Often when I speak with young people, I tell them that discovering your vocation is like finding the deepest desire of your heart.
So often, when making plans for the future, we stay at a superficial level. We think we know what we want, and then we cannot see how God could possibly fulfill it. But if we walk with Him, if we allow Him to walk with us, He reveals that He fulfills the deepest desires of our hearts in ways we could have never dreamed or imagined.
That was my experience of my own vocation.
I did not always know that I was going to be a priest. As I grew up, I often thought, “I want to help others. I want to help people with my life.” I had seen that in my family and in so many good stewards and teachers. Even as a kid, when I helped another person, that was when I was most happy, most alive. I wanted to do that with my life.
So I went to college and studied mechanical engineering. I wanted to do biomechanical engineering — designing prosthetic legs and hearts, things like that. I thought I could help people that way.
But as I grew in relationship with Jesus, I started to have this little bug in my mind and heart that would not go away: maybe He was calling me to be a priest.
One day I asked a priest, “What did you do today?” I thought, “If I can see myself living this kind of life happily, then maybe that is a sign.”
He told me he had been called to the hospital. A parishioner was sick and dying. He walked into the room, full of doctors and nurses, and said, “Excuse me. There is nothing more that you can do to help this person, but there is something that I can do.”
And he gave that person the Anointing of the Sick and the Eucharist — viaticum, food for the journey to eternal life.
Just hearing him say that, something clicked in my mind and heart. My heart was set on fire. That was the deepest desire of my heart. Not just to help people for a time, but to help them live forever. I wanted to help them come to know the love of Jesus personally. I wanted to help them know that no matter what sin they had committed, and no matter how long they had been away from the Church, there was always hope — healing and forgiveness through the sacraments.
So I took the leap and entered seminary.
Like many young men, the biggest difficulty in fully giving myself to the vocation of priesthood was the call to celibacy — to give up marriage and family for the sake of the Kingdom. That was especially hard in conversations with my mom. Like many moms, she wanted her children to be happy — and, of course, she wanted grandkids.
But there is a tradition in the Church that helped me. It is called the maniturgium, the cloth used after a priest’s hands are consecrated with chrism oil at ordination. The tradition is that a priest gives it to his mother. One day, when she comes before the Lord, she opens her hands and says, “I gave You my son as a priest.”
When I gave that cloth to my mom, I wanted her to know what I hoped my life would bear: that by the grace of God, one day there would be countless souls in heaven who could say they came to know Jesus through the sacraments of the Church, through the life of a priest. And I would tell her, “My life was never empty. These were the people I loved and cared for.” Whatever spiritual fruitfulness came from my priesthood would also be, in part, the fruit of the faith she passed on to me.
This is the gift of a vocation: a yes to God’s call, His hopes and plans for your life.
So to the young people , ask God in prayer, “What do You want for me? What is Your plan for my life?” I am confident there are young men in this parish called to the priesthood, and young women called to religious life, to belong to Jesus in a beautiful and radical way. Pray every day that you would be open to God’s call and have the courage to say yes.
And for all of us, we all must pray for vocations and support them. We need priests. We need religious sisters. Every parish is the family of God, just as every family needs a father and a mother. So pray for an increase in vocations. Encourage young people if you see something in them.
Let us continue to allow Jesus to walk with us, to reveal the deepest desires of our hearts, and to make Himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.
Father Garett Burns, Director of Vocations