One of the most beautiful images that Jesus uses to describe His love for the world is the image of the Good Shepherd. He leads the flock, guards them and protects them, feeds them, and – ultimately – lays down His life for them. And, in response, the sheep hear His voice and follow Him.
One of the strangest components of the Catholic Church is that Jesus gave this “image” – or “office” – to certain men. He invites Peter and the apostles to “feed my sheep” and to “tend my lambs.” That is, Jesus calls men (and, scandalously, sinful men at that!) to be shepherds. And that call is so univocal (I lack the right word) that Jesus tells His men-shepherds: “Whoever hears you, hears me” – through you, Peter and your brother priests, Jesus will speak to His flock. Make it easy for His people to hear His voice!
The Latin word for shepherd is “pastor” – which is where we get the English word ……… pastor. (Haha). A pastor is a shepherd. Pray for us priests, that we may be good ones!
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This weekend, the Vocations Director of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis asked us priests to talk to our parishes about our personal vocation stories. On this blog, I will give the “director’s cut” – a much-extended version. I hope it glorifies God and not myself.
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People sometimes ask: “Father, when did you know that you were called to be a priest?” And I tell them that it was just seconds before I walked down the aisle at ordination. But that’s a lie. Actually, I knew during the first week of 2010. I was 29. … I’ll come back to that in a bit.
But, when I look back on my life, I can tell that The Call was there since I was 5. Amazingly, I still have some memories from that age. When I was five, I remember sitting next to my dad at Sunday Mass. I also remember being a little squirrely at times and, on one occasion, I made it under the pew. And I laid there, just listening. I heard the people recite the Creed (even though I did not know what “the Creed” was back then) and it sounded like thunder – and I loved thunder. During storms, I would have the back sliding door wide open and lay down on the carpet and listen … until the rain was too much and the door had to be closed. So, early on, I equated Mass with something powerful, contemplative, and – the correct use of the word – awesome.
I remember the voice of the older Vincentian priest sounding deep and solemn. And I naturally thought: “That’s God!” The music was bright and catchy and, since I loved music even at that young age, I would return home and, on occasion, just lay on the couch humming one of the hymns. It’s like I was made for the Mass.
In retrospect, I am very grateful to my parents for always taking us to Sunday Mass. We were a soccer and sports-crazed family and we did club sports – even travelled on occasion before traveling was really a thing – but, even then, we always went. Or, at least, I have no recollection of ever missing.
And so, at summer camp before third grade, when my group leader asked us kids to “draw what you want to be when you grow up,” I drew what I loved: soccer and Mass. So, I drew that I wanted to be a soccer referee … and also a priest. I couldn’t decide which one, so I drew both. This was not at a Catholic camp of any sorts, so I found myself having to explain what a priest was. I was nervous and felt a little “out-ed.” This was the first time I ever had to explain the faith to anyone.
By the time I was in seventh grade, unfortunately, I had been through some trauma: my parents divorced, we lost my childhood home, dad had become an alcoholic and also had mental issues, my remaining grandparents died, and my older brothers started to disappear into late high school and college. Later on, mom would tell me that I had a different heart – very sensitive – and that it was a good thing. But it was also a bad thing in that these events hurt deeply. I started to go to kids’ group therapy, where I initially learned about emotions and listening (to yourself and to others) and other things that are important … Strangely, during that time, I discovered that other kids in my school were also from divorced families (we think we are alone, sometimes!) and I found it important to listen. One of the nicknames I had back then was “Doctor Antwan” simply because I would listen. I thought “maybe I’ll be a psychologist someday….”
During this time, my mom was going through a little “reversion.” While we were Catholic growing up – going to Mass on Sunday, prayers before meals, celebrating Easter and Christmas with family – we didn’t do other Catholic things: read scripture, pray the rosary together, talk about a moral life of virtue. Catholicism was just kind of "baked in" to the background of life. It wasn't bad at all, just not at the forefront; "cultural" we would say now, but not "intentional." In short, Catholicism was a thing of life, but not The Thing. So, when things were getting tough, and mom was awakening to The Thing, she started reading scripture (I strangely remember her paging through the Book of Job) and going to Eucharistic Adoration.
This devotion (“adoration”) was not nearly as popular back then as it is now. There weren’t many “adoration chapels.” So, one of the major outlets for this devotion was the Blue Army All-Night Vigil. This group had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and, once per month, they would gather at a rotating list of parishes in Saint Louis, and would pray all night in front of the exposed Eucharist. Many people would come and go, of course, but mom would stay the entire night. And since I was not quite ready to stay home overnight – nor was she ready to let me stay home overnight by myself – my younger sister and I would come with … and I found myself laying down on top of (not under) the church pews. Even though I had made my First Communion and went to Sunday Mass, I did not know what this was. So, I slept.
When dawn came and the vigil ended, the gregorian chant Tantum ergo would be sung. Sheepishly, I will admit that this is when I started to love chant – it indicated that we were at the end and it was time to go home (and maybe get donuts en route). Yet, I am convinced that as I slept under the gaze of our Lord, I was receiving deeper graces of a vocation. “The Lord gives His graces to His beloved while they sleep” (Psalm 127:2).
In high school, I was floored when I discovered that men were teachers. At my Catholic grade school, we had a man as a principal and as a music teacher, so when a man was teaching English and another was teaching math and another was teaching history – I was amazed. Nothing against the very inspirational and motherly teachers of my grade school. It’s just that I was a boy and boys need good men. And suddenly I had a bunch of good men around – including some very faithful and amazing Jesuit priests. They were good men, wise, funny, serious when needing to be, and inspiring. The thought entered my mind … – and then disappeared as I discovered girls.
Thankfully, I still continued in Sunday Mass, and there were stirrings in my spiritual life – times when I was close to waking up, but then would fall back to sleep: a retreat, a service project, a good confession, a tragedy, a euphoric joy, a powerful homily, a moving school play … High school and, later, college, was a time of riding waves between spiritually awake and spiritually sleep… Fully awake happened in May 2002. I was falling deep into existential despair. (Some of this was due to the enlightenment philosophy I was immersed in at the time; some of it was due to lack of a substantial foundation to counter it; and some of it was simply my own sinfulness). But the awake came in New Orleans, Louisiana.
I was with a group of my lovely bunch of Newman Center friends spending a week in New Orleans to do some service with Habitat for Humanity. During one of our days, for one reason or another, our work took us to Saint James parish catty-corner to the Superdome. We did some landscaping for the church and then fed the poor at the Feed My Jesus food pantry. I remember jumbalaya, gumbo, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and cokes. And I remember giving a sandwich and a coke to an older gentleman (older for me back then was 50 … goodness!) who had a graying beard and whose skin was white. Now, skin color has never really mattered to me. But it did at that moment because, well, I hadn’t actually met face-to-face a caucasian poor man.
As our eyes met, something hit in my brain: “He is better off than you.” I wanted to express charity to this man, but something was being given to me – and I didn’t like it. How was this man better off than me? I couldn’t get rid of the thought. It was like a splinter in a finger that couldn’t be removed. So, I gave it its due. And I still could not answer. I was nearing the end of a degree at a top-ten college; I had a car, a family, a girlfriend, and a shower that morning. This poor man – what did he have? How was he better off than me?
The answer came during that summer. I had “successfully failed” two of my classes (I love that oxymoron) and had been put on academic suspension; my relationship with my girlfriend was reaching its termination; and the existential despair was at its nadir. I was desperate – and, thanks be to the mercy of God – it led me to reach out to one of the Jesuit priests at my high school from years’ past. That wise priest, over the course of just a couple brief visits, diagnosed the issue and proposed the solution.
The issue was that I had stopped praying. The deeper issue was that, when I had been praying, it had been mechanical and without the heart. And the solution was to say the Our Father slowly. … Later in the autumn, I embarked upon the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. That changed everything.
First, I realized why God had reached down in New Orleans and told me that the poor man was better off than me: I still believed in a heaven and a hell, and I knew the line “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and I intimated that this man in front of me may say a prayer for a bite of food, or a place to stay, or protection from danger – and maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t – but he was in a better position to do so than I was. I was the rich man who didn’t even know his spiritual poverty – the worst kind of poverty! – and I had nothing, really, to recommend me for heaven. I was a camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle – and my existential dread was a symptom alerting me to the illness. And God wanted to bring me healing. The thorn in the finger – the unmoveable thought in the mind – was the Divine Physician’s initial treatment.
Second, as I started to really pray with the heart, I realized I had always encountered the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” – but never really considered: “What does God want me to be when I grow up?” I needed to ask Him this and pursue it.
That led me to grad school and Franciscan University and Rome and a whole host of experiences that awakened me all the more to God’s grace. I’d be remiss if I did not mention the last girl I ever dated. She really knew Jesus and she really loved. She was truly authentic and was integrating faith and charity. In short, she really wanted to do what God wanted – even if that meant letting me go. During our time, she went on a retreat and, while on retreat, visited the bookstore (very dangerous!). There was a book there that she felt was calling her – and it was for me. She bought it, brought it home, and put a note on it: “Anthony, I think you need to read this.” It was the book “A Priest Is Not His Own” by Fulton Sheen. I’m convinced that she perceived my vocation to the priesthood before I did.
The desire to be a soccer referee, or a psychologist, or an inspiring teacher, or a helpful servant, or a child simply enjoying the Holy Mass and resting in the presence of Jesus and the heavenly Father – it didn’t “all come back.” Rather, as I read that book, it all became connected, like the tumblers of a lock falling on a key. A door was opening. … But if I was to go through it, it would mean the end of many things (it would also mean the beginning of many beautiful things! But I could only see the end. And that was terrible. … Besides my mother, I have never known a more loving woman than the last girl I dated).
So, after she let me go, I entered the seminary.
While I was confident I was supposed to be there, I wasn’t convinced that I would become a priest. I was just so keenly aware of my faults and failings. Seminary was beautiful and difficult – it was like the three years when Peter was being so closely discipled by Jesus: times of walking on water, times of being rebuked for thinking like men and not God.
And so, finally, I arrive now at the first week of 2010. I was on a retreat before being ordained to become a Deacon. I was at one of my favorite places – the Lourdes Grotto at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows (in Belleville, Illinois) – and it was snowing. And I absolutely LOVE snow. There, at the grotto, I was praying the Rosary and, right as I began, I realized that I had said many, many Rosaries in the past few years, but I never really treated Mary like a person – more like a statue or an idea. So, I addressed her: “Mary …. what are you like?”
I continued to pray, now kneeling next to the Saint Bernadette statue, the snow about a half-foot deep. And I heard snow plows in the distance. … Mary had not yet told me anything, but I did feel a pull in my heart to pray for the men in the snow plows. It was snowing hard and I know it isn’t easy work. So, I prayed: “Lord, please bring those men safely home.”
Are you willing to suffer for them?
This was as clear as the “He is better off than you” from years ago. It was the Lord. … The question bothered me. I wanted to know more: What kind of suffering are we talking about? (Because there are many different kinds of suffering, Lord. Are we talking cancer, or what?). I received no other reply other than the invitation. And, by the end of the second decade of the rosary, I said yes.
By the end of the third decade of that rosary, it came to me that I should pray for the other people on the road that night. So, I prayed: “Lord, help those who are on the roads nearby – help them get safely home.” And, again, the reply was: “Will you suffer for them?” Lord, that’s a lot more people than snowplows, so I presume that means more suffering? … No answer … Middle of the fourth decade now …. Ok, fine, Lord, fine. Yes. I will suffer for them, too.
I get to the fifth decade and I realize this is a big snow storm, larger than Belleville. Lord, I say, this storm is probably hitting all of Saint Louis, so please bring them all home safely. … Will you suffer for them?... Lord, I say – somewhat frustrated – that’s a lot more people, and I already said I would suffer (I pause) …. Lord, I will suffer for whomever you want.
And that’s when I knew.
Because it wasn’t just about snow and cars and suffering. It was about love. Jesus was asking me, just like He asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Peter replied, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Then suffer for them, feed them, tend them. Jesus was asking me the same things as Peter because Jesus was asking me to be like Peter, a pastor, a shepherd.
I also realized that Mary had answered my question about her – what are you like? She answered it by taking me by the hand and giving me to Jesus. “This is what I am like: my entire heart is His and with His and in His. I am the mother of priests.”
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Some people ask what the best part of being a priest is. Changing bread and wine into Jesus is life-altering; freeing people in the confessional from sin – that’s tremendous; being able to turn water into holy water … opening the gates of heaven during Last Rites …. These are all such tremendous, tremendous gifts. But I think the best part of being a priest is the mystery of just having been called – and the gift of being able to see it and noticing the other hidden things that He is doing, often through me and (admittedly, sometimes) despite me.
Which leads to the hardest part about being a priest: firstly, knowing that I will never live up to the call and, not simply that, but, having known that, at times refusing to seek or receive His help and rather think, in such dumb, really dumb ways, that I can do it myself. Oh, self-reliance is a brutal sin! … But the second hardest part is living in a post-Catholic culture. I liken it to a man who loved his wife but is now divorced and is trying to win her back. So many people have left the faith or are in the process of leaving (the suspicion of their priests and of the faith is a hallmark) and, well, how does one woo back his wife when she looks upon him with suspicion? – some suspicion being warranted, some suspicion not, and some being the result of her own foolish choices. That’s the hardest part.
But, as with Sacramental marriage, the spiritual marriage is healed and deepened by trust. And by holding hands again and praying together. If even just the Our Father slowly ……….
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So, pray for priests. And pray with them.
After ordination, my mom confided in me: “Your heart was always different than others.” This was a compliment. I think she saw that Jesus had given me His. She perceived my vocation before I did, too… Jesus giving me His heart: sometimes pierced, sometimes crowned, sometimes glorious, sometimes received, sometimes not … Totally unmerited and yet totally given.
It is as Pope Saint John Paul II said about his priesthood: “It is both gift and mystery.”
Given to me forever, and a priest forever: May 28th, 2011 -- just 15 years ago.
