Vocation Page of the Diocese of Yarmouth

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T  hese vocations have come out of our own diocese in Yarmouth. God is probably calling others as well, is he calling you? If he is, don't be afraid to join us. Those interested in a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, please contact the vocations director for Yarmouth diocese Fr Ketih Billard at 1 902 245-2115 Saint Patrick's Church, 110 Queen Street P.O. Box 190 Digby NS B0V 1A0

	Henry Smolenaars is from Kentville. He is a seminarian studying for the priesthood for the diocese of Yarmouth He will be ordained (God willing) in May 2010	My journey to where I am today has come in small steps with a few detours along the way. The idea of the priesthood started coming into my head off and on in my teens. I can still remember telling a few of my friends in high school that I wanted to become a priest. But after high school, while I still attended Sunday mass, it gradually became something I did more because of a feeling of obligation than anything. Money and things began to seem more important. I wanted to go my own way, do my own thing. Having grown up on a dairy farm, I had always liked working with my hands fixing things. So I became an Industrial Electrician. It was nice work, a stable job with good pay. Life was going well. My focus became being the smartest and best electrician around. This is how things went for me on into my early 20’s. But as time went by, all these things started becoming less and less meaningful for me. I began feeling a void in my life. Deep in my heart was a feeling that there must be something more. Then one day while I was sitting alone in my apartment, I opened up the bible. This was the one religious thing I had taken with me when I had moved from home. It had been sitting on a table for a few years begging me to open it, yet mostly out of laziness I hadn’t. As I sat there reading the Words, I felt the Holy Spirit moving in my heart in a powerful way. While I had felt Gods presence before, it had never been so strong. It instilled in me a deep inner peace and joy like I had never known. A few months later, when I was home visiting my parents, A Jehovah Witness happened to come to our door. Feeling my new zeal, I said to myself “what a great opportunity to set this guy strait.” Little did I know that he was an ex-Catholic who knew more about the Church than I did. He challenged me on some of the main beliefs the Church teaches and I had no response because I didn’t even know the basics about my faith. Once again, God used this simple experience to move me along my path. I started buying books to learn everything I could about the Church. As time went on, I was gaining knowledge and praying and becoming more involved with the Church in various ways, but I still felt something missing in my life. Occasionally someone would come up to me and say they thought I had a vocation to the priesthood, something I really didn’t want to hear because I thought it would mean I would have to give up a lot, like my job and my freedom. Yet deep in my heart I did feel this stirring; that God was asking something more of me and secretly I knew that I wanted to be a priest but didn’t want the cross that might come with it. God was going to have to do more if he wanted me to answer the call. It’s funny though how God puts the right people in your path when he wants you to change directions, for one day while I was volunteering my time to help build a new rectory, a seminarian showed up to help for a week. While I had seen other seminarians before, I had always tried to stay away from them because I was afraid of what might happen if I got to know one. Curiosity about the seminary got the best of me. He seemed so happy. I remember asking him a lot of questions that week and from his answers I got a good picture of what the seminary was like. I must have aroused his suspicion because after the week was up I remember him telling me he thought that I should go to the seminary, but I didn’t feel ready to answer the call yet. As providence would have it, a year or so later that same seminarian came back to my parish as a priest. We began spending time together and seeing what he was doing as a new priest seemed attractive to me. About this time, I also decided to take a trip to the holy lands, thinking that it would just be “a nice vacation”. Instead it became a transforming experience for me. I was walking in the actual places Christ had. It did something to for me inside that I can’t explain. I knew in my heart that God had brought me there for a reason and if it was to be a priest, he would work it out that way. The next year, I made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Croatia. It was here I experienced a deeper conversion. After this, I started going to mass every day, something I feared before because I didn’t want people to notice I was becoming more religious. I was now finding it hard to hold back the stirrings in my heart. I knew I needed to go to the seminary because if God had made me to become a priest, it would be the only path that would make me happy. So Father Keith and I made the trip to Yarmouth to see the bishop. To my surprise, the bishop accepted me right away and a month later I was off to the seminary. Time passed quickly. The first four years of seminary were intense because of the busyness, but they were good years. They were a time of growth for me. But after four years of study, I felt I needed some time off to sort out feeling that maybe I hadn’t given the possibility of marriage a good enough chance. I had met girl whom I had grown close to, and thought maybe I could be happy married instead. So I told the bishop, and I left formation. But it wasn’t long before I felt restless again. The “hounds of heaven” as some call them, would not stop chasing me. After my first year away from the seminary, I wanted to go back. There was a sense in me that I was wasting precious time. But in prayer, I felt God speak to my heart, that I shouldn’t be concerned about time and that I was right where He wanted me for now. The two years I took off became a spiritual time and allowed me to see my path more clearly. It let me see that while marriage might be good, it wasn’t my vocation. As a seminarian again, while I still find that I am challenged in many ways, my sense of peace has come back. And as one priest once told me, any vocation is going to have its problems, but to discover your true vocation; you need to find what it takes to make you happy. For me, being back in formation is where I feel most happy.
	Jenna Murphy is from Yarmouth. Joined the Queenship of Mary Community In Aug 2007 She is in Ottawa, Ont.	Gently I was led.... Since this past August 22, 2007, the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, I have been a postulant with a new community based out of Ottawa called the Queenship of Mary Community. Postulancy is the first step in the process in becoming a religious sister in the Catholic Church, and it is followed by several years as a novice before the final profession of the  (evangelical counsels) of poverty, chastity and obedience. My decision to undertake this type of a life was a decision far beyond my own capacity to discern. I did not wake up one morning and decide that I would join, on the contrary, the steps leading up to entering the religious life were often clouded with doubt and even some fear. One thing I knew for sure, however, was that I sensed the Lord was preparing me for a radical life of faith although I wasn't quite sure what that would entail. After graduating from Mount Allison University with a Bachelor of Science degree, the time had come to make some decisions. I remember feeling so unsettled about all of the options I had previously been drawn to pursue, namely pursuing a life in the medical field. Near the end of my time at Mount A, an opportunity arose for me to participate in a mission to Peru. Upon our arrival in Peru, I learned that we would be living with and working alongside of a new movement of religious within the Catholic Church. Their joyful example spoke more to me even more than the good work they were doing. I genuinely began to consider the cause for their joy, and how I could secure some of this joy within my own life. When I returned home to Canada, I remained in contact with several of the sisters and the consecrated women that I had met and I still hear from them now and then. Although I attribute a major part of the discovery of my vocation to this time in Peru, the time after Peru was even more crucial because the ball was obviously in my court. I began to really seek the Lord and listen to the people that he placed in my path. Through a close friend, I met a woman named Alice Fougere (now my Mother Superior) who was responding to a call to found a new religious community of consecrated women here in Canada  affiliated with the Companions of the Cross (a community of Catholic Priests based out of Ottawa). When Mother Alice was speaking about what the Lord was placing on her heart, I remember pondering the words from Luke "Were not our hearts ablaze when he was speaking to us on the road?" (Lk 24:23). Indeed, my heart had been set ablaze with the recognition that I wanted to be part of a renewal of faith in Canada like the one I had witnessed in Peru. Mother Alice spoke with great zeal about how we are each called in a different way to use our respective gifts for the benefit of the whole Church. Through our being faithful to the Lord's gifts, Mother Alice said that we could help to usher in a new springtime in the Church (beginning here in Canada). It became clear through our conversation that there is also a strong need to pray for priests, both for their ministries and also for the young men discerning the call to the priesthood (this desire to pray for priests also figures very prominently in the mission of the Queenship of Mary Community). After having met Mother Alice, I began to conduct a real 'inventory' of my heart. I began to realize that I was not called to live out God`s love in a mediocre way. I knew that the time had come for me to step out in faith and to place my trust in God and His plan for my life and ultimately, my happiness. Needless to say, I said yes. On a human level I left so many things I loved behind- my family, friends, my previous passions and dreams. But I have very quickly come to know that God`s plans for my life are way better than my own. God, in His great love for us blesses us with family and friends and He places desires on our hearts, only that He may perfectly fulfill them. I am learning that all of those things that I held/hold so dear are only shadows of the true joy that comes from meeting He who is the Creator of all of these things that I love so dearly. Although I have a long road ahead of me, and this road is sure to be not without its sacrifices and trials, there is a definite promise of joy and lasting peace-a peace not as the world gives, but as only Christ can give. May God bless you!
	Thomas Murphy is from Yarmouth. He is a seminarian studying for the priesthood and is with the Legionaries of Christ He will be ordained (God willing) in Dec 2009	Thy Kingdom Come! Leaving the World with a BOOM! I am the fifth in a family of ten: nine boys and one girl. I went to Mass every Sunday at St. Ambrose Cathedral, to the dismay of most of the parishioners, since I had a talent of being very noisy and distracting, a trait I shared with the rest of my brothers. My life was pretty much the normal life of a boy growing up in Yarmouth until, of course, the day God came into my life with a bang or, better said, a boom. I was 16 years old. I was in the 11th grade. It was history class. A friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder and asked me what I was doing for Halloween. Since I didn’t have any plans, he asked me what I thought about putting a bomb on our teacher’s doorstep. I thought it was a great idea and would be fun, so I agreed to be his accomplice. It would be a service to our fellow students. After all, the teacher was a little on the serious side. After school, Halloween day, we went and bought the necessary material to construct our bomb, i.e. a brick, white modeling clay, and some wires. Without entering into the details of police officers, bomb squads from Halifax and street evacuations, we fulfilled this particular service to our fellow students, but there was a small price to be paid. I had to go to court and I ended up with 150 hours of community service and a year of probation! I began working my hours off very slowly with different volunteer projects throughout the year, like cleaning up storage rooms at the hospital, supervising at the YMCA, etc., until one day my mother mentioned to me the possibility of finishing all my hours in one week by going as a counselor to a summer camp that was being run by the Legionaries of Christ. This was a great idea. One week and freedom. I went to this camp with one goal: getting my hours done. God wanted this too, but he also had something else in mind. At the end of the camp I was invited to go down to visit the seminary the Legionaries have in Cheshire, Connecticut. I decided to go. It was partly because some of the other counselors who I had met and made friends with during the camp were going, and partly because I was curious. Some of the counselors had been talking about priesthood during the camp in ways I had never thought about before: the priesthood is a tremendous gift from God, a call to heroism, to give your life for your brothers and sisters, to bring as many people as possible to come to know and love Jesus Christ, etc. I think another thing that attracted me to go visit was the authenticity of the Legionaries I had met. On the one hand, I always had the impression at school that people weren’t being coherent, that they weren’t really being themselves, that almost everything anyone did was done in order to impress others and to make others like them, even though it meant going against their own principles. Maybe these feelings I had weren’t totally fair, but that’s how I felt about it. On the other hand, I saw authenticity in the Legionaries I knew. They were simple, honest, joyful, convinced of what they were doing and not worried about what others thought of them. Anyway, I decided to go and visit. It was during a rosary on the evening we arrived in Cheshire that I made the decision that would officially put me onto a new road in life, though I wasn’t aware of this at the time. The Legionaries have a month-long program in the summer every year for junior high and high school students who are open to or interested in the priestly vocation. If a visitor finishes the program and wants to continue discerning his vocation, he has the possibility of entering the Legion’s minor seminary, which is basically a private school that allows one to finish his high school studies and at the same time live in an atmosphere that helps him grow more in his relationship with Christ: Mass every day, the company of others who are also thinking about the vocation, confession, the possibility of speaking to a priest when you have questions, etc. It was during this rosary on the night our group arrived in Cheshire that I decided I would go to the program. There was no thundering voice from the clouds or lightning bolts or anything like that. It was a very simple thought: “If God might be calling me, I should give it a try.” And that was it. I told the Legionary who was with our group that I wanted to try the program. I had to go back home because the program didn’t begin right away, but a few weeks later I was back in Cheshire. The summer program was a very beautiful experience; at the end of, I was asked if I was going to stay. I said yes. It was a hard yes to give. It was hard because I loved my family and knew that a yes meant leaving home. It was a hard yes because I knew not everyone back home would agree. It was a hard yes because it’s always hard to leave the things you know and are familiar with behind and head into something you don’t know. It was a hard yes, but it was also the greatest yes I ever gave. It was the greatest yes because I knew deep down that it was what God wanted for me. It was the greatest yes because I knew that God can never be outdone in generosity and that if I was giving up a lot, it was because God wanted to give me so much more. It is a yes that I have renewed every day. It is a yes I have never regretted. After my year at the minor seminary, during which I finished my last year of high school, I entered the Legion’s French-speaking novitiate in Cornwall, Ontario. In this two-year period, the focus was a lot more centered around the priestly vocation and on preparing to profess the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Legionary. The preparation consisted in learning more in depth the spirituality of the Legion, what religious life is, and growing in my prayer life. At the end of these two years I made my religious profession. I then returned to Cheshire for a year of classical humanities studies (Latin, Greek, history, art, literature, etc.). After this, I was sent to Thornwood, New York, where I studied for and received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. I was then sent back to Cornwall to do some apostolic work. I was sent as dean for the French-speaking minor seminary we have in Cornwall. This lasted four years. When I finished there, I was sent to Rome to begin my theology studies. Currently, I am in my second year of theology and, God willing, I will be ordained to the priesthood on Christmas in 2009. “And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.” – Excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s first homily as pope, Sunday, April 24, 2005 –
	Sean Libby is from Yarmouth. He is a seminarian studying for the priesthood and has joined the Companions of the Cross in Aug 2007 He is now at Assumption Farm in Combermere, Ont	I was raised in an average Catholic family and from as far back as I can remember my sister and I were brought to church every Sunday, taught how to say our prayers, and were read parts of the Bible every once in awhile. We also went to Sunday school where we received the majority of our teachings about God and the Church. In Grade 8, however, I opted to attend the “Warriors of the Light” youth group instead of continuing with Sunday school. It was here that the teachings were made more understandable, and actually fun, through various talks, games, and skits; I made a lot of friends and found myself becoming more active in Church activities and ministries. The truth is, however, that this had nothing to do with a desire to know, love, and serve God. Yes I believed in God, in Jesus Christ, and in treating others with love and respect, but my involvement in the Church was motivated primarily by the fun I had with my friends. Plus, I think that helping out within the Church community gave me a sense that I was doing some “good” in the world. After High School I moved away from home to go to University and it was here that the truth about my faith was revealed. I still professed to be a Catholic but whenever my beliefs were challenged with some controversial issue I found myself making compromises; “Well, I don’t know if I believe that part” or “Um, well, yeah the Church is pretty old fashioned when it comes to certain things”. I still went to Church on Sunday every so often but I think it was more because I didn’t want to have to lie to my Mom when she called that evening. So the truth about my faith was that I believed that God existed but that my wants and desires came first because He created me to be happy as long as I treated people properly. This led me to live a life of drinking, partying, and basically pursuing my pleasures and desires as long as I didn’t feel like I was hurting anyone. Approximately three years of living like this left me feeling empty inside; I knew there was more to life than this but yet I just couldn’t break my routine. I continued to go to bars and drink with my friends only to have my hidden feelings of frustration come out in drunken anger. I felt depressed the next morning and yet was too weak to say no to my friends the next time and it would happen all over again. I found myself asking “what’s the point?” I then met someone who challenged me by the strength of her character and faith. As our friendship developed I found that the things she would say and do, sometimes inadvertently, made me sincerely question how I was living my life and slowly I began to desire to know the truth about this world and about my own existence. All of this was happening around the time that Pope John Paul II was very sick and eventually died. The surge of media attention focused on the Pope caught my eye and I found myself reading into his extraordinary life. I saw in him the hero I had always wanted to be; someone who spent his life fighting for justice, love, and truth without any regard for his own life; a man who was not afraid to sacrifice himself for what he believed in. What gave him such strength I wondered? The answer became clear to me: it was his relationship with Jesus Christ. And this wasn’t just the “idea” of Jesus that I had experienced in Sunday school and youth group. I was sure that somehow, in some way John Paul II knew Jesus personally and intimately in a very real way and all I knew was that I wanted to know Him too (if this was even possible since I still had my doubts). But I just had to know! So I did the only thing I could think of; I knelt down and prayed “Jesus, if you are actually real and can hear me, I want to give my life to you. Only I don’t know how to because I do not know who you are. Please let me to know you.” Jesus heard my prayer and he answered me. Everything about Him slowly began to make sense and all my doubts, hesitations, and fears dissolved away. I had great friends to point me in the right direction. My youth minister gave me the book “The Life of Christ” by Fulton J. Sheen and for the first time my mind was opened up to the Scriptures and I couldn’t deny the truth about God and His Church any longer. I had an intense desire to know Jesus and to serve Him with my life; I had found the purpose that I was looking for all along! This new desire to serve Jesus, as well as my admiration of John Paul II, led me to think that maybe God was calling me to be a priest. Although I had never seriously considered this in the past it just seemed to feel right for me. So for the past couple years I have been walking in the direction of the priesthood and despite my doubts and even a few possibilities of beginning a beautiful and meaningful relationship with the hope of being married and having a family, I cannot deny that God is calling me towards something else right now. That is why I joined a community of priests and seminarians called the “Companions of the Cross” this past August. This community is devoted to living a life in and with Jesus Christ by spreading the message of His Gospel to the world. They strive to accomplish this by being Eucharistic (adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament), Charismatic (embracing all the gifts of the Holy Spirit), Marian (consecrating one’s life to Jesus through Mary), and Magisterial (loyalty to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church). Despite anything else I know without a doubt that God has led me to where I am truly supposed to be at this point in my life and I will continue to follow Him wherever He may lead me.