It is hard to get young men (and parents!) over their fear of seminary.  It is almost impossible to get a guy to even go look at a seminary, much less enter one.  There is this stigma that to enter seminary, you must first be absolutely sure of your vocation to the priesthood, be holy beyond reproach, and  be ready to completely detach yourself from the real world.  These are admirable goals, but hardly necessary for a young man thinking of a vocation to the priesthood.  Seminary is not for the already perfect.  Seminary is for regular guys, and thus is not a scary place at all!  Of course, the attention given to prayer and formation is makes it a more intense environment than other colleges, but that intensity is balanced with lots of time for friendships and recreation.  Ask a priest or our seminarians.  Seminary is not a scary place.  It is a fun place to be!

I oftentimes get the question regarding my own path to priesthood, ‘Aren’t you glad you got a taste of the real world before committing your life to the priesthood?’  Well, the answer is yes and no.  Even as I am grateful for everything I experienced and learned at KU and in the real world before I entered seminary, and even though I can see God’s providence at work throughout my life, it is not necessarily true that I am a better priest today because I waited to enter seminary until I was 25.  The real world is a great place to learn life’s lessons, but the reality is that the seminary was eventually the best place for me to be able to make the changes God was asking me to make, and to become the man God was calling me to be.  People are unnecessarily afraid of seminary, which is almost always the most chaste, most virtuous, most prayerful and most intellectual environment a young Catholic man has available to him. 

Seminary is not a scary place.  Don’t be afraid to take a visit!  You will have an experience that you can draw upon during future years of discernment.  You will find seminary to be a uniquely challenging environment, but also a fun place where one can mature spiritually, intellectually and socially.  There is not undue pressure to become a priest if God is not calling you!  Our seminaries are not cut off from the world.  It is easy to maintain friendships and even to get away once in awhile (I even kept my KU football tickets when I was in seminary!)  Guys spend about 200 days a year in seminary, and 165 back home within the Archdiocese.  Let me know           ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) how I can help facilitate a visit for you or your family.  Don’t be scared of seminary – give it a look!

I wish I could have taken thousands of young men from our Archdiocese to see the Pope in Washington D.C. and New York City. I am writing this article just as the Holy Father arrives at Edwards Air Force Base, and immediately I am reminded of the impact seeing the Holy Father had on my own vocation.

In 1993 when a vibrant John Paul II came to Denver for World Youth Day, I was on stage with him because the St. Lawrence Choir from KU, of which I was a member, was selected to be part of the papal choir for the final Mass. John Paul II came over very close to greet us. I’ll also never forget the sea of people that gathered at Cherry Creek State Park. As an avid sports fan, I have been a part of many large gatherings of people. None of them, not even the parade for the Jayhawk National Championship down Massachusetts Avenue in Lawrence last Sunday, holds a candle to what it is like to be at a Papal Mass. There is enthusiasm, singing, great pageantry, and just an enormous number of people.

Thanks to Msgr. Vince Krische, who nominated me to represent the youth and bishops of the United States at the 1997 World Youth Day in Paris, I was able to greet John Paul II personally, and to meet my hero. At this point in my discernment of the priesthood, I had read many of the documents of our late Holy Father, and was inspired by his intellect, his devotion, and his fascinating life. I was able to be on stage with Pope John Paul II for the final Mass in Paris, and there were even more people there than were in Denver. In looking at an aerial shot the next day, I realized there were tens of thousands more that I couldn’t even see from the stage.

By 1999, I was in the seminary. I saw the impact the decision to follow Christ as John Paul II did could have on the world, and I heard Jesus’ voice asking me to follow Him. After these experiences with the Holy Father, I had the reassurance that no life I could choose for myself could be as great as the life to which Christ was calling me.

Now as a priest and as Vocation Director, I look forward to being with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I greatly admire as I did John Paul II, at St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers, NY and at Yankee Stadium. There I will have the privilege for the first time as a priest, of distributing the Eucharist at a papal Mass. While I will not have a chance to greet the Holy Father personally, and admittedly, I am a little jealous that Jenna Bush got to greet him and I didn’t, I know my vocation will be strengthened by the privilege of being with the Holy Father. I wish I could take every young man in our diocese to Yankee stadium with me, but since I can’t, I rely instead on your prayers that the visit of the Holy Father to our great country will give all the young men in our diocese a glimpse of the difference they could make should they answer Christ’s invitation to follow Him in His holy priesthood!

Do the following words sound familiar to you? Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men! Go sell all that you have, give it to the poor; then come, and follow me! Whoever puts a hand to the plow and looks to what is left behind is not fit for the kingdom of heaven!

These words do sound familiar to us. We recognize in these words the voice of Jesus. So often in life we can pretend that we do not hear God’s call clearly. We torture ourselves with the question – what does God really want me to do with my life? This is a good question, of course, but oftentimes when we ask it we are not really asking Jesus to make his voice more clear. We can be guilty of asking Jesus instead to save us from our confusing and changing desires, and to give us what we want.

The voice of Jesus is clear. It always asks us first to consider leaving everything, if we can, to follow him. It is important for us not to water-down this call from Jesus. The voice of Jesus does not tell us to follow our hearts, because He knows that our desires change. He does not ask us to keep his call as a last resort just in case following our desires does not work out. No, Jesus does us the favor of demanding that we listen to His call, and that His will be the first priority of our lives.

There are many of our young people who can set aside their own desires to follow Jesus wherever He would lead them. The voice of Jesus wants us to consider the priesthood or the religious life at least as strongly as we consider marriage. There is nothing wrong with a young man or a woman considering the religious life as a first option, even if they also have a strong desire to be married. It is normal for our young people to desire both. The two calls are both beautiful, and they oftentimes grow together, and must be discerned with prayer. The reality is that many vocations are lost in our Church today because we follow our own desires before we listen to the voice of Jesus. Those of us charged with forming the young people of our Church must never cripple them by telling them to save the priesthood or religious life as a last resort. Our young people want to develop their friendship with Jesus, and they want to hear his voice, and they do have the courage and faith to follow it, if only we do not let them down. It is fine for us to encourage our young people to follow their hearts. But it is better for us to encourage them to follow the voice of Jesus.

I live with Fr. Steve Beseau at the St. Lawrence Center at KU, and last week Fr. Steve mentioned a brief story on CNN regarding the happiness of clergy versus those in other careers. Overwhelmingly, clergy are the most satisfied of all workers. On the heels of this TV story, I opened Time magazine. Once again, in a survey of all careers, the clergy had the highest quality of life. 67% of clergy described themselves as very happy. Second place went to firefighters.

When most of us think about the priesthood, one of the first things we think about is the promise of celibacy made by a priest – the fact that he has sacrificed the possibility of a biological family in order to serve as a husband and a father to the Church. This is a difficult sacrifice to ask of a young man, and a difficult one to make. However, as we can see in the statistics above, the sacrifice opens up new possibilities of fulfillment and happiness through singlehearted service of God and his chosen family, the Church.

Isn’t it interesting that firefighters and clergy are the two most fulfilling professions? Firefighters literally save people from flames, while clergy, as people set on fire by the Holy Spirit, also will go to great lengths to save God’s people from the evil that might harm them. As we say at the end of each decade of the rosary – “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy!” This is the vocation of a priest – to be a shepherd of souls!

Like a husband and father who has the vocation to provide for his family and to protect them from danger, so a priest is to courageously shepherd his flock, and to protect them from the evils that threaten the eternal life they have received in baptism. Because the priesthood is not simply a profession, but also a vocation, a priest does not have to search for the meaning of his life apart from his day job. The two are inseparable in the life of a priest! No wonder the profession ranks far above all others!

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Mt 6:33). This is the vocation of a priest. In offering his life completely to God, he receives back from the Lord a life of deep meaning and lasting happiness, even as he make a sacrifice that does not make sense to the world. If every young man in our archdiocese would entrust his happiness to the Lord and to service of His Church, we would have more applicants to the priesthood than we could accept. Let’s all pray for that day to arrive sooner rather than later for our Archdiocese.