Welcome to Vocation Boom!

Welcome to Vocation Boom!, the new multi-media initiative (more on that in future posts) which I hope and pray will play a role in encouraging many young — and not so young — men to consider a priestly vocation, or to persevere in their current pursuit of the priesthood. Before writing another word, I ask that if you do nothing else, please make a commitment to pray for VB every day. And, by extension, pray daily for an increase in happy, holy, healthy vocations to the priesthood!

Many tremendous projects have been unveiled during this Year for Priests. May God grant that they all bear much fruit. As for Vocation Boom!, it really is much more than a response to the Year for Priests. In fact, I view the Year for Priests as more of a confirmation of a vision that’s been on my heart for almost twenty years.

All my life I have been blessed to have the influence of good priests. First among those outstanding men of God was my late uncle, Fr. Harold Thiel, C.Ss.R. I rarely saw him during much of my life since he was a missionary to the Hmong refugees in the hill country of Thailand. Nevertheless, I recall his influence on me being significant, especially late in his life when ill health forced him to return to the United States to live out the remaining years of his life. If you want a truly inspirational look at what a priest is meant to be, read more about him here - http://www.fatherharrythielcssr.com/.

While I always intuitively admired my uncle from afar, I had the great blessing of traveling to Thailand to visit him and “his people” several years ago. It was there that I came to fully realize the heroic sacrifices he made daily for all those decades to bring hope and truth to people who so desperately needed it. I learned more about what it means to be a man from him than I did from anyone else in my life. And, as I say, that happened more through his distant example than from my spending a great deal of time in his presence. What he showed me helps to drive home the point that today, more than ever, we need men who are willing to be martyrs — perhaps literally, God only knows — to accept the call to priesthood. Anything less will not do in the challenging times we’re already immersed in.

As you may know, I spent six years in priestly formation from 1989-95. During that time, a friend (Fr. Darrin Merlino, C.M.F., a member of the VB advisory board) and I started a newsletter called In Persona Christi, which we distributed twice a year to seminarians around the world. That, to me, was the seed of Vocation Boom!, which is now flowering in God’s good time, and with the help of tremendous advances in technology and media.

For nearly twenty years, this vision to creatively and aggressively promote and nourish vocations to the priesthood has been growing in my heart, to the point where it can no longer be contained. For the last couple of years, I have been assembling a team of colleagues who I knew could help it become a reality. We have been actively working on the multi-media initiative for quite some time, and as I noted above, Pope Benedict’s proclamation of the Year for Priests served as a concrete sign from God that the time has come for Vocation Boom! What you see here on our web site is merely the beginning phase of the project. There is so much more to come, which you’ll learn about in the near future.

I don’t know about you, but I have a real sense of urgency in my heart for helping more and more men discover God’s call to the priesthood in their lives. Let’s face it, the Lord isn’t calling fewer men today than he did, say, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, even five hundred years ago. What we’ve had has been a crisis in hearing or answering God’s call to the priesthood. I truly believe those days are quickly coming to an end, and I’ll share more about that in future posts. For now, suffice it to say, the “vocation boom” is underway. I just ask Almighty God to grant that our humble efforts to assist what the Holy Spirit is doing will help to bring about blessed results. Please jump in and join us in helping to facilitate this much-needed Vocation Boom!

Want to comment? I’d love to hear from you.

God bless!