When most people think about the vocation to the priesthood or religious life, they tend to think of it as Moses and the burning bush; that God comes down to certain people directly and tells them exactly what they are supposed to do. While the calling of Moses in the Burning Bush is beautiful and something to reflect on, in reality most people who receive a call to the priesthood or religious life say that it was never the big or spectacular moments that convinced them of their vocation, but the small, quiet moments with God. This is something that I have experienced in my own discernment towards the priesthood.
The first time I seriously thought about the priesthood was in seventh grade. One of my classes required that all of the students take a career test, as a way of having us start to think about different jobs we may have wanted to do when we grew up. When I got my results back, there were three full pages of different jobs I could be interested in with different descriptions for each one. However, the longer I looked over the papers, the more my eyes kept coming back to one word-clergy. At the time I didn’t know what “clergy” meant, so when I came home from school, I looked up what it meant and discovered that it was another word for priest. This caught my attention. Besides saying Mass on Sundays, I never considered what else a priest might do. I started researching what a priest was and how someone might become a priest. The more I looked into the priesthood and talked about it with my parents and friends, the more excited I became, to the point of choosing to seriously begin studying for the priesthood in college and eventually joining the seminary after graduation.
As I continued to discern what God wanted for me and my life, there was never a moment when the heavens opened up and a booming voice told me exactly what to do. While there were moments when I would have preferred that, my discernment towards the priesthood consists mainly of the silent, small moments. It was in choosing to attend daily mass, being consistent with my daily prayers, and talking about the priesthood with my pastor and family that helped me to begin and continue my journey to the priesthood. It was through these daily, consistent, and ordinary tasks of choosing to make time for God and hearing his voice daily.
Kraig Gruss
Seminary Intern