What is your full name?
Fr. Grayson Dodge Heenan

What is your current Assignment/Parish?
I am the Parochial Vicar for St. Andrew Catholic Church in Rochester, MI, serving the wider Rochester Area Catholic Family of Parishes.

What is the greatest gift about being a priest?
My life is immersed in the Sacred Mystery of God’s work. I get a privileged front-row view of His grace working in people’s lives. To mediate between God and his people, whether that be in the Sacraments or in “sacramental” encounters, is the greatest gift. It has long been my hope and my prayer that, as a priest, it might be Christ Jesus alive in me, working in me (Galatians 2:20).

What would you say to a young man discerning the priesthood?
Read your desires: do you feel an attraction or some kind of desire to be a priest? Be open to the possibility that this is God already at work in you, God the Master of Hearts who forms our desires.

How can people at your parish best support you?
People can best support me through prayer; friendship; and through their own lives as searchers, disciples, and missionaries, embodying and “incarnating” Christ the Friend in their lives “outside” the Church.

How do you see the Holy Spirit working in the Archdiocese of Detroit?
The Holy Spirit is always up to something. He is ever inviting us to be “born again.” Am I open to this or am I opposing it as a man of Catholic communion? The transition to Families of Parishes seems to be His latest invitation.

Describe the first moment you knew God was calling you to the priesthood.
I was nine years old and at Mass with my mom. Watching the priest, I felt a Presence suggest “that will be you one day.”

What should all young people know about discerning a vocation?
God speaks in the heart, and He speaks through others. Be a good and generous listener!