June 2020

     It can be pretty easy to expect, especially here in southeast Louisiana, that if you grow up Catholic then you’ll be Catholic your whole life. That was my family’s assumption as I grew up in St. Edward the Confessor School & Parish. After my First Communion in second grade there, I had some thoughts about becoming a priest, especially due to the example of the priests there. As soon as I mentioned it in sixth grade, my family and teachers continued to encourage me to pursue it, so the expectations stayed for me to grow up Catholic.

    There was a good sense of irony in that, though, since even in elementary school my older sister and I would go to a V.B.S. at my grandmother’s non-denominational Protestant church each summer. My family and I grew closer to that church community over the years, especially as I became more distant from my peers at school. When the time came for me to enter high school, I applied for Haynes Academy for Advanced Studies on Metairie Road. Upon being accepted for my eighth grade year, we decided that it was time for us to explore other denominations, landing in the Protestant church with which we had become so familiar.

     These two new places exceeded my expectations in a good way. I quickly became involved in the Protestant church by attending Bible studies and becoming active in their youth group. At Haynes I soared academically, joining the school band, becoming a member of their Quiz Bowl team, and participating in their Next Generation Christian group. However, even though my exposure to the Scriptures grew, my love for God did not, and I began to resent not only Catholicism, but also people in my own life.

     Then, one lazy summer day in 2015, I was channel surfing on TV and came across a documentary on PBS about Benedictine monks called “The Rule.” Getting comfortable in my seat, I was ready to belittle the program’s portrayal of their way of life. Yet as I continued to watch it, I saw something I didn’t expect. In running a boy’s high school in Newark, New Jersey, in one of the most underprivileged neighborhoods in America, the monks there built up a culture of life. Furthermore, the monks there gave the boys (many of whom were my age) a hope for their future simply by the way they live their lives according to the Rule of St. Benedict, a sixth-century guide for monastic life. Quickly I realized that those men were truly living a meaningful life centered in Christ, a life I wanted to live but had been mistaken in how I wanted to achieve it.

     In the following weeks, I wasn’t sure of what to do. Their monastic way of life grew appealing to me, but pursuing that would mean becoming a Catholic again. To this end, I decided to look back into Catholicism; however I tried to do this more privately through YouTube and other online communities, fearing claims of hypocrisy from friends and family due to an outward anti-Catholic sentiment. Once October came, since it is considered the month of the Rosary, I decided to pray one every night that month, using a plastic set of Rosary beads from my grandfather’s funeral earlier that year.

     Little by little, I noticed my disposition changing, as my friends peculiarly remarked that I had more energy (I saw it as a compliment since I’m more introverted), while inwardly I noticed God’s presence more active in my life. By the next summer, I was sure that I wanted to return to the Catholic Church. However, I was uneasy with the idea of leaving my Protestant church, more specifically the relationships I had built there. In prayer I turned to God, asking for the blessings of a smooth transition, but I realized in that prayer that God had already blessed me with a good life, and so the prayer changed to one of trust. In Job’s life He gave and took away, yet Job still blessed His Name (Job 1:21), and so I prayed that if He would continue to provide good things, then I would thank Him, and if He were to take away good things, then the song of thanksgiving would still continue.

     Soon after, I was placed in an SAT/ACT prep class at Haynes, and I saw it as my ticket out - if I could get my scores high enough, I could move far away and let nobody know that I’d be converting back! In the midst of this, I started to make new friends at my school with classmates I’d never have previously. Things were picking up, and I thanked God for it. Yet no sooner had these things come into my life, they went away - I didn’t score as high as I wanted in my tests, and I was starting to lose my old friends. But even as He took away, I continued to thank Him. Suddenly, for the first time in four or five years, I started to have thoughts of becoming a priest… and I knew it was finally time to come back into the Catholic Church.

     Attending Mass again was joined with healing in my relationships with my friends and even some of my family, while the thoughts about priesthood only grew stronger. For the first time in my life, I had no anxieties for the future, and instead I focused on building an actual relationship with Christ. Suddenly most of what I deemed important for my life faded from my view; I still chose to be active in my extracurriculars at Haynes, but these became second-rate to me. I might be biased by my recent experience as a high school student, but teens definitely have a lot of undue stress put on them, especially in deciding what their future will be and building their resumes for college all in just a couple of years. Surely, these are highly important things to consider, yet at an advanced studies academy, the expectation can become controlling. Most of my friends were (figuratively) pulling their hair out to reach the deadlines for application essays; meanwhile, I began to go to the adoration chapel at St. Catherine of Siena across the street each day, growing in the desire to keep Christ in the center of my life and discerning the decision to enter the seminary instead of university, trusting that even if He isn’t calling me to be a priest, I would grow further in trust of His ways.

     Now two years into my seminary formation, I still can never truly expect what will happen next. Even during my sophomore year at St. Joseph Seminary College, with my parents divorcing, one of my closest friends having to leave formation due to complications after an eye removal surgery, and the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s no assurance that God only gives us good things. Instead, it’s Faith that is the assurance of what we hope for - our expectations - the conviction of what we can’t see (Hebrews 11:1), and through it I have only to trust Him all the more.