Growing up, my life resembled that of a standard cradle Catholic. My family would go to Mass every Sunday, we prayed before meals and sometimes during the week as a family. I was an altar server and attended the parish Catholic school. However, my family was also unique in that I grew up on a dairy farm as the youngest of ten siblings and I had an uncle who was a priest. My uncle, Father Bill, almost always came to the farm on his day off and spent time working and hanging out with us. He provided me with a simple witness to faithfulness as every day on his day off, he would always pause, go off on his own, and pray the breviary. Although I would not recognize it until later, there was something about those prayer times that always drew me. I wanted to be a man of faithful prayer like he was.
Thus, growing up, priests were a constant presence in my life that would become even more present in grade school when my twin brothers decided to enter seminary and, eight years later, were ordained. This meant that there was an even greater flow of priests through the house as well as several seminarians who visited during their breaks. Because of this, it never seemed unusual to me that someone would want to be a priest.
My journey to seminary, however, was still full of twists and turns. Growing up, my parents taught me two important lessons. First, to pray every day, which I would normally do as I lay in bed each night. Second, to ask God what his will was for my life. I took the idea of God’s will for my life very seriously, and I frequently asked him what he wanted me to do. The first time I got an answer was in sixth grade when I was waiting in the church for my Mom to pick me up. I asked God that question and immediately the thought crossed my mind, “You could be a priest.” At first, I was relatively open to the idea, but shortly thereafter, I rejected it because I wanted to get married and have a career. This was the beginning of a cycle that would continue for the next five years: I would ask God what I was supposed to do with my life, the idea of the priesthood would come up, and I would reject that idea and then ask again.
That cycle finally broke one day during the fall of my junior year of high school. At that point, I decided that I wanted to be an architect and was taking a college architecture class. I was also milking cows every night on the farm, which meant that I had three hours every night with nothing to do but think about the future. During one of those nights, I realized that even though I enjoyed architecture, my life would always be missing something if I became an architect. This experience spurred me to turn to God and ask him what would make me happy. Over the next months, he gradually showed me how much I loved my faith and loved talking with other people about the faith. I realized that I had a desire not just for the sacraments, but a desire to give the sacraments. Through these and other similar realizations, I decided to enter seminary after high school. In 2017, I entered seminary at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Minnesota, and then in 2021, I entered Sacred Heart for major seminary. I am now a deacon in my fourth and final year at Sacred Heart.
Immediately when I entered Sacred Heart, I was struck by the chapel. It had the atmosphere of prayer, and I knew it was a place I would encounter God in deep ways. The seminary cannot force us to encounter God, but it can facilitate that encounter. Through daily adoration, offering confession regularly, and powerful retreats, Sacred Heart provided the environment that I needed to grow stronger in my relationship with God. My classes here have also played a very influential role in that relationship and my formation. The professors have consistently imparted a greater desire to pursue truth and the Lord through the studying of theology. This is especially true of the Scripture professors who have cultivated in me a deep love for reading, studying, and praying with God’s word. Please pray for me and my brother seminarians as we prepare for priestly ordination and seek to carry out God’s will in our lives.