A priest once told me that Vocation ministry is like watching a tree grow minute by minute; you don’t see immediate results, but that doesn’t mean the growth isn’t happening. That priest was Fr. Mark Shoffner, and he told me that just a couple of weeks ago!

I appreciated that agricultural analogy very much and have been reflecting on it ever since because it mirrors my experience as I look back on the last year of vocation promotion. We just sent out our new poster to parishes and schools in the diocese featuring the faces of our six seminarians, and while there are no new additions this year, there has certainly been growth in our program. I have been so appreciative of the prayers and support of people that I run into across the diocese who know what we are doing and are offering their support in whatever way they can. I look forward to reaching out in new ways in the coming weeks and months to these stakeholders. The awareness of our need for good men from our soil and the excitement that is building among our people is palpable, and I know that growth, though sometimes silent, is occurring.

We also do have our first candidate for women’s religious life from our diocese in quite some time entering formation right now! Ms. Kathleen McMullin has just departed to begin her formation with the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in Alton, Illinois. The mission of this order is to “make the merciful love of Christ visible.” They do this through working in healthcare and education across the world. Kathleen continues to be a great light in our diocese even though she is now a few hours away. Bishop Kopacz and I were honored to attend a “going-away” party hosted by some friends of the McMullins in the Jackson area, and it was really inspiring to see how much love and support she has as she witnesses to the call of Christ to religious life.

Please continue to pray for vocations and also encourage people who you believe may have a call. Don’t be afraid to tell them that you see gifts in them that could serve the Church well. You’d be surprised how many young people have never been encouraged to think about priesthood or religious life and therefore have never believed they were capable of it. I also remind you to please come to our 2nd Annual Homegrown Harvest Festival on October 2nd at St. Paul’s in Flowood. This event will bring together vocation supporters from across the diocese for a night of music, food and fun with our seminarians! You can buy your tickets or sponsor the event by going to one.bidpal.net/homegrownharvest2021. I appreciate your consideration as we want to give as many excellent resources as possible to our future priests and religious.

Thanks to all the pastors and parish staffs who hosted seminarians this summer. It is vital that our future priests have

positive experiences working with the People of God in our diocese, so thanks to St. Joseph Starkville, St. Paul Vicksburg, St. Peter Jackson, St. Joseph Greenville and Our Lady of Victories Cleveland for hosting our men. Also thanks to Father Scott Thomas, Father Mark Shoffner and the staff at St. Mary Basilica in Natchez as they continue to work with Deacon Andrew Bowden during his internship, which will last until mid-October.

SAVE THE DATE(s)
Our 2nd Annual Homegrown Harvest Festival is set for Oct. 2 at St. Paul in Flowood. This celebration of vocations and seminarians in our diocese will be a great opportunity for the people of the diocese get to know our current seminarians and also learn how they can support vocations in the coming year. Our fundraising goal is $100,000 to go toward our operating budget for the year. I will be sending out a Flocknote with much more information very soon, but if you want to buy tickets or sponsor the event you can go to one.bidpal.net/homegrownharvest2021 – right now!

Deacon Andrew Bowden is scheduled to be ordained to the presbyterate at 10:30 a.m. on May 14, 2022 at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle; Carlisle Beggerly will be ordained to the diaconate in preparation for priesthood at 10:30 a.m. on June 4, 2022 at his home parish – Immaculate Conception in West Point. Please mark these dates on your calendar!

Our Quo Vadis discernment days were such a hit this summer that we are going to be offering another young men’s discernment retreat Friday, Nov. 19 through Sunday, Nov. 21. The Diocese of Baton Rouge will also be taking part. I will be extending invitations to young men that I know may be interested, but if there are young men that you want to invite, please let me know and I will get them all the information!

If you want to know more about becoming a priest or religious brother or sister, please contact Father Nick at 601-969-4020 or nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org. You can also learn more about vocations by visiting to www.jacksonpriests.com.

Follow vocations on Facebook and Instagram: @jacksonpriests

Kathleen McMullin first began thinking about religious life while she was a student at St. Joseph Catholic School in Madison, but she wanted to go to college and pursue a career in medicine. She graduated from Mississippi State and became a certified Occupational Therapist, but she says that Jesus kept calling for something more: “He is patient, but he is persistent.”

McMullin says that as a professional she had begun to struggle with her faith, “it reached a point where I realized that my relationship with the Lord was not where it had been, my faith was not growing, and that I was lost.”

That’s when I met Kathleen. She told me while recording an interview for The Discerning Catholic Podcast that her mother encouraged her to set a meeting with me. At that point I was the parochial vicar at St. Richard in Jackson. Kathleen says that at that point in her life she had seen her brothers get married and start families, and she says, “I wanted [marriage] as well…really religious life was off the table.”

We spoke over Zoom about how I encouraged her to pray and invited her to come on a “nun run” with some parish youth group members as a chaperone. Kathleen says that after these events she “started getting up earlier in the morning and praying with scripture and got to the point where I was craving that time in the morning.”

“Slowly over time the Lord revealed how he made my heart and made me pursue him and the fact that he was pursuing my heart as well. I became more open to at least going down that road of religious life.”

Kathleen started to look at different orders. She enjoyed a visit to the Nashville Dominicans, a rapidly growing order whose primary apostolate is teaching, and she says she benefitted greatly from going on a visit during a designated weekend at their mother house.

“A big thing is just interacting with sisters and getting to see their joy and what drew them to this life.”

But she says that through prayer she was drawn to share her professional gifts with the church, she explains, “I knew I wanted to explore an order that had a medical apostolate — that’s the word for their work.”

Through a friend she met in Nashville, Kathleen was pointed toward The Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, a Franciscan order with a house in Alton, Illinois.

“Their charism — it’s kind of like their mission statement — is to make the merciful love of Christ visible…and there was a little flicker in my heart that was like, ooo, I like that.”

Kathleen contacted the vocation director for the order and says they had a great discussion. She made two separate visits over several months and made the decision to enter postulancy for the community.

Kathleen will enter the community this September, and I will have more from her interview later this summer. Her journey to this point has inspired me to be more confident in the Lord’s plan for myself and those that I serve. And she is not alone in seeking out the Lord’s will through religious life. Sister Kelly Moline, a Springfield Dominican working in our diocese at St. Dominic Hospital, will take her final vows with the community in Springfield, Illinois on the Feast of St. Dominic, Aug. 8. And elsewhere in this issue of Mississippi Catholic you can read about the priestly ordination of Father James Martin Nobles, O.P., a native of McComb and newly ordained for the Southern Province of Dominican Friars.

The church is one big family, and we rejoice that there are those in our midst who are giving themselves over to the Lord with vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. This gift speaks to all of us of the need to have greater confidence in the Lord’s power than our own abilities, and their joy tells us that it is worth it to give everything we have up to the Lord.

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

It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to raise priests and religious for our parishes, schools and ministries. I spent some time in Little Rock, Arkansas in early May to discover why the heck they have so many seminarians. They have about 30 seminarians and about 25 of them are from Arkansas. They also have nine men and women who are studying for religious life. This is Little Rock, not New Orleans. This is a diocese that is 5% Catholic and very rural. And they have 30 seminarians and nine men and women studying for religious life! I studied their vocations poster, and it reveals a diverse cast of characters representing many corners of their very large diocese. There are some wonderful missionaries who have come to study for the diocese, but the vast majority come from within.

I left my visit extremely fired up: we can do this! The thing that impressed me most about Little Rock’s program is the culture that has been built over years of collaboration between the Vocation Department, the Bishop’s Office and the Chancery, parish leadership, and the people of God. Everything in that department is geared toward serving the people of God in Arkansas. There is a clear message that God could be calling you to serve, and we are going to support you in that call. It takes a village, and we are that village.

This sort of support is certainly present in communities in our diocese. It took a village for Andrew Bowden to be ordained as Deacon Andrew Bowden on May 15. It took a village for Tristan Stovall to be supported through the RCIA process in Philadelphia and finally to see him off to seminary formation. It took the villages of St. Paul Flowood, St. Richard and St. Joseph Schools and St. Joseph Starkville to inspire Will Foggo to enter the seminary this past year. But we can create a bigger, more cohesive village, and that’s what I learned in Little Rock. This summer I hope our village gets a little bigger as I host our first ever Quo Vadis? Young Men’s Retreat. This fall I hope it gets even bigger with our second annual Homegrown Harvest Seminarian Gala. And I also understand that this village will not be built overnight, and I am not building it alone. If you have ideas or just want to get involved in supporting our seminarians and young men and women who are discerning, please let me know. You can always email me at nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org. There are great things happening in the church, and there are great things happening in our diocese. Please continue to pray for vocations, and live in great hope, because the Lord will respond to these prayers, and we need to support one another as we look to build up our culture of vocations.

Our Prediscernment Prayer Nights wrapped up in late April and I want to thank all the parishioners who came to the various parishes to pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life. I ended up visiting ten parishes in across the diocese. It was really incredible that our final stop on the tour brought our largest crowd as we had a packed house at St. Michael’s in Forest! A special thanks to all the pastors and parish leaders I worked with as we made these evenings of prayer available to so many.

As we continue to make changes to our COVID protocols I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a Men’s Discernment Retreat this summer at Our Lady of Hope in Chatawa. This retreat center was formally St. Mary of the Pines and has been sold to a Catholic group from the Diocese of Baton Rouge. The retreat will run from June 22-24 and is for young men ages 15-25. I’m hopeful that many of the young people who came to pray with us this winter and spring can build up bonds of friendship with one another at the retreat this summer. We will have keynote talks addressing important facts about discernment and the reality that the Lord is calling each of us to a vocation. But most of all this will be a time of fun and fellowship, helping young men from various backgrounds and at various stages in their lives get to know one another and find support.

It has been almost a year since I began as full-time vocation director, and I pray that this retreat will be a visible sign of the work that is being done in cultivating discerners from our diocese. It is so important that young people who think they might have a call to priesthood or religious life have other like-minded individuals to spend time with. Discerning a vocation can be isolating, but the more we can support one another the more young people will feel empowered to do God’s will.

I have been so impressed by the dedication of so many young people in our midst who are seriously considering God’s will in their life. Please continue to pray for these young men and women and pray that the young men who would benefit from attending this retreat will have the courage and the capability to sign up! If you are interested or you want to know how to refer a young man to sign up, please log onto www.jacksonpriests.com/comeandsee or simply email me at nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org or more information.

The following is an excerpt from Father Nick’s homily on Good Shepherd Sunday. This day is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations in the church. You can listen to the whole homily by subscribing to The Discerning Catholic Podcast on iTunes or Spotify. If you are interested in learning more about discernment, log onto www.jacksonpriests.com for more information.

            Shepherds, in the words of Jesus, are not hired men, but they are called forth by the Chief Shepherd to lead the flock. Jesus calls forth shepherds, not hired men, to be His priests. He is the Good Shepherd because he lays down his life for his sheep, and he lays down his life for his sheep because his only concern is doing the will of God and not the will of men. The opinion of men slowly turns against Jesus throughout his public ministry, but his fidelity to the Truth remains steadfast. He refuses to allow fear of retribution or rejection stop him from being the leader that the Father asks him to be. And yes, this costs him his life. The Good Shepherd then, is good insofar as he does what he is called to do by God. As priests our Chief Shepherd is Jesus Christ. We follow his lead. 

Being a priest is not being hired to do a job. It is having your soul conformed to the heart of the Good Shepherd. The way that I think about life has completely changed. And while I fail over and over again to live up to the standard set by the Chief Shepherd, he mercifully calls me back into the fight each time I ask back in. When we were first understanding the gravity of the pandemic, one of my first priestly thoughts was, “how are we going to get into the hospitals?” Some of my other thoughts were, “I’m terrified of going into the hospitals,” “I’m terrified of the way this is going to change the way we celebrate mass and attend mass,” and “how long is this going to go on?” As a priest I had to figure out how to shepherd the sheep God had entrusted to me. And there were many heroic examples throughout the world and in my own circles. A few of my friends in a nearby diocese were assigned by their bishop to be the Covid team. They figured out a safe way to anoint Catholics in the hospital, and so they were assigned to cover all the parishioners in the COVID ICUs throughout the diocese. They helped me to develop a strategy to anoint when I needed to go provide the sacrament during that time of fear and confusion. 

Celebrating mass alone in front of a streaming iPhone was completely bizarre at first. And yet because I knew that this was the best way to shepherd those entrusted to me, I did it. I think it is amazing how quickly the Church figured out technology because we had to. Many of our local priests have become extremely familiar with the technological landscape because this is what was being called forth out of them through their identification as the Good Shepherd. 

Good Shepherds do not fit in with the times but joyfully, bravely, and clearly guide their sheep. Church teachings are not always popular, in fact they are most often unpopular. But are better off now as a culture who has largely rejected God? Are we closer to truth? Are we closer to peace amongst ourselves? God calls forth shepherds after his own heart. Jesus was after the heart of the Father, his will and the Father’s will were in sync. This is how priests must operate. They must be rooted in prayer and relationship with their heavenly Father so that they can be Christ’s voice in the world. Sadly, this is not always the case, for myself included, but this is a wonderful call that can transform you in ways that you never thought possible.

The church has a Good Shepherd: Jesus Christ. But Christ calls forth shepherds after his own heart to serve his flock and to bring more into the fold. Pray for your priests, that they remain faithful to this call and have the strength to minister through their identity as priests of Jesus Christ, and that they reject the lie that they are simply hired men who have a finite skill set. Pray that your priests seek only after the will of the Father, and not after worldly success, acclaim, or acceptance. And pray for more young men to come forward, because they have heard the urgent call for more shepherds and they want to save souls, and they too want to be Good Shepherds, who lay down their life for God’s people.

The following is an excerpt of a homily I delivered on the 3rd Sunday of Lent. If you’d like to hear the complete audio plus a reflection on the content, please listen to my podcast “The Discerning Catholic” which can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

            “We’ve always done it this way.”
            “We’ve always allowed the money changers to have some space in the Court of the Gentiles during Passover. The crowds are so big, how else are we going to get it done? People need to get a half shekel to pay their Temple tax, they need to sacrifice their oxen or their turtle doves. We’ve always done it this way, who are you, Jesus, to change things? Who are you to demand something greater of us!”

            “We’ve always done it this way” The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent, in which Jesus rebukes the ongoing business in the Temple during Passover, demonstrates that “we’ve always done it this way” is an obstacle to evangelization. The Court of the Gentiles is flooded with pilgrims and money changers and believers, and yet their activity is actually making it more difficult for the Gentiles to get a glimpse of what the faith is all about. If we are not careful, we can flood our own parishes with practices that are stuck in their ways, and in some ways can be obstacles to others joining in. “We’ve always had this kind of music,” “we’ve always had this kind of event.” “We’ve always done things this way.”

            Church attendance in dwindling. Faith in Christ is free-falling. It is time for us to review those practices we’ve always done and talk to the Lord about them. And we must do this at the personal level first. What are those practices that we’ve always done that are actually an obstacle to our love of God and our relationship with him? These might be behavioral habits; we get on our phone first thing in the morning completely shutting off any opportunity for quiet reflection and prayer. These can be relational habits; we speak first rather than listen, we get defensive rather than challenging ourselves to be vulnerable and truly hear another person’s story. 

            But this must go beyond the personal level for our faith communities to stop surviving and start thriving. I’m not a pastor, I’m not even an associate pastor right now, but I am a vocation director. So, the Word of God compels me to look at the way “we’ve always done things” in vocations and discern where the will of God stands in the pecking order. How can I become the most effective evangelist in the way that I promote vocations to the priesthood and religious life? I am shocked to say that the website that I helped create does not get as much traffic as I thought it would. It is a really neat website and is easy to navigate (jacksonpriests.com if you are interested), but the next generation doesn’t really go to websites apparently. And that’s ok, I need to figure out other ways to connect with them instead of doubling down on “we’ve always done it this way.” 

            Jesus wants us to get stirred up. He is looking to stir up the temple authorities and show them that the way “we’ve always done things” isn’t going to get it done. We have to die to ourselves. That’s how we become the best spouses, the best parents, the best priests, etc. Jesus is headed to the cross as soon as he turns over the first table. He is going to be rejected by many for his actions and his words, but he knows that others will be enlivened, will be inspired, and shaken out of their “luke-warmity.” We must willingly head to the cross ourselves, with confidence that the Lord will not abandon us. 

Prediscernment Prayer Nights

Tuesday, March 16 – Our Lady of Victories Cleveland, 6-7 p.m.

Wednesday, March 17 – Christ the King Southaven, 7-8 p.m.

The start of this month marked the start of our “Prediscernment Prayer Night” series. As I’ve explained in previous issues, these evenings give young men and women an opportunity to pray to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament about their own call, whether that be to marriage, holy orders or consecrated life. These events will also help me network with people who need accompaniment on the journey and invite them to post-pandemic events like retreats and dinners for discernment.

“Prediscernment” is not a word that rolls off the tongue, in fact it may not be officially a word at all! But let me remind you why I like to use that term when it comes to working out God’s will for our life. The seminary or the religious house of formation is where formal discernment happens. Often, we think that the decision to go to seminary means that we are completely sure that priesthood or religious life is our vocation, and this is not the church’s expectation. I want men and women who are serious about their faith and open to God’s call to seriously consider entering the seminary or other formation, and to let them know that they do not have to have it all figured out by the time they decide to apply. The two biggest signposts I look for when considering one’s fitness for formation are 1) a consistent desire for what the seminary or religious house offers (more resources and to be formed with men or women who share this desire), and just as importantly 2) they need to have demonstrated the maturity necessary to enter into the program.

I tell men and women that I work with who are considering entering formal discernment that they don’t need to wait until they are sure they are going to make it to the end, but to enter once they are willing to commit two years to that discernment process. During that two years they will be given the resources that they need to discern well whether or not God is calling them. If they go into the program with that intention and after two years they discern that they are not called, they will leave a better Catholic and they’ll be ready to bring the gifts that they developed back into their parishes and their life in the diocese. They will also have the peace of mind that they discerned well.

This is why I am dedicated to this idea of “prediscernment,” which by the way, is a term I have happily borrowed from Father James Wehner, the Rector of Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. About half of the men who enter seminary do not get ordained. Far from proving that the system is broken, I believe this proves that the system works. I do not take the gifts of the People of God for granted. I know that our seminaries and houses of formation have their doors open because of the generosity of people like you, and I want you to know that it is good that not everyone gets ordained or takes vows, because that means that the church and the men and women discerning are taking it seriously! Using this word prediscernment is really just a way I can start a conversation, I can tell a young man or woman what the church wants to provide for those who take their call from the Lord seriously, and I can invite them to discern well if they have a desire and the maturity to take the time to discern.

Prediscernment Prayer Nights: Each event is from 6 – 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Tuesday, Feb. 23 at St. Alphonsus McComb; Wednesday, Feb. 24 at St. Mary Basilica Natchez; Tuesday, March 2nd at St. Joseph Greenville; TBA – Immaculate Heart of Mary Greenwood.

Questions? Email nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org