Thank You, Mrs. Weekley

Setting my banking slips down on the counter, the bank teller asked again with a more solemn tone. If they called you right now, would you go back to the mission? I stared back at the teller, confused at his questioning. I paused.

Yes, I said, I would go. The man smiled at me. He left. I walked toward the exit. As the door of the bank closed behind me, my phone rang. It was the campus minister from my mission school in Belize. He wanted to know if I would come back.

My name is Br. Nicholas of the Word of God Hamilton. I began my second year as a brother with the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) on July 16 of this year. I am in College II level of studies at Sacred Heart.

No one event in my life could I point to and say, That is when I knew I wanted to be a priest, though there are moments, like the opening paragraph, when God chose to use people I met, especially ones I do not know, to invite me to follow him. Today, I am following him; tomorrow I will wake up and pray that still I may follow him. I feel that God gives me every day the opportunity to follow him, especially through ministering to his people.

Many people have helped form me into the man I am today. Above them all stands my youth minister from San Antonio. If ever there was an example of Mary, a mother who pours herself out for her children, it is Mrs. Weekley. She helped to foster in me the vocation to love and serve Christ through her selfless example of service.

Fortunately for me, I went from a place modeled after the Immaculate Heart of Marythe youth group Mrs. Weekley ledto a seminary that forms its men after the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Every aspect of formationintellectual, human, spiritual, and pastoralis carefully worked on. I desire to respond to God's invitation to the priesthood in order to serve his people in the confessional, through the graces won during Mass, and especially through service in the areas of deepest apostolic need.