Shaped by those who came before

Father Jorge Sanchez, O.M.V. administers ashes to Marquette High School students. (Photos courtesy of Father Jorge Sanchez, O.M.V.)

"TO BECOME a father, a man must first be formed by other fathers.”

I didn’t hear that until seminary, but I had already been living inside of it for years without knowing how to name it.

I grew up at St. Peter Chanel, a Catholic parish in Southern California served by the Oblates of the Virgin Mary. As a kid, I wasn’t thinking about priesthood in any serious way. I wasn’t trying to figure out my future. I just knew I liked being there, and I liked being around the priests. I would see the same priest at Mass, then later in the confessional for hours, then outside talking with people who didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. People would walk up to them without hesitation. There was no distance. They were available in a way that stayed with me. I didn’t have language for it, but I could see it. That stayed in the background as I got older.

By the time I was in college, I was studying film at Cal State Long Beach. I could see a path in front of me that made sense. I enjoyed it. I could imagine building something there. The priesthood didn’t fit anywhere into that picture. When the thought came up, I moved past it quickly. Then I made the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises (see sidebar).

I didn’t go into that expecting anything to change in a major way. I thought it would be a good experience, something worthwhile. What I wasn’t expecting was how direct everything would become. Prayer stopped feeling distant. The gospel wasn’t something I was just reading anymore. I found myself drawn into it, into Jesus’ life, into moments where I wasn’t just observing but responding. I started to recognize that following him was going to ask something from me. That question didn’t leave after the Exercises. It stayed with me. It came up in prayer, in conversations, in moments when I wasn’t trying to think about it. At the same time, I kept coming back to what I had already seen growing up.

A familiar community draws me in

The more I stayed with it, the more I started to understand the life of the Oblates in a different way. I had known them as the priests at my parish. Now I started to see the source of it. Our founder, Venerable Bruno Lanteri, had built a way of life around helping people encounter Christ deeply through the Spiritual Exercises, through preaching, through Confession, staying with people and not giving up on them. I realized I had already seen that lived out before I ever understood where it came from. That drew me in, and at the same time, it raised more questions.

I knew what I would be stepping away from. I didn’t fully know what I was stepping into. I didn’t have clarity on everything. At some point, I reached a place where I had to move or I was going to stay in the same spot, turning the same questions over without ever answering them.

So I entered seminary. I moved into Our Lady of Grace Seminary in Boston, and everything became more immediate. I wasn’t just seeing priests in short moments anymore. I was living in the same house with them. Same chapel. Same schedule. Same table at meals. I saw them early in the morning in prayer, then again at Mass, then later just moving through the day like anyone else. I saw when they were tired. I saw when things didn’t go well. I saw how they handled it when plans changed or something unexpected came up. What stayed with me wasn’t anything they said directly to me. It was the way they kept going back to prayer throughout the day, like they knew they couldn’t do this without it.

Living there brought things out in me too. I started to notice how quickly I got impatient in small things. How easily I could check out of a conversation. How I would avoid something instead of staying with it. Being around the same group of guys every day doesn’t let you hide from that.

A legacy passed on to me

At the same time, I was watching men who had already given their lives to this. Over time, I began to recognize that what I had seen growing up and what I was seeing now were not separate things. It was the same life, handed on.

I remember the day of my ordination, lying on the floor during the Litany of the Saints, hearing the names being called. I knew I wasn’t there on my own. Everything I had received from those who came before me was right there with me.

Now I’m in Alton, Illinois, at St. Mary’s Parish and School, and I serve as chaplain at Marquette Catholic High School. I teach OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults), and I spend time with our young adult group, Amicizia Cristiana, so most days I’m moving between the parish and the school without much of a break between them. I’ll be walking through the hallway and someone will fall in step next to me and start talking. It can stay on the surface for a bit, and then it shifts. Or after something at the parish, someone hangs back and starts saying something they haven’t said out loud before.

I know that place because I’ve been there.

I know what it’s like to sit there and not know how to begin, and to need someone to stay long enough for it to come out the way it comes out. So I stay there with them, even when I don’t feel ready, even when I don’t have a clear answer, because that’s what was given to me. I’m still learning how to do that without trying to control it or move it along too quickly. It keeps happening like that in ways I don’t see coming and don’t get to prepare for. I’m in it now on the other side, trying to give what I received while still being formed by it. I hope to become a father to others worthy of the many fathers who formed me.

Related: VocationNetwork.org, “What it takes to be a good priest” and “A spirituality for every temperament.”