I grew up in and around Suwanee where I am a parishioner at Saint Monica’s. I have two incredibly loving parents and two beautiful sisters, each of whom I love dearly. Growing up, I had a very happy and full childhood, during which I attended diocesan school from kindergarten all the way up to my high school graduation from Blessed Trinity.

I have many hobbies and interests, but they usually involve activities in which I can grow closer to those I am with. I greatly enjoy playing and watching golf and different team sports, something I am doing frequently now in seminary. I have recently also begun learning to play the guitar, although I confess that I am not very good yet. Lastly, I enjoy watching good movies with others and reading good books and discussing them with my family and friends.

It is impossible for me to pick a favorite passage from scripture, so I will choose one that I have been meditating on recently. “But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back;” (Lk 6:35). This is probably the most revolutionary and difficult of Jesus’s teachings to live out, yet it is also the most fruitful in our daily lives.

Again, a Saint that has come to mind recently is our first Pope, Peter. He was an ordinary guy in all ways but one. But in the end, His faith became the foundation of the Church. Peter is also the perfect witness to ongoing and lifelong conversion, another necessity in the lives of us modern Christians.

In a nutshell, my conversion story is one of the relentless and faithful love of God the Father, who, despite many of my efforts to flee from him, called me back home to Christ’s bride, the Church. In middle and high school, I fell into habits and tendencies which destroyed both my life in Christ and my healthy relationships with others. But by the mercy of the Lord in His sacraments, I returned to the faith and was reminded of my true identity as His son. I discerned that I was called to the priesthood very slowly and subtly. The thought had crossed my mind as a child, but I found God’s speaking to me in the mundane and ordinary. Like Elijah, I heard the Lord speak to me in the silence of a quieted heart which desired nothing from God but Himself.

Seminary life has been great. It is very structured and ordered towards maximizing our freedom and development of virtue as potential priests. So far, I have enjoyed playing tons of different sports and praying in fraternity with my brother seminarians from all over the southeast US.

I am most looking forward to coming to love others more fully. It is true that greater knowledge of a thing can increase a person’s love for it. As a priest, I will have the privilege of getting to know my sheep for who they are and can therefore come to a more perfect love of them through the Sacraments.

Psalm 46:10

It is easy for us to get anxious about the future and allow ourselves to become afraid for our responsibility in it. But the Lord only calls us to the present moment. Be still, and trust that His will will be accomplished despite our sin and weakness. Our vocational certainty will never come from a complete lack of doubt; rather abandonment to the Providence of the loving Father.