What is the greatest gift about being a priest?
Being able to celebrate the Eucharist.

What would you say to a young man discerning the priesthood?
I would encourage him to start to pray now about what God wants him to do with his life. For so many young people today, including myself, discernment and taking these things to prayer wasn’t something that was commonly talked about. So men, at a younger age, try and learn how to pray, schedule your prayer time, on a regular basis, and develop a relationship with Jesus. At that point, you can start to pose questions to Jesus: what Lord do you want me to do with my life, what vocation are you calling me to, what college do you want me to apply to and so on. My best advice for a young man today would be to start that process of prayerful discernment and have a disciplined prayer life. Without having to overthink it, discernment is naturally going to happen, as long as you have that relationship with Christ through a dedicated prayer life.

How can people at your parish best support you?
They can enter into intercessory prayer; prayer is the most powerful thing. In addition, lately, it’s been placed on my heart, to really try to encourage the people to come to Eucharistic adoration. I’m trying to teach the community what adoration is, and, in addition to that, why you should desire it. If we had a full community of people who love Jesus and wanted to come spend time in Eucharistic adoration with Him, not only would that support me, it would also support the entire parish, the entire Archdiocese, and the entire universal Catholic Church. So again, it kind of goes back to a disciplined prayer life. Pope St. John Paul II said that “parishes need to be schools of prayer.” Priests should really dedicate quality time in their preaching to try and teach people how to pray and maybe focus on different forms of prayer. The highest form of prayer would be Eucharistic adoration, so that would be the best way for people to support me. Once they pray, then the Holy Spirit prompts them into action and now they have a desire to serve. But if you don’t have that foundation of prayer first, then you truly don’t know the next step to take.

How do you see the Holy Spirit working in the Archdiocese of Detroit?
One way I see the Holy Spirit working powerfully is through the laity and their dedication to prayer and their commitment to growth in holiness. It’s been so inspiring as a priest. There are people who have full-time careers, full-time jobs who are also raising families who are at church, praying before the Blessed Sacrament and volunteering at the parish. It’s inspiring to see how the laity give of their time and talent. I’ve been assigned only to parishes that have schools, so I see another level of sacrifice with parents sacrificing to pay tuition to have their children in a Catholic school because they want faith formation and their young ones to be raised and formed as disciples of Christ. To see that commitment has been very inspiring. The Holy Spirit is inspiring my parishioners to offer up prayers and sacrifices.

Describe the first moment you knew God was calling you to the priesthood.
I wanted certitude that Jesus was calling me to become one of His priests and that took a lot of time. It took years to come to that realization with certitude that God was calling me to become a priest. It happened in a dramatic moment for me. I entered seminary in 2005; I left seminary in 2008, so I spent three years discerning my call to the priesthood. And I came to the conclusion then that I was called to be a husband and father instead, so I exited seminary on good terms. I was away from the seminary for two years, and it was during that two-year hiatus in which the thought of priesthood was still on my mind. I felt this feeling that maybe He really is calling me to become a priest. And the reality was that I really had to discern which of those were my feelings and thoughts and which were His, so it had to do with proper discernment.

During that two-year hiatus, I started to work at a nursing home as a certified nurse’s assistant. I was in that job for maybe six months, and I ended up working the midnight shift taking care of a resident who was on hospice. He was a double amputee, and he had cancer. He was on comfort care, wasn’t able to speak, and was legally deaf. It turns out he was a priest. And one of the nurses you knew my history of being in the seminary said, “John, it might be nice if you took care of Fr. Harry.” She told me he probably isn’t going to respond to me since he has been days without food and drink and is slowly dying. I thought it would be an honor to take care of a priest in his last moments. In the course of the night when I was taking care of him, he wasn’t really engaged with me at all. He couldn’t even open his eyes. I would try and talk with him, saying: “Father, I used to be in the seminary.” I figured if I talked to him and shared with him my vocation story, maybe he would perk up. And there was nothing; he didn’t say anything.

Right before I was getting ready to clock out for the day, I went back into his room and said, “Father, I know you can’t hear me; I just want to ask you to pray for me, pray for my vocation. I was in the seminary; I felt God was calling me to be a priest. And then at some point, I felt that I didn’t know if I wanted to become a priest. And now here I am, almost two years later, thinking maybe I want to be a priest. I just don’t know what God wants for me.” And Fr. Harry started speaking, saying, “John, I heard everything that you had to say, and Our Lord and Savior is calling you to be a priest. Now go back to the seminary.” I left the room, and I got the nurse and said, “Hey, I got Father to say something, maybe we can talk to him and see if we can get him to eat something.” But by the time we got back into the room, he was unresponsive like before. I left work that morning, and Fr. Harry died within a matter of hours. To answer the question, when did I know for certain that God was calling me to the priesthood, it was Him speaking through Fr. Harry in that dramatic moment. However, I took my time with it, saw a spiritual director, explained that story to him, and started to have confidence that God was calling me to be a priest.

What should all young people know about discerning a vocation?
It requires patience and perseverance; my discernment process took years and during that process, it was a roller-coaster. At one point, I felt that Jesus was calling me, and at another point, I felt He wasn’t. And then mixed in with all that, there were times I wanted to be a priest and times that I really thought I wanted to be a husband and father. And so you need patience and perseverance and also a spiritual director who is going to be able to help accompany you on that discernment journey. Sometimes we want Jesus to answer our questions real quick, but it certainly requires patience and perseverance to be able to properly discern your vocation or calling in life.