My mother also encouraged my prayer life. She encouraged me to ask for His instruction and to believe in His help. My nightly prayers were most often meditations on the love of God and requests to imitate that love in my daily life. I remember being very much aware that the love God has for us was greatly lacking in the world; that most people did not treat each other with love or even consider it a goal. In response to this I often prayed that God would make me someone who would bring His love into the world, someone who would defend and promote His love, to make me into someone whose life would be an example of His love. As a child these sentiments carried with them a sense of combat, as if desiring to do battle with darkness and complacency. Not fighting people, but fighting to free them. Of course, I wouldn't have expressed myself like this as a child, but these were the sentiments behind my prayers: my prayer that He might make me a warrior for Him. I consider these prayers fulfilled in my discernment of the call to the priesthood.

As I recall the main thrust of my life I see it primarily as a search for God, a desire to get to know Him better, to come closer to Him. It was strange that I turned to Christianity last. Having very little religious background, in my early teens I became interested in the eastern philosophical traditions, such as Buddhism. My chief interest was in meditation. In college I studied the western philosophical tradition, focusing primarily on the modern and post-modern schools. In college I also had my very first encounter with genuine Christianity: I made a friend who's search for God had brought him to accept and convert to the Catholic faith. Over the course of my years as an undergrad this friend and I would spend many nights, early into the morning, debating theological and philosophical ideas. It was from him that I came to understand the profundity of Christianity, beginning to perceive its beauty and to sense its truth. Through these conversations and his example my thoughts and convictions about the nature of God and the spiritual life became more and more Christian in character. My full conversion really did not occur however until my last semester of college, a semester I spent abroad in Paris.

My experience abroad is difficult to discuss as it was simultaneously filled with many trials and tremendous graces. It was during this period that I experienced for the first time an entire lack of consolation in my spiritual life. God no longer seemed present. I figured that I must have done something wrong and searched restlessly for what that might be, and what I might do to win back His affection. The details of this period are too many and too long to explain, but is suffices to say that by the end of my time in Paris, I knew that my relationship with God was changing (maturing, I hoped) and that seeking Him purely by my own guidance and whim was simply not the way to approach Him.

That summer, back home in the States, I began to read Saint John of the Cross for the first time. It did much to explain the spiritual trials I had experienced only recently and introduced me, for the first time, to a major branch of Catholic spirituality. The Dark Night of the Soul and the Catechism, which I acquired at that time, helped to convert my admiration for Catholicism into a love for the Catholic Church. I became determined to become Catholic and at the Easter Vigil the following year I was received into the Church..

My decision to apply for the seminary took place over the following two years. I was first interested in the monastic life. I enjoyed praying so much that it was all that I wanted to do. I thought I could best serve the Church and the world by offering my life in absolute prayer. Eventually, however, I was forced to realize that I gained much from being in contact with people, and that many of my talents would be put to much better use in an active life. I then considered the Franciscans and though I enjoyed the groups that I met, I realized quickly that I was not made for community life. Diocesan priesthood was my last interest, and it was by providence that I considered it all. Through a friend at work I came to be in touch with Father Marcel Taillon, the vocation director for the Diocese of Providence. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, but I figured I would talk with him because it couldn't hurt and might help me think about my other options. Sitting in an old dinner on a Saturday morning Fr. Taillon and I talked for a good hour about the Church, spirituality, priesthood and the needs of the world today. I very much enjoyed everything he had to say, and after our meeting I agreed to come and visit the seminary in Providence. A couple weeks later I came down for the weekend and took an instant liking to the place. It was fall then, I figured I would apply in the spring.

Around the end of December everything changed. All of my drive, all of my excitement, all of my desire to enter the seminary seemed to vanish. I remember being very confused by it, but also strangely peaceful about it. I wasn't depressed, or distraught over this apparent loss. Nor, in retrospect, had I really discerned that God was not calling me. It was simply that the drive, the spiritual impetus, to enter the seminary had left me. When I would bring it to prayer there did not seem to be any encouragement in one direction versus another. For about three months my whole discernment process seemed to freeze into a very peaceful but puzzling pause. God's call seemed to go quite. I began considering other options, looking at grad schools and programs like Teach for America. In late April I was off of work for a week. Under the guidance of my spiritual director I decided to devote that time to serious discernment. At that point it was between law school and seeking a career as an educator. It was at a mass during this time, when I was again praying devotedly for guidance about my future, that the idea of the priesthood came back to me. It presented itself to me so appealingly, I perceived so much fulfillment and joy in it, that it was hard to deny. All of my interest in it, all of my desire for it, all that I had loved in the priesthood, all that had held so much attraction for me came rushing back. And yet, it did not completely overpower the other options I was considering. After this experience I devoted a number of days weighing my options. I saw the attraction and the value of each option, and I firmly believed that God would be with me no matter what I chose, but when I considered the priesthood it was the option which held the most appeal, it was the option which inspired me the most, which seemed to promise me the greatest fulfillment and satisfaction.

Later, when I had made up my mind to submit my application to the seminary, I had to ask myself why I had ever drifted away from the idea of the priesthood. Why had I considered any other option? I felt that there was providence involved here. That maybe, up until that period in which God seemed to be silent on my vocation, I was purely attempting to discern His will, determined to do it without a question. There is no doubt that the chief concern of discernment is the question of what God wants from us. However, there is also a demand placed on our will. That is, we may discern God's call, we may discern our vocation, but unless we commit ourselves to it, unless we do indeed choose it ourselves, it is bound to be laden with difficulties. I consider this second half of my discernment to enter the seminary, the half in which God's silence left me puzzled, as that opportunity given to me to consider other interests and still come in the end, and this time with full determination, to enter the seminary. In this process God revealed His loving grace as well as His demand for the participation of my own will. That is, He answered all my prayers for guidance, and, after answering these, He left it to me to decide. As of this writing I have been in the seminary for three semesters and my life is richer and more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

As far as the seminary itself, it should be considered a place of on-going discernment. I didn't stop discerning when I entered the seminary. My first discernment was simply to enter, the discernment of the call to priesthood is on-going. I honestly feel that any Catholic man who has considered the priesthood should answer his questions by giving at least a year to the seminary. If someone comes and leaves, they leave more informed of their faith and the priesthood, relieved of some of the burden of vocation discernment. If someone comes and discerns that it is God's will for them to stay, then so much greater is the cause for rejoicing. A vocation to the priesthood is a gift to the individual man, to his family, to the Church and to the world. No man should be afraid to ask God if that gift is to be given through him.