I have decided to start writing more personal material via the Thinker, if for no other reason than because it just so happens that the most important thing happening in my life at the moment happens to pertain quite explicitly to the Gospel of Christ and the Church he founded.
In just under four weeks now, on August 20 between noon and 4 PM to be exact, I will be reporting to Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas, TX to begin training to become a priest for the Diocese of Austin. I am very much looking forward to that day. This is certainly a time of intense transition for me, I’ve been telling people that if my life was a movie, we’d be about to roll credits and getting ready to start filming the sequel. (Not that I think my life is worth making a movie out of…)
Tonight at Mass I got to read the first reading, which was from Jeremiah 23:1→6. It was a stark reminder of the responsibilities that come with being a “shepherd” of “the flock of his pasture” (cf. v 1). Failing to meet that responsibility meets with considerably undesirable consequences, as Jesus says also in Matthew 18. None of this makes me fearful really. But it does help me to take seriously what an important task it is to share in the one priesthood of the one priest who is Christ.
It is for that reason that I am entering seminary with pretty much an entirely open mind. I do believe that seven years from now I will be ordained a priest for the Diocese of Austin. But I can be by no means certain.
The goal of seminary after all is not to make one a priest, but rather to help one to know as clearly as possible precisely what God is asking of him. If one goes to seminary and concludes that God is asking him to be the father of a nuclear family, then he should leave seminary and pursue that call. If God is asking him to be the father of a spiritual ecclesial family, then he should stay in seminary.
I don’t know which of those I will hear God calling me to a year from now. But suffice to say the thought of lifelong ordained ministry and service to the Mystical Body of Christ excites me in a way that no other path that I can think of at this point does, But I’m confident that if I keep focused on God and keep in mind the blessings he has graced me with in life in spite of my unworthiness, he will show me clearly the way he wants me to go. I just have to be patient in the meantime.
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