"People ask me when my first vocational call came," he said Monday. "People smile, but I usually say, according to family stories, it's 2 1/2 or 3, it was outside of church and my neighbors kind of said, 'Now, Jerome, what do you want to be when you grow up?'
"And a priest passed by, and I said, 'That's what I want to be.' And, of course, they laughed and they said, 'Sure, you'll grow out of that one,' but I never did. There has always been this deepening relationship and that desire to be (a) priest."
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2 comments:
This may sound crazy.
But from the earliest time of my memory I have known that God is everything, Jesus is the Lord, His Word is Truth.
I was born into a devout Protestant family; my grandpa was a minister of the Disciples of Christ.
But when I first learned of what the Catholic Church taught, I knew it was all true. All of it.
No problems with intellectual conversion. I knew it was all true.
God's wonderful grace.
And I was not baptized until I was 13 yrs of age (my parents did not believe in infant baptism)...but I received the imprint of the Catholic faith even before then...I was "dedicated" as an infant (catechumenate maybe?).
When I found the wonders of the Catholic Faith at age 10 I knew I was called to be a religious and a priest.
How?
I don't know.
It's been the mystery of my life.
All I can say is that I had a great-grandma who was a Catholic; in unfortunate circumstances, she left the Church...but all her children became Catholic...and now her great-grandchildren are Catholic...did she pray for me?
Good German Catholic that she was, I believe so.
And the Irish side (my mother's) might have left the Faith in the hills of TN...God is so good.
He works with all of the sins, failures, infidelities, weaknesses of our lives. Praise be to Him forever!
That is fascinating Father! I'd love to hear more of your conversion story, or of when you learned of what the Catholic Church taught.
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