Vu Cao
Meet our Seminarians / Vu Cao
The thought of being a priest, however, was always on my mind whether I liked it or not. This all started around my junior year in high school. It mainly happened in church when the priest would give the homily. This was when I would start imagining myself up there doing what he was doing, perhaps even improving the homily. I would always dismiss these thoughts as a consequence of being bored. Then one day I decided to act on my “imagination”, I went to go talk to my pastor about becoming a priest. The moment we finished and I walked out his door the thought of becoming a priest left my mind.
As much as I wanted it to leave my mind it was always there, poking at me. This time the thoughts were stronger and more frequent. My thoughts and the Holy Spirit followed me from church into my classes. During class I could no longer focus on the material. I was always trying to pick up on the style of the professor, thinking that it would be great for me as a priest. When I realized that I had exams coming up I snapped out of it and tried to focus.
The most shocking thing for me was one day during a homily in mass, all of a sudden the priest says: “Today God is calling a special person to do His will.” When I heard this I felt as if this was meant for me to hear. So what I did was I reasoned with myself saying, “It was a homily, everyone is supposed to hear that.” I never fully convinced myself of this though. For months there was a question burning inside me. Every night I prayed and asked God if the words of the priest were meant for me to hear, wondering if God was calling me into service.
It was during winter of 2007 that I finally decided to see my pastor again and find out the next step. We talked and he gave me the vocations director, Fr. Gary’s, phone number. Over the next few weeks I met up with Fr. Gary and talked about my vocation. It was only the second week of my senior year and I decided to withdraw and find out if God was truly calling me.
Through many prayers and interviews I am now a seminarian at Our Lady of Providence. I strongly advise those people who are interested in the priesthood to go out and find out more about it. Have an open mind and accept the possibility that God is calling you to do His will. There is nothing more satisfying than doing what God has made us to do.