As we continue to nurture a culture of vocations in our diocese, we are starting a new initiative to invite more stakeholders to get involved. The Catholic Women’s Burse Club is a ‘meeting-less’ association that invites all Catholic women in the Diocese of Jackson to support our seminarians. We have sent out invitations throughout the diocese, so be on the lookout! A small gift is all it takes to become a member of the Burse Club, and all members will be connected to the Office of Vocations with a monthly report and will be asked to pray for our seminarians. They will also be recognized at our annual Homegrown Harvest Fundraiser each fall.

One of the biggest sources of priestly vocations is parents. If parents encourage and promote priestly life to their sons, then it is a much easier road to the seminary. Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well. It is very challenging for young men when their parents do not support their decision to discover God’s will for them in the seminary. I know that it can be scary as a parent when your children choose to take a “road less traveled,” but God will not be outdone in His generosity. I encourage all parents, and as we are in May, all mothers to please encourage your sons to consider the priesthood. It can be easy to say “we need good priests,” but it is more difficult to proclaim, “…and those good priests can come from our family!”

I am hopeful that the Burse Club will provide helpful information and a wonderful opportunity for women of the diocese to get involved in our quest to bring forth homegrown vocations. We ask for the intercession of the patroness of our diocese, Our Lady of Sorrows, and we are confident that the Lord will bless our efforts. Please consider joining the Catholic Women’s Burse Club. We are rejoicing this month at the ordination to the priesthood of Carlisle Beggerly and the ordination to the transitional diaconate of Tristan Stovall. Kay Beggerly and Ginger Stovall, the mothers of these men, have supported them greatly and have encouraged them every step of the way. This is a great gift and we thank them for giving their sons to the family of the church.

                The women of the diocese should be receiving information via mail on the Burse Club in May. If you would like more information on the Burse Club, you can contact the Office of Vocations at (601) 969-4020.

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

Back in Spring 2021, I visited the Diocese of Little Rock to discover why they had so many seminarians. For the past several years the diocese had consistently large numbers of seminarians and most of those seminarians came from parishes in the diocese. This was interesting to me since the Diocese of Little Rock has a similar demographic layout to the Diocese of Jackson. The diocese spans the entire state of Arkansas, and other than the parishes in the metro area of the capital, and a couple of university towns, most of the parishes are in rural areas.

When I spoke to Msgr. Scott Friend, then the longtime vocation director of the diocese, he told me that one of the biggest unifying forces for his men was their dedication to learning Spanish and being ready to serve whatever community they needed to upon ordination. Speaking with some of the young priests of the diocese on that trip, they told me how their dedication to learning a second language had galvanized them to see their priesthood through the lens of mission, and this was helpful since they were studying for a mission diocese. They shared with me that learning Spanish created a ‘buy-in’ among the seminarians and helped them to grow in humility and trust of the Lord as they struggled to encounter the People of God in a new way.

As I processed through my visit to Little Rock and I spoke to Bishop Kopacz about the experience, I was sure that language immersion and a dedication to being ready to minister to the growing number of Hispanic Catholics in our diocese needed to be a focus in our formation program.

In Summer 2022, I visited the Benedictine Abbey of Our Lady of the Angels outside of Cuernavaca, Mexico in hopes of finding an immersion program that fit our needs. I visited on Fourth of July weekend as the seminarians in that year’s program in the middle of their studies led by lay teachers and monks from the Abbey. I came away very impressed by the program, and we began to make plans to implement this summer program as a part of our formation plan.

This summer, four of our seminarians and I will depart for Cuernavaca to take part in this program. We will spend two hours each day individually practicing with a teacher, then two hours in small group discussion. We will also be spending regular prayer time and attending Mass with the monastic community in the Abbey. We will also be visiting historical sites around the area, including the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is the patroness of North America. I am very hopeful that this program will not only equip our seminarians with a much-needed skill in today’s church, but that it will be a great source of fraternal bonding. The Lord meets us whenever we take a risk and trust in Him, and I know that He will be with us in Mexico. Please keep myself, Ryan Stoer, Tristan Stovall, Grayson Foley and Will Foggo in your prayers this summer, and pray to the efforts of these great seminarians will bless them, and our diocese, for many years to come.

Father Nick Adam

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

Another ‘school year’ is reaching its end for our seminarians. This means final exams and papers and looking ahead to the summer.

Only one of our seminarians will be on parish assignment this summer. Following his first year of studies, EJ Martin (St. Richard, Jackson) will spend his summer at St. John the Evangelist in Oxford with Father Mark Shoffner. John Le (St. Francis, Brookhaven) will be doing clinical pastoral education in Houston, Texas. This is a summer of hospital chaplain fieldwork that many seminaries recommend as men continue to progress toward ordination.

Four of our seminarians, Will Foggo (St. Paul, Flowood), Grayson Foley (St. Richard, Jackson), Ryan Stoer (St. Richard, Jackson) and Tristan Stovall (Holy Cross Philadelphia) will be joining me during the months of June and July in Cuernavaca, Mexico. We have partnered with the Monastery of Our Lady of the Angels in Cuernavaca to provide our seminarians with a summer immersion so they can be on the road to fluency in Spanish by the time they get ordained.

We have two men who have discerned that the Lord is not calling them to priesthood. Tripp Bond (St. Patrick, Meridian) and Straton Garrard (St. Richard, Jackson) have decided to leave the program, or ‘discerned out.’ It is never easy to ‘lose’ a seminarian, but we remember that the seminary is not a place for those who have already decided that they are going to be priests – this is the common misconception that I’ve been trying to debunk. The seminary is the place where men discover whether or not they are called to be priests. I am grateful that Straton and Tripp asked the question in the first place, and we pray that their life has been enriched by their time in formation and that they will grow in holiness as they pursue their life outside priestly formation.

As our program grows, we trust in the Lord. We have one new seminarian for the Fall – Wilson Locke (St. Joseph, Starkville) – and a few others who are seriously considering entering. God is answering our prayers, and supporting vocations means supporting our men whether or not they become priests. If our program is healthy, then we will have more men ‘discern out’ because we are inviting and supporting men who are truly open to God’s will to study in the seminary and discover whether they are called to the priesthood.

The best thing you can do is encourage the young men that you see in your parish to consider the priesthood, and to remind them that seminary is not the end, it is just the beginning. Please pray for all of our seminarians and for Tripp and Straton. Thank you for supporting our program, and we beg the Lord to bring forth more laborers for the harvest.

                                                                                         – Father Nick Adam

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

Every Palm Sunday weekend, St. Joseph Seminary College hosts a “Come and See” experience for young men. This has been a very important retreat for many of our current and former seminarians because it gives them an up-close look at what seminary life is really like. One of the biggest challenges in vocation promotion is trying to overcome perceptions that we have about seminary formation. I know that before I actually went and saw the seminary, I thought it was much more like a monastery. I expected to see people quietly praying and being very serious all the time. Of course, we all hope that there is lots of prayer in seminary life, and there is, but there is also vibrant community life. This is what is highlighted most clearly at the St. Ben’s Come and See (as I’ve said before, St. Joseph is colloquially known as St. Ben’s since it is a Benedictine monastery!)

The men arrive on Friday night and have a big crawfish boil which some local Knights of Columbus Council put on. The weekend is filled with talks about seminary life, and there are lots of opportunities to play sports throughout the days on campus. The weekend is rounded off with “Emaus walks,” where current seminarians pair off with Come and See participants to give them a listening ear to process what they have seen and heard over the weekend. After this, every goes to Palm Sunday Mass at the Abbey Church on campus. This is the highlight of the weekend as huge palms are waved throughout the sanctuary and the nave of the Church. The monks of St. Joseph Abbey take great care in their Holy Week liturgies, and it is inspiring to the visitors.

            I ask you to regularly pray for men discerning the priesthood. There are many obstacles that are placed in front of young men even as they make the first steps in a healthy discernment. Distractions can seem much more distracting, fears can become much more pronounced and sometimes the Lord’s voice can get drowned out by the many voices in the culture which do not prioritize the Lord. We have several young men actively discerning whether the seminary would be right for them right now, please keep them in prayer, and simply pray that God’s will be done! Satan does not want good and holy priests, and he wants to shut off the possibility of priesthood at the earliest moments, so pray a St. Michael prayer and ask the Archangel to intercede as these men consider their call and fight against distractions in their discernment.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.

This text from Psalm 133 is one with special meaning to any seminarian who must seek to live in unity with his brothers if he is to have some peace in his life! But it should have special meaning to all priests who need to cultivate deep, supportive friendships with fellow priests if they are to live a happy and healthy priesthood.

Father Gerry Hurley and a team of parishioners at St. Paul in Flowood have hosted area priests for dinner around St. Patrick’s Day for the last 16 years. Now that I am almost five years a priest, I find that these events are precious opportunities to spend time as brothers. We were able to relax and tell stories and laugh with one another for an evening, and it was a life-giving event. In the seminary, those opportunities were almost nightly. We always had some event that we had to help out with or an impromptu study session or dinner conversation that took us deep into the evening, but in the field, we are usually all very busy with our parishes and our other assignments, and so it is truly good and pleasant to have time to just be together for no other reason than to visit.

Priests are not married, but we still must have support. Our greatest support comes from our relationship with the Lord. We cultivate this in the seminary as our formators instill in us the absolute necessity of daily meditative prayer beyond simply saying the “mandatory” daily prayers of the breviary. Of course, we also cultivate a deep and life-giving relationship with our parishioners. But just as important is the encouragement and brotherhood of our fellow priests. There is a level of camaraderie and common cause that we need in order to stay on track and keep living our call. An isolated priest or seminarian can begin to doubt his call. A priest or seminarian who can quickly and effectively reach out for the support of a listening ear will be able to weather the storms that stir up during the course of his ministry.

                There is a lot that seminarians are responsible for after they get done with class each day. Some of them serve in student government or on planning committees for seminary fundraisers. All seminarians have pastoral assignments at various ministries throughout each school year, and all of these obligations are carried out with others, which can be a challenge in itself! But looking back, I see that these obligations instilled in me a deep love for community. It is truly good and pleasant for there to be unity of purpose and faith and for that to be lived out in community. Diocesan priesthood by its nature gives us priests plenty of time to be with parishioners, and this is a great blessing, but I am convinced that I must be dedicated to cultivating deep and lasting brotherhood with my fellow priests as well. Please pray for our presbyterate, that we can continue to grow in unity and support one another to continue to follow the Lord’s will.

 – Father Nick Adam

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

We finally won the Championship! If you know me, you know that I love basketball. I love watching basketball and talking about basketball, and I most especially love playing basketball. Much of my childhood was spent on a patch grass which had been pounded down into a patch of dirt as I shot baskets either with siblings, friends, or all by my lonesome. Even today I love to shoot baskets at the end of a long day just to decompress and get my thoughts together. So yes, I love basketball.

I was filled with great joy, then, when I heard that the St. Joseph Seminary College basketball team won the national seminary basketball that they played in back in January on the campus of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago. St. Joseph, or St. Ben’s, as it is more affectionately known (since it is on the campus of a Benedictine monastery), has been playing in that tournament since way back when I was there (2012-2014). We always were at somewhat of a disadvantage because basketball isn’t life down here in the South during the winter, since it’s usually warm enough to get outside! In the Midwest, however, and the Northeast, the basketball court is one of the only spaces during the long cold winter to get some good exercise in community, and so we would always travel up to the great white north in fear and trembling! We knew that these guys had been playing day in and day out in the gym while we were enjoying the great outdoors.

In my seminary career I think I was a part of one win in basketball outside the state of Louisiana, but the boys brought back the championship trophy this year, and our own Grayson Foley was a big part of the team. Grayson played basketball at St. Joe Madison and was the starting center for the Bruins before taking his talents to St. Ben’s in 2020. At 6’6, he provided much needed height to the seminary squad, and I am so happy that those guys were able to take part in the tournament.

Every time I played, even though we lost, I always enjoyed getting to know guys from other parts of the country. We would return with great stories and great memories. I know that many folks in the diocese supported the team as they raised money to travel to and from the tournament, and I want to thank those that gave to that cause. We want our guys to have a well-rounded experience, and even though seminary basketball is not March Madness or the NBA, it means a lot to be a part of a team, and I’m really proud of Grayson and the boys for bringing home the (Seminary) National Championship! And by the way, some of those guys, including Grayson, are great athletes, which goes to show that while sports is a great way to have fun together, it is not the end all be all. I’m grateful that those great athletes followed their call to the seminary, and that they still get to use their talents together on the court.
– Father Nick Adam

(For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.)

God doesn’t call the qualified – He qualifies the called. In my four and half years as a priest I have learned to do countless things that I once thought had “nothing to do” with ministering to God’s people, but which I now realize are mandatory if I am going to be an effective parish priest. I have learned to create agendas and run meetings – not exactly the height of spiritual union with the Lord, but very important if you want your staff, finance council, pastoral council and other committees to be in a good mood. I have learned how to fundraise and create budgets and produce purchase orders and expense reports – not what I immediately thought about when I began to consider the priesthood, but very important when it comes to day-to-day stewardship of the goods that the People of God entrust priests within the church.

I have learned to do all kinds of things that at one stage or another I thought had “nothing to do” with ministering to God’s people, but now I realize that as a priest, especially a diocesan priest, everything that I do can be caught up in the mystery of God’s call to be a priest. When we entrust our lives to the Lord by following his will for us, we allow him to take our lives in whatever direction he sees fit. This is what we prepare men studying for the priesthood to do. They need to be generally prepared to be good leaders, good organizers and good business managers, but they won’t know exactly what will be asked of them until they are out with their flock. Getting ready to be a priest is probably something like getting ready to practice medicine – you get lots and lots of training in med school and then when you put the white coat on, you begin to be challenged by things you never expected.

All this is to say: our seminarians may not take a ‘class’ for every possible situation they’ll be faced with, but they are trained to expect the unexpected and do their best, because God doesn’t call the qualified – he qualifies the called. This means that the most important thing that a man learns in seminary is how to pray and how to remain in relationship with the Lord who has called him to this task and this identity. If a man is deeply rooted in a life of prayer and a joy-filled relationship with the Lord, then he will be up to the task even when the task at hand is something he had never prepared for.

In the past week at my parish, I’ve done a wide scale edit of the website (didn’t learn how to do that in seminary), revamped our social media presence (didn’t learn how to do that either), issued purchase orders for seminarian education (same) and filed expense reports (same). It can be easy to see these tasks as “added burdens,” but that is not the message that the seminary sends to our men. For the diocesan priest, all of these administrative tasks are a part of a loving response to God’s call to the priesthood. These things are important to the life of the church and the life of our people, and so we are trained over 6-9 years to expect the unexpected, and to see every part of our day as an opportunity to minister to the People of God.

– Father Nick Adam

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

A priest or a seminarian, can slowly but surely be steered away from his call if he stops pondering the mystery of God’s love for him and starts to become, as one of my professors used to quip in seminary, ‘a sacramental Pez dispenser.’ (If you don’t know what Pez are, they are little sugar tablets that come in decorated dispensers, and you should try them.)

I hope I’m not scandalizing anyone by saying that celebrating Mass can become routine, and dispensing the sacraments can become routine. A priest can start to doubt his call and start to feel like he is a machine who exists to give out the sacraments while living a life that does not honor the reality of his whole person. Profound liturgies can become a dull routine if a priest does not understand, or does not prayerfully enter into the reality that his priesthood is a call to a mysterious and profound relationship with Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity.

Priesthood is not a job, but if we are not formed to believe this and more deeply understand this, it can feel like a job. Priesthood is a change in a man’s being, at the level of his soul, and it is an invitation to become a vessel of God’s love for humanity in a specific way. It is also an invitation into a different type of relationship with God himself. The Lord desires His priests to speak God’s wisdom to a world that has forgotten it. He desires his priests to enter so deeply into the mystery of his love for them and for the world that they cannot help but proclaim it at Mass, and they delight in the dispensation of grace that comes from dispensing the sacraments.

The seminaries that are forming our men are seeking to highlight how to be a priest, not just how to act as a priest. One of the fruits of modern priestly formation that I’ve experienced is a dedication to silent prayer. I just returned from a five-day silent retreat. It was the first time I went on retreat since I became a pastor, and I quickly realized how tempted I would be to break silence in order to ‘check on things.’ But because I was taught in the seminary that my priesthood is not about what I do, but rather is about who I am, I knew that I needed all that time in silence so that Jesus and I could talk. We needed to talk about my triumphs and my shortcomings. We needed to talk about my fears and my brokenness. Most of all, I needed time to be reminded of God’s presence in my life and the call that he placed on my heart to be His priest.

In my last article I encouraged you to support and encourage our priests in their call to celibacy. This week, I ask that you encourage your priests to be men of prayer. When you see them in the Church sitting quietly, say a quick prayer that they take their time and reject any lies that they should ‘get to work.’ Encourage them after a moving homily by saying, ‘Father, you must have been praying this week because that was a spirit-filled homily.’ Encourage them to pray because none of us can give what we don’t have. If a priest is not assured of God’s love for him and the call that he has placed on his heart, he won’t be the bold witness that he has been called to be.

“…if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

American novelist Flannery O’Connor responded with this curt statement after a fellow dinner guest suggested that the Eucharist was a nice symbol. The devout Catholic O’Connor had clearly based much of her journey in the faith assenting to the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and so she responded with great courage at a suggestion that the Eucharist was not the very presence of Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity under the appearance of bread and wine.

She recounted the comment to her friend in a letter and went onto write regarding the comment ‘that was all the defense I was capable of, but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that [the Eucharist] is the center of existence for me; all the rest is expendable.’ (Excerpts from O’Connor’s letter cited in John Desmond’s 2002 article for Logos “Flannery O’Connor and the Symbol”)

Certainly, anyone can look to this anecdote for encouragement in making the Eucharist the center of his or her life, but I think about that statement when it comes to other truths of the faith that we hold as well, including the call to celibacy for most priests in the Roman Church.

As I’ve stated in this space before, the reason for celibacy is often assumed to be ‘so the priest has more time to minister and doesn’t have to care for his family.’ My response to that is O’Connor-esk: “if that’s the reason for celibacy, to hell with it.’

Priestly celibacy is a real Spiritual Fatherhood that a man must be called to. One of the reasons that seminary is so long is so a man can discern chaste celibacy alongside priesthood. Jesus says in Matthew 19 that some will be called to be unmarried “…for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive this.” (Matthew 19:12b; NRSV2CE)

If my celibacy is a way to give me more time, it’s not working. I have less time now than I ever had, but that is because I am seeking to exercise a real fatherhood and a real spousal relationship that is lived out in my soul and in my day-to-day work and life.

Jesus actually taught this in the Gospel. That’s why I always cite these words when people try to give me an ‘out.’ They say things like: “I wish y’all could get married, because you’d probably have more help.”
I realize that these comments are made in support of me and my brother priests, but sometimes I respond in a way similar to O’Connor’s defense of the Real Presence. If the priesthood and the call to celibacy that I discerned in seminary is really all about efficiency and was not a true call to be a spiritual father, to hell with it.

I believe that priesthood can most fruitfully be lived out with a deep recognition that you were called into relationship with the church and into a true fatherhood for her people. Thankfully this was explained to me many times in many ways by many different formators in the seminary, and that work continues with our men currently in formation.

Thank you for your support of priests, and please encourage them to take ownership of the identity that Christ has called them to – they are spouses of the church, and they are true fathers of the People of God. Pray that our men in seminary discern well the call to celibacy, and that they courageously accept that call if, and only if, the Lord offers it.

– Father Nick Adam

For more info on vocations email: nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.

In his book From Christendom to Apostolic Mission, Msgr. James Shea makes the argument that the Catholic Church must reconnect with her evangelical roots. He spends a couple of chapters in this short book explaining that structures within our society that used to be infused with Christianity no longer are, and college students who used to return to their religious roots after a few years away at school often no longer do so. Msgr. Shea does a great job explaining the reality that we are living in, and he also gives an encouraging and invigorating challenge to those who love Jesus and His church: be disciples first, and then become apostles.

FOCUS seeks to answer this call in an inspiring way. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) is a national network of missionaries who work on college campuses to help students become disciples of Jesus Christ. They also train those student-disciples to become apostles, encouraging them to go out and preach the Gospel after it has led them to change their own lives. The annual FOCUS conference, SEEK, was held in St. Louis earlier this month, and the fruits of their mission were on display. About 19,000 people attended the conference. It was amazing to witness the faith and dedication of these young people, and not just their faith, but their formation. In speaking with the attendees and spending time with them, it was clear that they didn’t just like coming to church, but on top of that they were in a living relationship with Jesus Christ, or they were at least on the road to having one. They were dedicated to the sacraments and they understood why the sacraments were important to their life.

As the head of FOCUS, Curtis Martin stated in one of the breakout sessions: our colleges and universities help to set the course of our culture, and the next generation is formed during these four critical years, so we must bring the Gospel to these campuses or risk young people losing their faith entirely before entering the work force. This conference was a very life-giving event for me, but it also has left me considering what I can do as a priest to support the young people I met and was inspired by. The young church needs priests who will accompany them and bring them into contact with the Lord through the sacraments. There were about 400 priests at FOCUS, and it was amazing to see how the students would regularly come up to us with big smiles and ask for various items to be blessed, or for prayers for a certain intention, or for one of us to hear their confession.

As vocation director, I am grateful for the work done by campus ministers across our diocese. About 80 students from our diocesan universities attended the conference. FOCUS serves at Mississippi State right now and they had about 60 attendees alone! But all of us share in the responsibility to form our young people in the faith, and I am grateful that I was able to attend this event, and it has led me to think seriously about the way that I evangelize. Nearly 19,000 people attended a conference centered on Jesus and the sacraments. The desire for God is in the hearts of young people — what are we doing to bring Him to them?

– Father Nick Adam

If you are interested in learning more about religious orders or vocations to the priesthood and religious life, email nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.