Academics were such a high point for me that I went
to a private boarding school so that I could make it in the world,
or prepare to go to an Ivy League college. I knew where I came from:
the son of a single mother who always struggled to give her children
what they needed, whose Dad left his family when he was four, who
grew up without the frills of even a middle class lifestyle, and
I wanted to “do better”. I was competitive, and stuck
up. My faith, however, kept me in check. I thank my Mom for raising
me in the Catholic faith, and for always letting me participate
in Church activities. I sang in the children’s choir and cantored
at my home parish, St. Patrick’s in Northfield. I loved serving
the Lord at the altar, and that inspired a reverence for the Mass
that carried over into high school years.
It wasn’t until I was bombarded with the secular culture
of high school that I realized I could not be part of what I had
so desired. I had an amazing experience at an Antioch Retreat Weekend
in the summer after my freshman year where I was touched by the
Holy Spirit. It was the first real adult experience of my baptism,
and the gifts that the Lord really had for me. And I knew from that
moment that I wanted to evangelize the atheistic culture that so
many peers were falling into.
Jesus Christ, for the first time, was a real person to me, and
he was calling me to something. And I asked myself, could that something
be the priesthood?
It took sometime getting to understand this new direction in my
life. I was still that competitive kid, who hadn’t truly considered
giving his whole life to a radical one like the priest’s.
And yet, every time I went to Mass, and the priest said the words
of consecration, raising the Sacred Host on high, I was drawn in,
and thought of myself in the place of the priest.
Two years later, I studied in the Dominican Republic in a term
abroad program, and focused not only learning Spanish, which was
part of my desire to learn the language of my father, who was Puerto
Rican, but also focused on the faith which was such a large part
of that little island country. I worked with twelve priests from
all over Latin America at a reformatory, teaching English to about
200 young boys who had been abused, neglected, and had behavioral
problems. I gained so much insight into the life of a priest, as
he related to the people of God. I knew more and more that God was
calling me on to a life of service. This was also the time where
I developed a close relationship with Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows.
I did not know how poignant that relationship would become.
Senior year of high school was the trying time of this growing
understanding. I fell down a flight of stairs and dislocated my
knee, and had complications from the surgery to repair it. As a
result, I was left disabled at a very hilly high school campus.
Later in the spring of that school year, I was also diagnosed with
Hodgkin’s Disease, a lymphatic cancerous tumor on my neck.
Still using a wheelchair, and sometimes crutches, I went through
four months of chemotherapy and two weeks of radiation. It was the
first time in four years that I questioned where God was leading
me, and the first time in my life where I thought I could die. Yet,
I had the faith that said, “Lord, if you are truly calling
me to the priesthood, this will be taken care of.” It was.
That August, which was when I was to begin studies at Franciscan
University of Steubenville, I was declared in remission. I needed,
however, to spend that first semester healing from treatment and
getting used to walking with crutches, and so I did not enter college
when I wanted to.
This was a tough lesson for me, as I realized that everything is
in God’s time. It’s his story, and not mine. I began
at Franciscan in the spring of 2004, and immediately found myself
in the strongest faith environment I had ever been in. The chapel
in my dorm was called “Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows”,
so I knew I was in the right place. Franciscan was a place for me
to grow spiritually, intellectually, and mature as a human being.
I was accepted into the Pre-Theologate Program for priestly formation,
and enjoyed years of brotherhood and getting to know others who
had a similar calling.
In the spring of 2005, I took a semester abroad at Franciscan’s
campus in Gaming, Austria, which was perhaps the greatest experience
of my life. I was privileged to be a part of history. It was that
spring that the Holy Father John Paul II fell ill. My group of students
got to pray for him at his hospital, and then when he died, made
the journey back down to Rome to view his body, along with the rest
of the world. I left from Rome that day in April, forever changed.
I knew the glory of the Diocesan Priesthood, and had such a profound
encounter with the Universal Church. I knew from JPII’s example,
along with that first experience of wanting to evangelize back as
a freshman in high school, that I was called to be a diocesan priest.
I recently graduated from Franciscan, with a bachelor’s degree
in philosophy and theology, and finished the Pre-Theologate Program.
I applied over the summer of 2007 to become a seminarian, and I
look forward to these next four years of theology studies at St.
John’s Seminary. I thank the Lord for the journey it has been,
and for revealing more of his plan, his story, to me day by day.
Hopefully, what has been written of me echoes the line in Psalm
110: “You are a priest forever, a priest like Melchizedek
of old.” I entrust my vocation to the heart of the Immaculate
Virgin Mary. Mother of Vocations, and Our Lady of Sorrows.