Vocation Stories

[AlterDominicus]

Great vocation stories everyone!

Johnny B Girl
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[the_rev]

When I was born my mother was single and lived with her mother. My mother was not a devout Catholic, and did not want to be Catholic, even though her mother was. The responsibility to raise me in the faith was left to my grandmother because my mother had no interest in it. My grandmother saw to it that I was baptized, received first Holy Communion, and the other sacraments. She took me to Mass on the weekends and holy days and to daily Mass during the summer. In this lifestyle she had raised me in it was practical and normal to think of a vocation to the priesthood.

I found life during this period to be great. I was a pious altar server and wanted to be a priest. However this all changed when I reached the teenage years. I began to hang out with the wrong crowd when I was 13 and as a result I spent three days in a juvenile detention facility facing several charges and the possibility of going to juvenile prison. I did a lot of things that I now regret and as I look back at it I am ashamed of those things. However, I didn't go to prison, and by the grace of God I was allowed to plea bargain and have all charges dropped against me. They did this because I had a good record before everything happened and my grades were good. I was able to supply them with strong character references, and they knew that previous to this I had wanted to be a priest when I grew up.

The time which I spent in jail and the experience of being expelled from school frustrated me, so I stopped praying. I decided that I did not really believe in God and the only reason I went to Church on the weekend and daily during summer, was because of my grandmother. I didn't want to disappoint her by abandoning the faith she had raised me in, especially since she could no longer go to Mass herself. I couldn't bring myself to break her fragile heart by telling her that I no longer believed in God.

I was lucky to be allowed back into school for freshmen year, as if nothing had happened, but yet again I began to hang out with the older kids who were bad influences. I became more involved in sinful things but was able to maintain being a good student.

With the arrival of my sophomore year in high school life began to change. I was asked to work a political campaign; I could not believe I was asked to, but I said yes. It was something that I enjoyed, and as a result politics became the career that I wanted to go into. My experience in politics lead me to change my life from hanging out with the druggies and drinkers to once again being a model student. Even though I was still somewhat involved in parish work as an altar server, my doubts in the existence of God continued.

During my sophomore year I was also asked to make a trip to a place called Medjugorje. Due to my involvement in the parish and church beforehand, I was somewhat familiar with it and knew that the Blessed Mother was allegedly appearing to six people there, but that was the extend of my knowledge. After being asked if I wanted to go on the trip, I Googled it on the internet and found out that it was in a country where the United States once aided in a war. Upon learning that I realized that Medjugorje would be my ticket to learning about foreign government. Most of the trip was paid for through sponsorships by local businesses and by June of 2005 I boarded a plane bound for Sarajevo.

Before leaving in June, I had an interest in Medjugorje, so I purchased several books about Medjugorje. After reading a few of them, I was convinced of the existence of God. One of the very first messages from Our Lady was, “I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and peace, you must return to God". I finally got it, I realized God existed and I must return to his love. I started to believe in the everything the church taught and for the first time in three years I re-visited the idea of a priestly vocation silently, but really had no intent to follow through.

By the time we arrived in Medjugorje it was evening and one of the pilgrims took our group on a mini-tour; afterwards we were all exhausted and retired for the evening. I did everything that a normal pilgrim did.

From the start of the trip there I was amazed at what I found in Medjugorje because I fell in love once again with the faith that I had loved so much as a child. Ordinary Catholics went to daily Mass, and sought reconciliation to God through the confessional; they prayed the rosary and joined in prayer groups. Thousands of Catholics gathered in one village because of what allegedly occurs there; that they might grow in their relationship with the divine.

Encouraged by what I witnessed, I myself sought reconciliation with God for the first time with true contrition in several years. I attended daily Mass and each day I would make my way to the front of the church to sit on the floor because of the abundance of people there. I adored Christ in the monstrance from outside the church since the faithful flowed out of the doors; I was even asked if I was considering the Catholic priesthood, to which I vehemently responded no.

I wanted to be involved in politics and run for public office. A priest in this land told me that I had a vocation to the priesthood and each day for the rest of my stay I must arise and climb Podbro Mountain where the Blessed Mother allegedly first appeared. Reaching the statue of Gospa, (Our Lady in Croatian) he told me to kneel and pray a rosary with the intention being for my vocation. For the remainder of this trip I knelt each morning on the top of a mountain praying to God through the Blessed Mother asking her for a sign that I was called to the priesthood and that in return I would be her priest.

I did what any new discerner would do, and I prayed, “GOD IF I HAVE A VOCATION GIVE ME A SIGN”. Later that day, after praying, I thought I found the answer to my prayer. I was playing with some Croatian children in a fun game of football (soccer) and one of the pilgrims from my group said, “YOU WILL MAKE A GREAT DAD SOMEDAY”. I immediately thought I had a vocation to the married life, because this person told me I would make a great dad! That was the only sign that I really found during my stay in Medjugorje, so with that thought I returned to the United States and told my parish priest that I wanted to have a wife and children because that was the sign that I received in Medjugorje!

I knew that our diocese had a Marian shrine where the Blessed Mother had appeared at the 1800s because I had visited it many years ago. A local newspaper story reminded me of its existence. The paper said that the Bishop would make his annual pilgrimage there on August 15th and would celebrate Mass. I decided that since I could drive I would go to there. Upon my arrival, I found the answer to my prayer that I made in Medjugorje; I knew that this time I had received the true sign.

When I reached the shrine I had to park 1/2 mile away because so many people had chosen to go to there on that day. It was a very “Medjugorje-like” experience in my own diocese, and I knew at that moment that God was calling me to the priesthood. If that wasn’t enough, the words of the Bishop were a clincher as in his homily he retold the story of the Annunciation and how it was Mary's faithfulness, “her saying 'yes' to God, without knowing that one day she would hold her dying son in her arms, that brought about our salvation…We must respond to our own call”.

After that encounter of prayer, I contacted the vocation director. After a year of many dinners and lunches spent discussing the prospect of my vocation and what that would entail, I applied with the diocese for college seminary. On April 20th, 2007, the Bishop accepted my application for seminary.