We are blazing through another spring season and the seminarians are very busy. The Spring Semester always feels a little more ‘fast and loose’ because there is so much going on, liturgically, socially and academically. We have some exciting things on the horizon for our seminarians. They are getting ready for their summer assignments. Several of them will be assigned to parishes throughout the diocese and some will have specialized assignments to help them focus on specific parts of their formation. Joe Pearson will be headed to Omaha, Nebraska for the Institute for Priestly Formation. EJ Martin and Grayson Foley are headed south to Cuernavaca, Mexico to spend two months immersing themselves in the Mexican culture and learning lots of Spanish. The other three men (Will Foggo, Grayson Foley and Francisco Maldonado) will be in parishes for June and July, and Joe will be in a parish when he returns from IPF since that program only goes to July 5th. I’ll make those parish assignments public a little later in the spring. The summer assignment is an important stretch in the seminary year. It helps our guys focus on the specific tasks that they’ll eventually be fully responsible for as parish priests. I try to send them to a variety of parishes so they can meet the people of the diocese, and the specialized assignments help them prepare as well, even though they are outside of the diocese.

The trip to Mexico is in part to learn Spanish, but it’s also to experience the beauty that comes when we meet people where they are. This is a challenge for many young priests (it was for me) when they are in a parish with a large Spanish-speaking population, or any other population with unique needs. In a bilingual community, you have two choices — do everything in English and lose whoever you are going to lose because nothing is in Spanish, or, do your best to encounter your people where they are and take the risk and make the sacrifice of speaking as much Spanish as possible.

I spent a summer in Cuernavaca, and have been in a bilingual parish for nearly three years, and I’m still not totally fluent in Spanish, my grammar is bad and I still need help translating, but my time in Mexico gave me an attitude of resourcefulness and opened my heart more fully to ‘just trying.’ It can be easy to say — ‘let someone else handle that,’ but as priests of the Jackson Diocese, we have to be ‘malleable’ and able to handle many different realities within one parish or one assignment. I think that the summer in Mexico really helps our guys understand that mentality and practice it. I tell our guys that they are not going to Mexico so that they become fluent, or because Hispanic ministry is the only important ministry in our parishes, but they are going there so they understand what it takes to do the work of encountering whoever comes through the door, whatever language they are speaking, and whatever background they come from.

We also have some exciting news with regard to new seminarians for the new year, but I’ll save that good news for next time! Please pray for our seminarians and for those men discerning entrance into the seminary for August 2025!

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

Our discernment groups continue, and semester number two is going really well for the Jackson high school group. I’ve tried to provide enough groups in the Jackson metro area so that we don’t have large age gaps, and my high schoolers group has really bonded. I have five guys that took part in the discernment group last semester, and four new guys who have come on board this semester. The curriculum is flexible enough so that the returning guys aren’t getting the same information as they got the last time, but the new guys don’t feel lost in the shuffle. The coolest thing that I’ve noticed is how the returning men are stepping up and leading, and they are also such a good influence on the new guys.

I would like to ask for your prayers for all the priests who are leading discernment groups this semester. It is a big commitment, and it takes a good deal of prep work, but I really think this is the key to having a healthy group of discerners in the diocese. Young men don’t just need to talk to me, or Father Tristan, or their pastor about the priesthood, they need to talk to one another about the path to holiness and encourage one another along the way.

The point of these discernment groups is not to get every single participant to be a seminarian. It is to give our young men who care about their faith a venue to grow and learn more about God’s call for them. That call, first of all, is to holiness. This is the call for all of us. But think about your friend group in high school or college, did it encourage you to seek holiness? I know that I wasn’t always a great example in those days, and it would have been a huge help to have a group of guys who I knew were serious about their Catholic faith to hang out with. These discernment groups are helping with cultivating more priestly vocations and helping to form young men to be holy and about the right things no matter what vocation God calls them to. So far, we’ve got groups in Jackson, Cleveland and Starkville off and running. St. John Oxford has also started a discernment group for women open to discerning religious life. We are also about to start promoting our summer camps for high school girls and boys who are serious about their faith but also want to have a lot of fun!

Our next big ‘thing’ in vocation promotion will be a seminary visit to St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, Louisiana on Palm Sunday weekend. All the guys participating in discernment groups this semester will be invited, and any other young man aged 16-18 who would like to see the seminary can come, free of charge. Anyone interested can find out more.

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

Join Vocations Supporters on Flocknote for updates from the Vocations Office: https://jacksondiocese.flocknote.com/VocationsSupport

Our second wave of discernment groups has kicked off, and it has been ‘supercharged’ by our Called by Name weekend back in the fall. You may remember that weekend in November that we asked all priests to share their vocation story during Mass, and then we asked you to share the names of any young men in your parish who you think should consider the priesthood and who might benefit from being invited to vocation events. One of the benefits of having all those submissions is that our discernment groups can now have a much bigger pool of possible participants. Here’s an example to help me explain:

My discernment group last semester had about eight high school age boys from the Jackson Metro in it. The group, as scheduled, lasted six weeks and we had a great time, and the guys got a lot out of it. When I started planning my group for this semester, I reached out first to the guys who were in the last group. But I also had about 15 more young men to invite because they were submitted through Called by Name. Because my group is for high schoolers, I called the parents of each of the boys submitted and shared about the group and invited them to share the information with their son. We just had our first meeting, and we had five returning participants, and four new participants come. We actually increased participation between our first group and our second group.

This may seem like ‘no big whoop,’ but this is a substantial ‘widening of the net.’ There is so much going on during the school year that there will be some guys who can’t attend a group for a semester here or there just because of sports and other extracurricular conflicts, so the fact that we retained five guys and we added four more is a huge deal. It keeps the group going and it keeps our meetings dynamic and fun. It is so important that we are consistent in our approach and in offering opportunities to young men so that priesthood stays on their radar. It has also been a great gift to be able to speak to parents in this process because it gives us an opportunity to get to know one another, and I think it gives them confidence that their sons are going to have a positive experience in the group whether they end up being interested in priesthood or not.
Stay tuned for more updates on opportunities that we are developing for young men and women to discern their vocation. Next week I’ll let you know about a great opportunity coming up this summer for high school youth.

https://jacksondiocese.flocknote.com/VocationsSupport

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

I stated this last issue of Mississippi Catholic, but I’ll state it again … we have set a date for Homegrown Harvest 2025! In this Jubilee Year of Hope, we will have our 6th Annual Event on Oct. 11, 2025 at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Madison. Please save the date.

Homegrown Harvest has become a sort of touchstone for me as vocation director. I had conversations just before the pandemic with Bishop Joseph Kopacz and with the development team at the diocese about having an event that allowed our supporters to encounter our seminarians and see all the good things that are store for the future of the church. Then … Covid. And so, our first Homegrown Harvest happened at St. Jude in Pearl and there were about six people in attendance. We somehow managed to figure out the technology and had a live event over Zoom that night as Bishop Kopacz and I spoke with Father Jim Wehner about vocations, and some other things happened I’m sure. It was all a blur.

I am so grateful at how this event has grown since then. We want to continue to make it better and more fun, and, of course, keep raising money to support our seminarians and the great ways that we are reaching out to young men throughout the diocese and accompanying them in their discernment.
In other news, Father Tristan Stovall took a group of ten (10), yes, I said ten college students down to Notre Dame Seminary at the end of January. We are so blessed to have Father Tristan as assistant vocation director. He’ll be leading another seminary trip on Palm Sunday weekend to St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington.

Seeing the seminary helps young men see that there are just normal people at the seminary. The seminarians are not monks, and they are not hermits, they are normal young men who are discerning a call to a unique state in life. I’m so grateful that Father Tristan has such a love for the work that he’s doing, and it is a great help to have a brother priest on board who can lead these types of trips. He is also leading a trip for young women to see the Nashville Dominicans in the coming weeks. Thanks Father Tristan!

Our second wave of six-week discernment groups with men ages 15-25 are ramping up this month. If you remember the Called by Name campaign that we held last November – all the names that surfaced from that initiative are being contacted by members of the vocation team to see if they’d like to participate in one of these groups. Please keep these young men and the vocation team in your prayers and pray to the Father to send out more laborers for the harvest!

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

(For more information on vocations, visit jacksonvocations.com or contact Father Nick at nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.)

Join the Vocation Office email list: https://jacksondiocese.flocknote.com/VocationsSupport

I have been hearing from more and more folks that this article is an important part of their routine when they pick up the Mississippi Catholic, and I’d like to thank you for that encouragement! This really was the first way that I started to communicate with vocation supporters way back when I started as vocation director for the diocese. We just launched a new monthly newsletter that we want to get to all vocation supporters via our diocesan Flocknote email system. If you have participated in the Homegrown Harvest Festival, signed up to be a member of the Women’s Burse Club, or have given any donation to the Vocation Office in recent years, you should have received an email about our January activities in the vocation office. We will send this newsletter out to any Vocation Supporter who wants it, and so if you would like to receive these updates and are not, please let Rebecca Harris, our diocesan development director, know at rebecca.harris@jacksondiocese.org.

I sent letters and emails to our Women’s Burse Club members at the start of the year to let them know that we’ll be merging that group under the larger vocation supporter umbrella. That way, everyone who supports vocations will be able to know what we’re doing in the department. I’d really like to thank the development office; they are always willing to work with me and they give me good ideas on how to communicate our message more clearly.

That message continues to be this: We are creating a culture of vocations by calling forth more young men to consider whether or not he is called to the seminary. With the help of our friends at Vianney Vocations we have a system in place to accompany those young men with consistency and quality, and we look forward to seeing what the Lord will do with our work. So far two young men are applying for entrance in the seminary in the Fall of 2025, and our spring discernment groups are about to launch, so please pray for a few more applicants in the coming weeks and months. We still have our goal of 33 seminarians by the year 2030! I believe we can get there; I know it sounds crazy, but with God, anything is possible!

Our Homegrown Harvest Festival is officially set for Oct. 11, 2025. It will be held at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Madison. Please save the date and thank you to Father Albeen Vatti and his staff at St. Francis for welcoming us back to their wonderful parish grounds. We are excited, I hope you’ll join us this fall!

– Father Nick Adam, vocation director

(For more information on vocations, visit jacksonvocations.com or contact Father Nick Adam at (601) 969-4020 or nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.)

The new year is upon us and we continue to build on the momentum that we started back in the summer. Our partnership with Vianney Vocations continues and we have some work to do!

More than 130 names were submitted back in November during our first-ever Called By Name weekend, when parishioners took part in encouraging young men in their parish to think about the priesthood and to help the Department of Vocations connect them with resources to help their discernment. Our Vocation Team, which is a group of priests from across the diocese, will begin reaching out to all of those young men this month and inviting them to take part in a discernment group.

You may remember that we launched a few six-week discernment groups last fall and more than 30 young men took part. We expect that those numbers will greatly increase this spring. I would like to thank all of those who participated in the Called by Name campaign. Think about it: the Department of Vocations has over 130 more contacts than we had before. That is God at work.

The next big discernment trip will be hosted by assistant vocation director Father Tristan Stovall. Father Tristan is taking college age and above guys to Notre Dame Seminary at the end of January. The men will tour the seminary, take part in classes and visit with our seminarians as well as the other men at NDS. We will have a seminary trip to St. Joseph College Seminary a little later in the spring for our younger discerners. These trips are always important and thanks to Called by Name and other initiatives, more men are being invited to participate.

Our goal continues to be ambitious, but full of confident faith in the Lord: 33 seminarians by the year 2030. We have two applicants for the coming year so far, and we will see what the Lord has in store when our discernment groups launch, and God continues to work on the hearts of the young men who are participating.

As you discuss our vocation efforts with possible discerners, parents and your Catholic friends, help them to understand that seminary formation is not just for men who know they are called to be priests. Seminary formation is for any man who is open to the will of God and thinks that priesthood might be his call. Too many people dismiss the possibility of going to seminary off hand because they misunderstand what the seminary is for.

The seminary exists primarily to form young men, and many of them become priests, but not all. Many of the guys who start seminary formation don’t end up getting ordained, and that is ok. If a man has the requisite maturity and the correct attitude and openness to formation, he will end up being a better Catholic professional and husband than he would have been without that formation.

Thank you all for your incredible support of our programs. I have been inspired by the amount of phone calls, letters and gifts that we’ve received to keep our programs going and to support our men in priestly formation. Thank you, and Happy New Year. Let’s go find some more seminarians!

(For more information on vocations, visit jacksonvocations.com or contact Father Nick Adam at (601) 969-4020 or nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.)

At the end of 2024 things may seem like they are about the same as they were at the beginning. We started the year with six seminarians, and we’ll end with the same amount. But all the seminarians will affirm that the Lord’s work is most often done very quietly. When we are faithful to our call, the Lord works. When we show up to pray each morning and pray the Mass with reverence, the Lord works in our heart.

The greatest change this year has been made in the hearts of our seminarians as they continue the work of being formed into priests after the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. That work is quiet, but its results are clear. So many people have reached out to me to tell me that they were blessed by the presence of our seminarians at one event or another. This is my favorite news to receive, and it affirms what I see as well: we have great seminarians who are working very hard and who want to do what the Lord wants them to do.

We have great hope for the future as well. At the end of 2025 Will Foggo is scheduled to be ordained a deacon in preparation for priestly ordination in the spring of 2026. We also have two applicants for the seminary as of now for the next formation year which begins in August 2025. Please keep all of these men in your prayers. We always ask that God’s will be done, and if they are meant to enter into seminary formation, please pray that any barriers come down for them.

We may have more than two applicants as the weeks and months of the winter pass, in fact, I can say today that I expect that we will. This is the mark of a vocation program that is healthier than it was at the start of 2024. We introduced the Vocation Pathway in the summer and thanks to the help of Vianney Vocations we have walked with over 30 young men in discernment groups across the diocese. We have also collected the names of over 50 more young men who you think need this type of fellowship, and so we’ll be reaching out to them in the New Year as well.

The goal that we set at the start of this new chapter was bold, and we continue to ask the Lord to bring it to fruition – 33 seminarians by the year 2030. With that number of seminarians in the pipeline, we can staff our parishes and schools with priests. That’s the goal, that’s the vision, and we have trust that the Lord will bless our efforts.

I am grateful to all those who have supported this mission and vision this year, and in many years prior. We are building on the work of so many people who want to see our parishes thrive. In our little corner of the Chancery, God has called us to promote the diocesan priesthood, and I believe we are doing that very well right now. I am grateful to all of you, and to my part-time staff members, Cecy Arellano and Debbie Padula, who work very hard to promote the priesthood and support our seminarians. I am grateful to our six seminarians. We don’t have a huge number of guys, but they are the type of men we need, and seminary isn’t easy, so I know they appreciate your prayers and support.

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

Our first annual Called by Name weekend has wrapped up. Every parish priest was asked to share his vocation story during Mass on the weekend of Nov. 9-10, and then every parishioner was asked if they knew of a man in their parish that they wanted to encourage in his discernment. We will not have final numbers in for a few weeks, as all the cards are being sent to our partners at Vianney Vocations so they can enter the data, but I know that 26 names were submitted via our new jacksonvocations.com website alone. That is 26 names we would not have gotten in prior years, and that is 26 opportunities to reach out and encourage a young man to take his vocation seriously, whether he ends up going to the seminary or not.

All of this is designed to get many more young men thinking about priesthood, and to therefore get many more young men to attend the seminary. As I’ve stated, we want to have 33 seminarians by the year 2030. I believe that many more men are called to the seminary than are currently in the seminary, and we want to change that. The seminary is not the place for fully formed priests, rather, it is the primary place of formation. You don’t have to know you are going to be ordained in order to be a good candidate for the seminary. In fact, most guys don’t know they are going to be ordained. Ordination comes after 7-9 years of prayer, life in community and study. We want more men to enter the seminary so that they can discover whether or not they are called to be priests.

I want to be clear, however, that this does not mean that there is a ‘low bar’ to be accepted to seminary. We have spent the last several years bolstering our application process so that we help a young man discern whether or not seminary is the right fit for him. It is delicate work trying to discern with a man whether the Lord is calling him to the seminary, and I can’t be the only one who discerns with a man. We have a team of experts in Louisville, Kentucky who work with us and our applicants and proctor psychological testing in order to help the applicant, and us, understand whether a man would be a good fit for seminary life.

As I’ve stated before, I loved my time in the seminary, but if a man is not prepared for the academic and social rigor that is present there, then it will not be as positive an experience for him, or for the community. We also have a vocations board in the diocese that meets with an applicant and provides a recommendation to myself and the bishop. The team meets with the applicant after all the other work is done – references are checked, tests are administered, many conversations are had, and I present that work to the board for their review.

I have grown much more comfortable in recent years taking men through this process and also being honest when necessary, when I think the process may have reached its end. I believe that more men are called to seminary than are currently in seminary, but I also take my responsibility to help these men discern seriously. We have these protocols in place so we only accept a man who will be able to enter into seminary life freely and joyfully, so that he can be formed into the Catholic man God has called him to be, whether or not he becomes a priest. And as the net widens and more men (please God) apply for seminary, this process will continue to be vital.

Please pray for me, our vocations board, and all those who work with seminary applicants. We want to invite as many qualified men into the seminary as we can, but we also need to be good stewards of the resources given to us by the people of God, and good leaders for these men who are trusting us with their future.

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

Our first annual Called by Name weekend has wrapped up. Every parish priest was asked to share his vocation story during Mass on the weekend of Nov. 9-10, and then every parishioner was asked if they knew of a man in their parish that they wanted to encourage in his discernment. We will not have final numbers in for a few weeks, as all the cards are being sent to our partners at Vianney Vocations so they can enter the data, but I know that 26 names were submitted via our new jacksonvocations.com website alone. That is 26 names we would not have gotten in prior years, and that is 26 opportunities to reach out and encourage a young man to take his vocation seriously, whether he ends up going to the seminary or not.

All of this is designed to get many more young men thinking about priesthood, and to therefore get many more young men to attend the seminary. As I’ve stated, we want to have 33 seminarians by the year 2030. I believe that many more men are called to the seminary than are currently in the seminary, and we want to change that. The seminary is not the place for fully formed priests, rather, it is the primary place of formation. You don’t have to know you are going to be ordained in order to be a good candidate for the seminary. In fact, most guys don’t know they are going to be ordained. Ordination comes after 7-9 years of prayer, life in community and study. We want more men to enter the seminary so that they can discover whether or not they are called to be priests.

I want to be clear, however, that this does not mean that there is a ‘low bar’ to be accepted to seminary. We have spent the last several years bolstering our application process so that we help a young man discern whether or not seminary is the right fit for him. It is delicate work trying to discern with a man whether the Lord is calling him to the seminary, and I can’t be the only one who discerns with a man. We have a team of experts in Louisville, Kentucky who work with us and our applicants and proctor psychological testing in order to help the applicant, and us, understand whether a man would be a good fit for seminary life. As I’ve stated before, I loved my time in the seminary, but if a man is not prepared for the academic and social rigor that is present there, then it will not be as positive an experience for him, or for the community. We also have a vocations board in the diocese that meets with an applicant and provides a recommendation to myself and the Bishop. The team meets with the applicant after all the other work is done – references are checked, tests are administered, many conversations are had, and I present that work to the board for their review.

I have grown much more comfortable in recent years taking men through this process and also being honest when necessary, when I think the process may have reached its end. I believe that more men are called to seminary than are currently in seminary, but I also take my responsibility to help these men discern seriously. We have these protocols in place so we only accept a man who will be able to enter into seminary life freely and joyfully, so that he can be formed into the Catholic man God has called him to be, whether or not he becomes a priest. And as the net widens and more men (please God) apply for seminary, this process will continue to be vital.

Please pray for me, our vocations board, and all those who work with seminary applicants. We want to invite as many qualified men into the seminary as we can, but we also need to be good stewards of the resources given to us by the people of God, and good leaders for these men who are trusting us with their future.

Father Nick Adam, vocation director

Our vocation promotion is about to get super-charged!
On the weekend of Nov. 9-10 every priest in the diocese is being encouraged to share his vocation story at Mass, and every parishioner is being encouraged to submit the name of a man, or men, in their parish, age 15-30, who they think should consider the priesthood. We are calling this effort “Called By Name Weekend,” and I ask that you take part in it!

The names that are brought forth from this program will be catalogued and sent to our vocation team. This is a team of eight priests, including myself, who have committed to running discernment groups throughout the diocese every fall and spring. Depending on where the young man resides, a member of the vocation team will reach out and invite him to consider joining a discernment group and also invite him to other in-person events throughout the year. These events include Come and See weekends at the seminary, dinner with Bishop Kopacz, and more.
Each man who’s name is submitted will also receive a letter from Bishop Kopacz congratulating him for being recognized as someone who takes their faith seriously and encouraging him to be open to these other invitations.

As you consider who you might nominate, please remember, submitting someone’s name does not mean that you know that man is going to be a priest. It simply means that you see a light in him and a desire to do the Lord’s will, and you want to help him get support to discern his vocation. The discernment group that I ran in October had a good mixture of guys. Some were just starting to learn about what the priesthood was all about, while others had been considering the priesthood for a while and were very open to it. All of them got a lot out of the six weeks of group meetings and the social and service outings that were a part of the program. My favorite part was our morning of service when we put together care packages for the homeless and walked around downtown Jackson on a Saturday morning encountering those on the streets. It was really inspiring to see the sincerity of the young men and the courage and care it took for them to speak with the folks that they were serving with compassion and friendship.

We had 36 men in discernment groups this fall, and that was without the help of the Called by Name campaign, so I can’t wait to see what the Lord will do with your help! If you are reading this after Nov. 9-10, but you still want to submit a name, please go to www.jacksonvocations.com/called to submit someone’s name!