I guess the first time I thought about being a priest was when I was around 6 or 7. I remember asking my mom, “Do priests have health insurance?” and she replied that they did. “Well, I think I want to be a priest.” That is certainly not the best reason for wanting to be a priest, but, as we’ll see, such a fairly innocuous statement will turn out to have far ranging consequences…

The second boy in a family of four boys, I was born to a ‘cradle-Catholic’ father and a convert mother. However, I gather that religion was not very important in either of their houses growing up; each of my four grandparents came from a different Christian denomination.

It wouldn’t be long before our family followed suit. It was decided that our family wouldn’t practice our faith, and so our family essentially severed all ties with Catholicism. Therefore, from when I was around six years old until eighth grade, we never went to Mass (Sundays or Holy Days, not even Christmas nor Easter!). The only contact I had with the faith was through Catholic schools; my family's decision to put us in Catholic schools was more an acknowledgement that the local public schools were terrible, rather than any sort of approval of the Church. However, this was a huge blessing, as the school integrated the sacraments into their theology curriculum. Thus, I received First Communion, Reconciliation, and Confirmation, all as a part of being a student there.

To make matters worse, I was very sick as a child, and this drained the family finances (and, I assume, served as the motivation for my health insurance question!). Thus, we spent time on government assistance, and things were not the greatest, to say the least...

Thrown into this mix was my limited, rather fluffy exposure to God. From my encounters in theology, our teachers kept repeating that God is a gentle, loving father. Well, my experience told me otherwise, so I, for all practical purposes, became an atheist – a fairly heavy thought for a middle schooler! It wasn’t as though I had reasoned this out; I think it was more a reaction to having a loving God in an unloving world, and my thoughts were more along the lines that if I ignored God, maybe He would just go away…So much for thoughts of being a priest. When those ideas rarely resurfaced, I would think of being a religious priest, even though I had never met one…

In middle school, I started playing oboe. I thought (key word, thought!) I was incredibly talented, and resolved to play professionally. So, I leapt at any chance to play and the first opportunity I had was to play at the 5 pm Saturday Mass at our Church. Thus, for all the wrong reasons (remember, I didn’t really believe anything that was going on at the Mass), I came back to ‘Sunday’ Mass on a regular basis (my brother and I had begun altar serving off and on when I was in 8th grade).

When I moved on to high school, we changed parishes to the one I now call home, St. Thomas the Apostle. Here I continued to play, and I was extremely blessed to meet the priest who was really responsible for my vocation: Fr. Roger Prokop. An older priest, with an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Fr. Roger was an example of humility and holiness the likes of which I had never seen before. Now at the time, it wasn’t that big of deal, but later on…

I continued my frigid relationship with God through high school. I guess I slowly evolved into a deist – I thought that God probably existed, but He didn’t care one way or another about what I was doing in my life. I really owe this acceptance (as little as it seemed) to my friends in high school, to whom God seemed very real and very near.

The summer of my junior year, I was given the opportunity to attend a retreat with some classmates and several teachers from my school. The plan was to start this retreat program (Kairos) at our high school the coming year, but, in order to do that, the leaders had to go on the retreat first. So, my high school chaplain suggested I go.

Now, I know he was well intentioned, but my first thought was, “Hmm…I can take four days off of work, pay to go on a retreat with classmates I don’t care about, teachers I don’t like, to talk to a God that doesn’t care about me… Thanks, but no thanks.” Luckily, only that last part came out of my mouth!

My spiritual director later noted that this chaplain typically took ‘no’ for an answer. However, in my case (and thank God!) he was relentless. He would not let up, no matter how many times I said no. Finally, after he had called my house numerous times, my mom said, “You’re going on that retreat!”, maybe just to give herself time away from answering the phone. In any event, I headed, unwillingly, on retreat.

The retreat itself was a good experience. However, it was when I helped lead our retreat, and gave a short talk about what it meant to be a Christian leader, that things really came together. I talked briefly about my own life, summarizing what’s been said above, and the concerned and loving response of my classmates really overwhelmed me. It was as though God said, “I know you might not care about Me, but I still care about you.”

This realization started a slow thaw. Slowly but surely I started becoming more involved in the Church, realizing eventually that God did exist and did care, so perhaps I should return that with more than I had been. Although my home life was still a mess, I graduated from high school and opted to go to the University of Michigan. This choice wasn’t the subject of much discernment at all; they offered a full ride, which my other two (Catholic) colleges simply couldn’t offer.

My return to the Catholic faith slowed down at this point. I was going to Sunday Mass and playing oboe, but that was about it. I started dating a good Catholic girl from my high school, when two months into our relationship my parents divorced, and we broke up after nine months or so. In one of those ‘re-bound’ moments, I decided that the best place to look for a new girlfriend would be at the Young Adult group at my parish (yeah, it’s lame, I know, but God works with all our bad intentions and makes them work for His good).

This group would meet Sunday nights for an hour of Eucharistic Adoration, followed by an hour of social time. So, I started going for the first time to Adoration on a weekly basis. It was during one of this Holy Hours that I could finally ask God the question that had bothered me all though out my on-going conversion: if He loved me so much, how could He have left me to suffer so much as a child? I thought it was okay that He wanted to care for me now, but what about before? Where was God then?

During these Holy Hours, I would ask this question again and again, until, finally, one night I opted to listen for His response (a good idea – listening at prayer!). I had heard that God suffers with His children, but, that night, I heard those words as though Christ Himself had spoken them to me: “Where was I? I was crying and suffering with you!”

From that night on, I (slowly but surely, again!) got more and more involved with that Young Adult group, taking over some leadership positions. I started praying the Rosary, and going to daily Mass. Finally, as I neared my senior year in college, things seemed to be going exactly as I had planned them. I was all set to graduate with my BA in Spanish (and Czech and Biology…) and apply to medical schools. I thought my application was solid, and I should be good to go…

It’s been said that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. So, I figured, why consult Him on the matter? However, the summer before my senior year, my parish started up a men’s discernment house (we’re practically on the University of Michigan’s campus). First, I imagine they were desperate if they asked me to come live there. I made it clear I thought I was called to married life (key word – thought), but, ultimately, I moved in.

Now, I felt that, more than discerning the priesthood, the major draw for the men’s discernment house were the neighbors: the church itself, always open for us, the rectory, and the priests who invited us for dinners once a week, and, of course, the women’s discernment house next door. The last one was the major draw, I must confess (still lame, I know).

I chose a spiritual director who, unbeknownst to me, had been in medical school himself, and could relate to my situation. He had also been a religious before joining the diocese, which gave him a good perspective on the religious life in general.

As the year progressed nicely, I began the time- and money-consuming process of applying to medical schools. My spiritual director waited patiently, and simply suggested I pray all the while, asking God if this was His Will. I did pray, but everything still seemed to lead to married life (everything, that is, that I wanted to hear.)

Speaking of married life, at this point I took a liking to one of the young women next door. I prayed and prayed, and all the while I felt very called to pursue a relationship with her. In fact, it had almost reached the point where I was going to ask to take our relationship to another level. Well, as God would have it, one morning I was called over after Mass to speak with her. Her words were “I just wanted to let you know, that I am going to become a contemplative nun…”

Ouch. So, if I were keeping score, that would make God 1, Nate 0. So, that night in the chapel, as I made my Holy Hour, I prayed, thanking God (first of all) for sparing me the embarrassment that would have ensued had I followed through with my plans, and secondly, almost jokingly, telling God that if He would take the next three girls I liked into the convent, I would “have to go to the seminary”…

*sigh* If you make a promise to God like that, beware: He may very well take you up on it…

Girls 1, 2, and 3, by the end of the summer, headed off to various convents.

In the meantime, I was starting to have second thoughts about medical school. I was right (for once); my application was good enough to get into medical school. I ended up with acceptances at Wayne State (in Detroit), at Baylor College of Medicine (in Houston), and Johns Hopkins (in Baltimore). However, something just wasn’t right. One night, I sat praying in the chapel, having received all these acceptances. As I prayed, I finally (through God’s grace) had the courage to say, “God, I’m not sure you want me to be a doctor, and I’m not sure I want to be one either.”

At that moment, I received what I can only call a “peace the world cannot give”. I was so calm and collected for the next three weeks or so; I took exams and was completely at peace (not an easy task for a pre-med student!) Although I decided to write medical school off the list of paths to take, that didn’t leave me any place to go.

After those three weeks, I headed down to Mississippi to build houses over spring break (a misnomer – ‘Spring Break’ for the University is mid-February). On the way down, I met for the first time a group of young and excited religious, the Dominicans Sisters of St. Cecilia (Nashville). That was my first real glimpse of religious life, and their chaplain, a diocesan priest, had been a doctor in Ireland before becoming a priest. Thus, he became the first of 18 priests that I met in the next several weeks that had either been doctors or thought of being doctors before they became priests. I can be very stubborn, but, after 18, I got the message…

Thus began my more active discernment of the priesthood. I reached a point where I wanted to take a year away from medical school, and either enter the seminary or religious life, simply to get this idea of priesthood out of my mind. On my second visit to Baylor, I made a point to visit the Catholic Student Center and meet with their chaplain, a Benedictine priest named Fr. Justin. A former physician himself (you can see the trend), he gave me the best possible advice on medical school. Someone at Baylor, mistakenly, told me I couldn’t defer a year (i.e., take a year off and save my seat until the following year). So, because I liked the school, I was tempted to go. However, Fr. Justin, in his very no-nonsense English manner, remarked that if I went that year, the medical school wouldn’t take just one year of my life. I would be so in debt after one year, I would have to stay for four in order to have something to show for it. Then, to pay that off, I would need two or three years of residency, followed by three or four years of work. That, he stated, added up to one decade. “They want ten years of your life, and they don’t want to give you a year to think about it. What do you think you should do?”
“Well”, I remarked, “I guess I won’t go.”
“Good.”

That settled the matter. I wrote Johns Hopkins asking for a deferral, which required (through the strange legislation of the Association of American Medical Colleges) that I turn down Baylor. That same day, right after I mailed in my letter to Johns Hopkins, I would receive an offer of a full tuition scholarship to Baylor, which, because I had bound myself to Hopkins, I wasn’t able to accept. God obviously had something He wanted me to do in the fall of 2007…

I began looking at various religious orders and my own diocese. The IVE (which has no priests in Michigan) came up in conversation multiple times, but I had never checked them out. Finally, on the insistence of several friends, I flew to DC for their ordinations. It was a moving experience, in which I was really able to experience the IVE life. Something about the joy, the poverty, and the fraternity captivated me.

It’s not that I don’t love my diocese; far from it, as it is a great diocese, and I hope to be allowed to return as a missionary there some day! God called me to here for His purposes, and it is here that I came.

So, by the end of the summer, I would take an Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with the IVE, and finally enter on September 12th, 2007.

There are three small annotations to make.

First, in November of 2007, I wrote Johns Hopkins to tell them I would never be coming, so they could give me seat to someone else. I hope that made someone very happy…

Secondly, I had to break the news that I was leaving to the last girl I liked. So, one night I sat down with her and told her. I tried to explain everything nice and clearly, so I said, “Look, if God tells you to do something, even if you don’t want to, just do it, ok?”. She said alright, but I wasn’t convinced, so I said it again. She still didn’t sound too convinced, so I said it a third time, to which she replied, “I know Nate! I’m going into the convent next fall…”, which is where she is now. (God 4, Nate 0, in case you’re keeping score…).

Thirdly, and lastly, about that curious remark regarding insurance at age 6 or 7; when I was visiting the IVE, I saw a brother with a cast on his leg. I asked what happened (those pre-med traits die hard) and he recounted the incident. Curious, I asked him if he had to beg for his cast. He laughed and replied, “No, we beg for almost everything, but one thing that the Institute does try to provide is… good health insurance.”

Who else but God could’ve planned that?

Created on 11/23/2008 11:22 AM by Admin Updated on 02/21/2009 07:00 AM by Admin