Hello Saint Francis Cathedral family!

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I grew up in Hillsborough, New Jersey. My home parish is Mary, Mother of God, where I received all my sacraments. Growing up, I did not have a dream to be a priest or much interest for that matter. I had a dream of becoming a singer and was captivated by classic movies about “show business”. I wanted to play video games and go to Yankee games, but the idea of sitting in a pew was not on my bucket list, at that time. I still love music, I still love the Yankees (until playoff time for the last 17 years), I still love to sing and play the guitar, but now I have a new dream that the Lord has given to me which is greater than any of the plans or interests I had.

Even though I have been Catholic since I was a baby, I really didn’t start discovering my faith until college. When I was growing up, I stubbornly resisted any idea of being involved in the Church and found Sunday Mass to be a burden. The Lord has great mercy and great humor, the fact that I now love being at church, as He gently led me to His Sacred Heart.

By the time I got to college, I entered a four-year journey where I was hitting some of my lowest points in life, but these lows brought a deeper conviction and realization that I needed God and His Church. Reading Bishop Barron’s book about Jesus’ Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, This Is My Body, was the moment of conversion for me. I never realized how Jesus is truly present in the sacrament. I encountered in this book the Gospel passage of the Samaritan at the well. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty. The water that I will give him will become a spring of water within him welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14). I felt a joy and excitement unlike I have ever had in my life, and I began to realize the realities of sin. I realized how serious sin is and how the Lord Jesus was drawing me to new life in Him. He wanted to free me from the toil, darkness, loneliness, disappointment, and all the sin-which exhausted me and brought me farther away from my authentic self. By the grace of God, I made a resolution to go back to confession, which I have not attended for ten years. For many years, I have been searching exhaustingly for the fulfilment; I desired so much. I can gratefully say the Lord has given that to me, with an overflowing amount of grace that I did not expect. I still have a cross to carry, I am still a sinner, I still fail (many times), I still have wounds, I still get tempted and I still have times of yearning. Each of these challenges are calls to lean even more on Our Blessed Lord and to seek the intimacy He offers us. Our end goal is to be with Our Lord Jesus in heaven and there we will be complete. The Lord has such a tender love for us, and He has given me all I have ever looked for in Him and in the journey to priesthood. I am blessed to serve all of you and have the opportunity to deepen my relationship with the Lord.

I can understand the doubt of being a devoted follower of Christ, a fear to strive to become a saint, to be holy, to be the person God has made you to be. There is an anxiety we can get of “losing” something, but the Lord just wants us to drop the suffocating weight and take His yoke upon us. Not to be watered down, not to be less of yourself, but your strongest, most virtuous, most dignified, most joyful, most authentic, and most free person He made you to be. The joys of my vocation are many, praise be to God. I am so passionate that I get to share this journey with all of you to get closer to Jesus, to love His Church, and to become the missionary disciples we are called to be.

In Jesus’ Rays of Divine Mercy,

Seminarian Andrew