luster for me, not that the Mass diminished, but I allowed myself to be pulled in different directions.  Two of those things were basketball and girls

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On Sunday mornings I couldn’t wait to get to the park to play pickup basketball with the older guys or go with them to 4^th Street in Greenwich Village to play against some of the best, I rarely got on the court there but love it I did.  When I would return home my mother would ask, “Did you go to Mass?”  I would say, “Yes” and hand her the bulletin.  What I would do is sneak into the back of the Church grab a bulletin and shoot out of there.  Eventually my mom caught up on this because she began asking me, “What did Father preach on?”

Then in my very early twenties I started going back to Church, not of my own volition, but rather due to the girl I was dating at the time.  I use to think, what a sacrifice I am making here, I hope she sees this sacrifice, anyway all kidding aside even in those moments, mostly bored out of my skull, God was still speaking to me because during Mass I would picture myself in the priest robes, walking around the altar, and most of all preaching and thinking I can do better than this guy (I am such a typical New Yorker-North Jersey guy, what can you do).  Without even knowing it those childhood memories of being in awe and beauty were breaking through.  God was working slowly but surely not just for me, that would be selfish, but also for my girlfriend at the time who has also been blessed by God with now a beautiful family.  What great love God has for us as He works in each of us to bring about the best for us.

And still, even after all of this I continued head long into what I thought what eventually be a college coaching career for me.  Again, Church became or rather went to the bottom of my priorities.  But, God did not give up on me.  After a powerful conversion experience in my mid twenties and about two years of discernment I eventually entered seminary, “Alleluia” the angels sang, he finally responded after 100,000 calls.

If you sat down with a priest I am sure each and every one of us has an incredible story of our journeys.  Today I only shared with you a very small part, there were other big moments and signs, and hopefully one day I will just give a vocation talk for about an hour and share it all in one sitting.  

When I think of all of those who have helped me towards a vocation whether they knew it or not, like my cousin Vinnie, my mom and dad, my high school English teacher Mr. PJ Shelley, my History Professor at Montclair State who was actually atheist, my former girlfriend who dragged me to Mass for purposes I would not fully understand until ten years later, Fr. Peter, Fr. Frank, Fr. Jim, Fr. Anthony, and finally my friends, the OLG gang the older crew and the younger crew.  We were more like brothers than friends and their support was amazing.  Each and every one of the folks I just mentioned was a Vocation Awareness person, simply by living the faith or by being direct. 

There is one other person I would like to thank and he has been gone from this world for about 1600 years and that is the man who was known as Augustine of Hippo.  He is my favorite Saint.  I gravitated towards him immediately upon reading about his life and recognized our paths shared many similarities.  In no way am I saying that I am like him, I have a very long way to go for that, but rather both of us were being called throughout our lives and either ignored the call or shook it off, however God did not give up on either one of us and I know that this great man prayed for me, that’s another story.  I will leave you with words that he wrote about himself that fit me perfectly, words that made us brothers, brothers as friends and brothers as priests.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!  You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your peace.