Week 2 - Why Am I Studying to be a
Priest?
Last week in this space, we explored the meaning of the word “vocation”
and the three basic types of vocation: married life, celibate single
life, and priestly/religious life. This week, and in the weeks to come,
we will delve more deeply into a specific vocation – the call to be a
priest. This week’s topic is “why am I studying to be a priest?”
In the beginning, my plan for my life was very simple and
beautiful: become a lawyer, meet and marry a nice Catholic girl and
raise a family, make lots of money by doing good things for people,
retire to the south of France, live happily ever after. There is an old
saying, however: Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.
The first part of my plan went as expected; I obtained my law degree
from the University of San Francisco in 1979, passed the bar the same
year and began practicing law. Some years later, I joined my parish’s
young adult group in order to meet some nice Catholic girl, part two of
my “plan”. Then God started laughing. Somehow I became more and more
involved in parish ministry as a volunteer, first in ministries to the
homeless and to the elderly and then, later, in liturgical ministries.
The more involved I became at the parish, the more I began to encounter
something unexpected. I loved my work as an attorney, helping people
with their estate planning issues and doing general corporate work, but
my ministry at the parish gave me a sense of joy and fulfillment that my
work did not. In addition, my volunteer ministries awakened in me a
desire to know God better, to read scripture regularly, and to ask
questions about my life, especially to ask God where he was taking me
and what he wanted of me. Then one day during confession, Fr. McNaulty,
God rest his soul, asked me point blank. “Christopher,” he said, “you
spend a lot of time as a volunteer here at the parish. Do you think you
might have a priestly vocation?” Since I was in the confessional, I
could not lie, so I admitted that the idea had crossed my mind. That
admission was the beginning of a seven-year process of discernment, with
me constantly asking God “Are you sure about this? It’s not in my
‘plan’” -- and God responding through many people and events, “Yeah, I’m
sure. Can’t you hear me laughing?”
So, at age 50, after
twenty-four years of practicing law, I entered St. John’s Seminary in
Camarillo to study to be a priest for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I
won’t make lots of money and I certainly won’t be retiring to the south
of France (or retiring any time soon, period). But the joy and
fulfillment that flow from serving God’s people as a priest aren’t bad
substitutes, and by the grace of God I still hope to live happily ever
after. |
