During the summer of 2018, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament in the living room of a lake house on the final evening of a retreat with other college students, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the clear realization that I had received the greatest gift that any person could possibly receive: a living relationship with Jesus Christ through the Church that He founded. That gift had been given to me 20 years earlier, when I was baptized as an infant. It was nourished throughout my childhood as I grew up with four younger siblings in a committed Catholic household. Sunday Mass, regular prayer, and Catholic values were deeply ingrained in me by the time I left for college. I knew that God was real and good, and I wanted to keep my faith as I entered into adulthood.
Seeing my desire to follow Him and knowing that I would need help, the Lord surrounded me with many wonderful people during my years at the University of Michigan. They showed me how to live as an intentional disciple of Jesus and encouraged me to dive deeper into the sacramental life of the Church. My love for the Lord grew as I developed a personal relationship with Him in prayer, and that relationship began to permeate every dimension of my life. I realized that God had created me for some particular mission that He had entrusted to nobody else, and that His will for my life would be more fulfilling than my own plans. For the first time, my motivation shifted from what I wanted to do with my life to what God wanted to do with my life. I became convinced that His mission had something to do with sharing the tremendous gift of faith that I had freely received, so that others too could encounter His love and live in relationship with Him.
This new disposition opened me up to the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood. The possibility began to transform into a desire as I spent more quiet time in prayer and witnessed the Lord bringing spiritual life into the world through my ministry on campus. After months of wrestling with this calling, I finally surrendered and entered into an intentional period of discernment. At daily Mass during this time, when the priest elevated the consecrated Host, I was pierced with wonder and awe at the thought of being the one who makes Jesus present on the altar. “If this is what God is calling me to do with my life,” I realized, “I cannot think of anything that I would rather do.” The priesthood no longer appeared to me only as a difficult sacrifice, but also as a gift from the Lord, a fulfillment of my deepest desires.
Responding to this gift, I applied to the seminary and began my formation at Sacred Heart in 2020. Coming from the active ministry that I had been doing at the University of Michigan, the movement toward a more hidden life of prayer and study was both a challenge and a blessing. I heard the Lord calling me into the spirituality of Nazareth, learning to receive the present grace and to love my brother seminarians in the simple moments of daily community life. As I look back on my time at Sacred Heart, I am eternally grateful for the relationships that have been forged within these walls. By the Lord’s grace, I know that I have “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” over the course of these years. The habits of prayer, study, and fraternity that have taken root in my heart will serve as the foundation for a life of discipleship and ministry.
St. Catherine of Siena famously wrote, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” The only flame that truly has the power to set the world ablaze is the one that burns in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But when we respond to God’s invitation, leaving behind the masks of a false life and allowing Him to direct us according to His designs, then our hearts come into contact with the furnace of divine love and begin to burn with that same flame. And it is that fire, that love, that has the power to transform the world.
Deacon Karl Finkbeiner, from Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Plymouth, is a seminarian in formation for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Detroit.