An Unexpected Meeting

I ended up driving back home to where my folks live this weekend. I haven't been home since Easter, which has been about two months. I called up my best friend JP and his wife DJ to visit them while I was near since she is pregnant and I haven't seen either of them since their birthdays. They were excited to hear that I was coming up, but had a wedding to go to on Saturday. It was someone we knew in college, so I figured that I would at least go to the ceremony part and maybe see some old college pals. Which there were some there and it was great to see them too.

Celebrating the wedding was Fr. JN. Fr. JN, was a seminarian at my home parish when I was around middle school or early high school years. When he was running around the church getting ready for the pictures afterward, he joyously and loudly said hi and that we hadn't seen each other for sometime. Well, while pictures were going on, I did the meet and greet in the front of the church with all of my old friends.

When the pictures were over, I went over to the sacristy to find Fr. JN cleaning up and setting some things for the Sunday vigil Mass which would take place in a couple of hours. He said he had just thought he should probably find me to catch up. We talked for a while about my family and catching up on many many years. After a while, Fr. JN asked if I knew where I was going in life, and if I was happy where I was. He had a look like he knew that it might be the right question. I didn't say exactly what I was thinking, nor did he. But, I formed my answers in a way to let him know that I was considering a big change in life. Towards the end of the conversation, he told me took pick up a bulletin for the phone number and to give him a call.

Later, I was talking with DJ and JP in the parking lot as I was getting ready to leave to pick up my parents and grandparents to do Fathers Day things as they headed to the reception. Fr. JN, on the way to and from the offices stopped by to say by to us all one more time and handed me a business card with his cell number written on the back. Priests don't usually give out their personal cellphone number, kind of like doctors they don't want to get house calls at ungodly hours because of something silly. He giving me his personal number meant that he was serious.

Okay, so maybe that's a long story to get to the point I'm trying to make that this is really important in my new journey. First off, the very day after I changed my focus and became serious about praying and discerning a call to the priesthood, I meet an old priest friend that I haven't seen in ages at a wedding whom I didn't expect to see asking the right questions for him to see if I was open to a vocation to the priesthood. Second, I thought up some priests that I may want to approach and talk to about this discernment; Fr. JN was towards the top of that list.

Dominus Vobiscum