Religious education students hear personal vocation stories from priests and religious women

Friday, Nov. 24, 2017

WEST HAVEN — They were a diverse lot, the priests and religious women who gathered for the Nov. 20 Vocations Awareness Night at St. Mary Catholic Church. One began thinking about becoming a priest when he was 6 years old, another never even considered the possibility until he was in college. Two were converts to the faith; one of the sisters knew about Catholicism only what she had seen in the movie “Sound of Music.”  One was born in Utah, another in California, and two overseas, yet despite their differences they all have one thing in common: They said “yes” when God called them.

 Each of the priests and religious had a unique story that they shared with the hundreds of students who filled the church. 

To begin the evening, Fr. Gustavo Vidal, St. Mary pastor, asked God to open the hearts, minds and wills of the young people present, and called upon the Blessed Mother to intercede for those gathered and help them find the way to her Son, Jesus.

The Most Rev. Oscar A. Solis, the 10th Bishop of Salt Lake City, was the first to tell the story of his call from God. 

“At the age of 6 I was thinking about becoming a priest already,” said the bishop, who was an altar boy by the time he was in second grade in the Philippines. “It was not that I heard the call or the voice of God. I did not hear any call. My mom told me, ‘You will be a priest,’” he said as his audience laughed. “So it was my mother who opened my heart and my eyes to becoming a priest.”

He entered the high school seminary at the age of 11 and continued through the start of his college years. As a young adult, however, he decided he wanted to become a lawyer, but after a year of studying law, he felt something missing in his life, he said. He returned to the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1979.

“I love being a priest, I love to be with people, I love celebrating Mass, I love visiting the sick, I love what I do, and I cannot think of anything else to do in life other than being a priest,” Bishop Solis said.

Unlike Bishop Solis, who grew up in a Catholic family, Daughter of Charity Lisa Laguna knew nothing about the faith as a child except what she learned from “Sound of Music,” she said. When, as an adult, she thought she might have a calling to religious life, she tried to ignore it because she didn’t want to wear a dress and her dream was to become a professional golfer, she said. 

“But God still called me,” she said, and so she entered religious life.

“When we’re young people, we think God isn’t calling us right now, but God is calling us,” said Sr. Lisa, who works in California and is a vocations director for her order. “God might not be telling us exactly what we’re supposed to do, but there’s a way we can prepare right now for our calling that we might hear later.” 

She urged the students to begin practicing saying “yes” to God not only with the mouth but also with the heart, even if they don’t yet know what they may be called to do.

Dominican Fr. Marcin Szymanski, parochial vicar of St. Catherine of Siena, was born and raised in Poland. One day his mother asked him and his brothers to attend a youth ministry activity in a nearby parish; afterward, he decided to join the order, he said. After he was ordained, he was sent to Ireland, then to Seattle, Wash., before he was assigned to come to Utah.

Some of the most profound moments in his life have occurred after he left Poland and faced the difficulties of living in foreign lands, Fr. Marcin said.

“God called me and taught me in my life, in many ways through a supernatural feeling of my spine, which was equally terrifying and surprising, but also very … full of grace,” he said, adding that whenever he makes a mistake, “it is always that back to Christ I can find my way, my freedom, my joy and my happiness. I think that is what my vocation is really about – finding those four: joy, truth, happiness and Christ.”

For Holy Cross Sister Celine Dounies, who teaches at St. John the Baptist Elementary School, her vocation began when, as first-grader, she heard God’s call, she said.

She was taught by a Dominican sister who was always so happy “and I wanted to be like that,” she said. 

At a high school vocations fair she met a Holy Cross sister, and “I said to myself when I left that gathering, ‘If I’m going to become a sister, that’s the one,’” said Sr. Celine, who after high school joined the order and underwent the eight-year formation process, which she compared to a married couple’s engagement period. 

“A vocation – God calls you, and if you listen to God’s call, you will be happy,” Sr. Celine said. “So listen carefully to God’s call because God wants you to be the happiest ever. If you follow his path, you will be happy. There will be times when things are hard, but ultimately you will be happy if you follow God.”    

By contrast, for Fr. Joseph Delka, a diocesan priest who was ordained in 2015 and now is parochial vicar of St. Joseph Parish, priesthood “was never on my radar,” he said. Growing up in a household that was nominally evangelical but not particularly religious, “I felt a sense of God, but I didn’t know what to do about it” when he was in high school, he said.

In college he started attending a Lutheran church, but he still felt something was missing, he said. 

He began exploring different faiths, “and really, Catholic was just the next thing on the list,” he said, explaining that he had no Catholic friends or family members. He didn’t know much about the Church, “and what I thought I knew turned out to be wrong,” he said.

However, at the end of his freshman year at Utah State University, where he was studying biochemistry, he went through RCIA and was confirmed. Then, after one Sunday night Mass, the pastor told him he might have a call to the priesthood.

“That was kind of scary,” said Fr. Delka, adding that he didn’t sleep that night because of the possibilities the priest’s comment opened up. He wrestled with the idea, but upon graduation decided to enter the seminary.

God’s call might be surprising, Fr. Delka told the students, but “give him that chance because what he calls you to do will bring you the greatest joy and will bring you the greatest happiness in this life.’”

The final speaker for the evening was Benedictine Sister Marilyn Mark, pastoral associate and Newman Center coordinator at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. A native Utahn, she didn’t much like going to Mass as a child, she said. However, on the day of her Confirmation in fifth grade, after the ceremony, her mother told her to go help a neighbor. Sr. Marilyn walked out onto the porch “and it was like I couldn’t escape this new relationship with God,” she said. “I knew God was inside of me, and talking to me, and that started my prayer life in a new way.”

Her prayer life continued to deepen when, in 8th grade, she began leading the music ministry at her parish. On Sunday afternoons she would look at the next week’s readings, reflect on them and then choose appropriate music, she said. 

“God was working through all of that” even though she was unaware of it, she said. At one point she thought God might be calling her to a religious vocation, but she wanted to get married so she attended Weber State University. After earning a degree in music, she taught music at Notre Dame School in Price. A year later, she decided she did in fact have a vocation and, because her co-workers at the school all had gone to the College of St. Benedict, they suggested she go there. 

Sometimes God’s will is like a cloud-covered mountain that is difficult to see, Sr. Marilyn said, but “eventually we learn what God is calling us to do.” 

After the presentations, the students asked questions, which ranged from why priests always wear black to why women can’t be priests, from how deal with religious discrimination to how God tells people what he wants them to be.