The Most Difficult Conversation I Had On Independence Day

One of my good friends recently got accepted into Texas A&M’s nursing school (whoop!), so her family threw a going-away party for her. A substantial handful of fellow friends, catechists, and people from my parish came to celebrate. Even one of our priests participated in the celebration! This party was dual-purpose because it also happened to be on July 4th.  Obviously there was launching of fireworks! I found out our priest really, really likes fireworks...

#PyroPriests #RomanCollar #RomanCannons

At some point during the evening, I was catching up with the husband of one of my fellow adult volunteers with a good seminarian friend. For this blog post, let the husband’s name be Alfonso. I haven’t really interacted with him beyond brief small talk in the past, usually in youth ministry/parish event contexts. Because he knows of my involvement at the parish, I think it was natural for Alfonso to ask about my non-church life. Ya know, life and work. I started talking about work because of his questions. Obviously, talking about aerospace-related things oftentimes lead to military talk. I mentioned something about news regarding the Marines.

Now, Alfonso has a son who is in the Marines so the conversation went that direction. His son was indirectly one of my youth in the youth group as well as a peer of my seminarian friend. I naturally had to ask Alfonso how his son is doing and where he’s stationed now. He started giving updates. Alfonso then mentioned that he should be home for Christmas after being gone for a long while!

...before he’s shipped off to Iraq in January.

When Alfonso was describing how his son will be deployed to Iraq, I could begin to sense the fear in his voice. With everything going on in the Middle East right now, it’s understandable and a hard reality to face. All three of us dwelled on the inherent dangers and the reality of death. We had some awkward silence, which I broke by mentioning how his son’s faith, or at least caring about his faith, increased when he went into the Marines. Back in high school, he was one of those punk kids that treated his Catholic faith in a superficial way. But that seemed to have changed somewhat since becoming a marine as I learned from talking to his mom every so often.

Alfonso mentioned that Marine culture isn’t very conducive to cultivate one’s faith. Despite that, his son seems to hang onto his faith better compared to his Marine buddies. In our conversations about the reality of death, Alfonso mentioned that when it comes down to it, “there are no atheists in the trenches.” Alfonso, my seminarian bro, and I all recognized the notion of the importance of what’s next after passing away.

When we were talking about the very real possibility that his son may be killed in action, Alfonso started tearing up. That was the most difficult part of this conversation. I nearly started tearing up myself seeing Alfonso’s great love for his son and very real fear of the very real notion of his son’s death.

Through the awkward silences, wetting of the eyes, and dwelling on the thought, I ended the conversation by offering to pray for his son and his family. Likewise, the seminarian did as well.

Praise God that all three of us are Catholic (and the Marine, too). Because of our Catholic faith, I know that we’re equipped to handle the reality of death. It absolutely sucks to confront, it’s difficult to come to terms with it, but it is a reality we all must face one day.

Please pray for Alfonso and his family and for the protection of their Marine in body and soul—St. Michael the Archangel, our defender in battle and protection against the devil, pray for us!

One of my favorite Instagrams for #100picsofbeauty

St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of soldiers and bishop of Tours, pray for us!

-JD

St. Martin splitting his cloak for a beggar // Sacred Art Series Blog

How A Single, Catholic Guy Knows He's On The Right Track

Back in January, I took a road trip. After three hours of riding on a sleepy charter bus, we finally made it to Austin, TX. I joined with 100 other people from my parish for the Texas Rally For Life. Pretty cool! We joined thousands of others from around Texas to rally for the pro-life cause. We had great speakers, and Abby Johnson MC'd. No big deal.

Before the march, we had some downtime after we arrived in Austin to relax and take a lunch break.

During this break, I was going around talking to various people being a social butterfly.

Ok, so Apu from The Simpsons is being a hummingbird here, but whatever. 

Not that I have any measure of popularity, but I suppose because I'm pretty involved at my parish, people know of me. Because of this, whenever they have a chance to talk to me, they want to know more about me. I found myself in such a conversation with a mom of one of my religious education students.

She asked me the usual questions. She asked me what I do for a living, the ministries that I'm involved with, and of course she asked about my marital status. When I told her that I'm single, she asked the next natural Catholic question in this Catholic context: do you want to be a priest?  I chuckled and answered no, but what she said next is what prompts me to write this blog post.

She said that she thinks that I would make an excellent priest or husband in the future.

This stuck with me the rest of the Austin trip. Why? Because I guess I needed to hear it. It's an affirmation that whatever I'm doing means I'm on some right track.

In our Catholic world, a vocation is a calling by the Lord to live out one’s life according to His will (His not mine) to a particular state in life. It is truly a calling and not an occupation. The primary vocations, or states in life, available to me are priesthood, marriage, and single life (which single life could also mean religious life in community like in a monastery). The most talked-about vocations are priesthood and marriage, with marriage being the more popular one.

And so for the mom to say that I would make an excellent priest or husband gave me pause because sometimes it’s easier for me think about it if the opinion is more one-sided. But to be considered excellent for both? Hmm.

I’ve heard it said before (I forget where) that a really good, awesome Catholic priest would also make a really good, awesome husband. Now, married priests and priestly husbands is a totally separate discussion which I won’t cover here, but both Catholic priests and husbands share a commonality— both are men! Not only both are men, but both are fathers. In each of these vocations, priesthood and marriage, the man is called to fatherhood in uniquely expressed ways. Fatherhood, to me, is the fullest expression of being a man.

So I took her compliment as a deeper affirmation that I'm living out an authentic masculinity that fits well with either of the two vocations. The commonality between a Catholic priest and a husband is the man and his call to fatherhood. His role as priest or husband doesn't make sense or cannot be lived in its fullness if he doesn't first live out his authentic masculinity.

It was a really nice compliment for me. It was something I needed to hear at the time. It helps me realize that I must be doing something right and that overcoming the struggles of living out authentic masculinity is worth it. Striving for an authentic manliness has been a constant reflection of mine since the end of college. I don’t think I’ve arrived, but I must be on the right track.

Now, time to dig deep, put on my archery mentality (whereby archery mentality focuses on what was done right to continue hitting the bullseye) and take note of what it is I'm doing to be the man God created me to be.

Please pray for me!
-JD

Pastor Lee // The Drop Box
Pope Francis celebrating Mass in the Sistine Chapel // BBC
Apu hummingbird gif // Giphy