My Notre Dame Experience The most important question I have asked while at Notre Dame is, “What should I do with my life?” When I was very young, I thought I was going to get married, and I always had the desire to get married and raise a family. However, since 5th Grade I have thought about a vocation and felt called to the priesthood. When I was younger, I was always trying to get God to prove to me that he existed through ridiculous requests and prayers and hoping that I would have some great vision. In 5th grade, I realized that there was no reason why God should reveal himself to me. I realized that I was not some great person or some hero or biblical figure who deserved any sort of vision, and that I just had to have faith. Around this same time, while staring at the tabernacle at my school mass, I heard, “Carl, I want you to become a priest.” It was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to hear. In middle and high school, I ran away from God because I was afraid of that call. I realized something was wrong with my life my junior year of high school and tried to turn things around. By the end of my senior year, I had reconciled my relationship with God, and was actively considering becoming a priest. I had recently been praying the rosary a lot, although I hadn’t been talking to Jesus. At my senior Kairos retreat, after I apologized to Jesus, I stared at a picture of him and heard, “My mother has told me so much about you, and what you have done. You are everything I’ve ever wanted, and I will give you many graces for your generous yes.” Now of course there is the question of whether in both of these cases what I heard was really God, but I’ve thought a lot about it and it seems unlikely that it wasn’t. I had expressed a sentiment to my Freshman Theology teacher that I think still rings true: all of the superficial ways we try to fix the world are ultimately like trying to put a band aid over a deep and open wound, but if people simply knew Christ and followed him, the world would be a lot better. I think this is captured well in a quote by one of my role models Bishop Fulton J. Sheen: “Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of men and women, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul.” Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was an American Bishop in New York from 1950s to 1970s and had his own wildly popular TV show on NBC called “Life is Worth Living.” So, from all of this, I even began to see the appeal in becoming a priest, especially if I wanted to help the Church and the world. Before I got to Notre Dame, I set myself on the idea that I would be a priest. I had no idea what the next four years would hold for me or what my major would be, etc. My parents told me not to date until college, and I had been in several relationships (non-dating) in middle and high school which didn’t really end well. My senior year I decided that I had had enough of pseudo- dating people, especially as I began to think more about becoming a priest. This past summer I was thinking a lot about my relationship with God and about how I would proceed with my life, but the thought of dating never crossed my mind. My first day here, I met a girl named Meg at band camp before school started, and she was the only person whose name I could remember by the end of the first day. In a journal entry I wrote that day, I described her as, “really nice, helpful, funny welcoming, just really great.” A lot happened in two weeks, and it was not only clear to me, but pretty clear to everyone else that we liked each other. So, I considered dating her, but wondered how I possibly could with this call I felt to the priesthood. I was out to lunch with my parents who came to visit that weekend, and I told them about her and talked about asking her out and they were really happy about it. So, I asked her out the next day and she said yes. One of the first things I told her was that I was considering becoming a priest because I wanted to be upfront about, especially entering into a relationship. So, I thought a lot over the last three months about this question. I felt everything from guilt, to confusion, to despair around this question. That’s not to say life was misery. The last few months have been some of the best of my life, and I didn’t let it get me down. One of the promises that I made to myself before I asked Meg out was that I was going to be the best possible boyfriend I could possibly be and also deepen my relationship with God at the same time. The training to analyze arguments in philosophy class this semester helped me to break down the arguments, that I had in my head for getting married versus being ordained, into individual premises. That helped me to realize that any reason for or against one or the other that was based in fear was unreasonable. For example, I had feared for a while that being a priest might be boring, but I realized that if God had a job for me to do, even if it was boring, it would be good. However, even after I had realized this, I still feared being bored in marriage and having some mundane job. But I realized that if I could offer up my mundane work to God as a priest, I could also in marriage. There was no reason to fear boredom on either side of my vocation. So many events and classes and interactions helped me figure out so much. I went to the talk by Patricia Talbot about her vision of Mary and learned about the value of time and the value of the Eucharist in my daily life. I went to a talk “Dating Under the Dome” which was a panel on marriage as a vocation. One of my most important realizations occurred at this panel. One of the panelists said, “If you have this deep desire in your heart, God put it there for a reason. Taking up a cross in a vocation doesn’t mean denying that desire. That desire is a step in the right direction.” I also realized that the desire to serve Christ and others was not incompatible with marriage. I had also talked to Fr. Pete and vocalized this realization: whatever God is calling me to do, there is a reason for what has happened and what is happening. If I’m supposed to be a priest, there is something in these relationships that will help me be a better priest. If I’m supposed to get married, then considering the priesthood will help me in some way be a better husband and a better father. Still the question was in my mind, how could I choose something other than the priesthood if God explicitly told me that he wanted me to be a priest. I’m not sure if this is right, but it seems a possible explanation. I may not be meant to be a priest. I might never have been meant to be a priest. But God calling me in that direction drastically changed my life and my view of the world and drew me closer to Him. To me, it is not unreasonable to say that the reason for that call was to gain the benefits and closeness that God desired. And looking back, when I heard “I will give you many graces for your generous yes,” it may not have been a “yes” to the priesthood, but a “yes” to God and what he puts in front of me. I also see a parallel between the first time God spoke to me and my vocational call. I asked and asked and asked God to prove that he existed, and right when I accept that there is no reason to see any signs and that I will not get one, God gives me a sign. In the same way, after hearing him, I begged and begged and begged not to become a priest, but when I finally considered it and accepted the possibility of what God might have planned, God puts me next to an amazing girl on the first day of band camp. All this is to say that this is all one giant lesson in humility and trust in God. I think in the beginning of the semester I was looking for a place to fit in and trying to evaluate my own worth. “Since it’s tough to really know how hard our peers work, how difficult they find certain tasks, or how much they doubt themselves, there’s no easy way to dismiss feelings that we’re less capable than the people around us.” (“What is imposter syndrome and how can you combat it?” by Elizabeth Cox – Moreau FYE Week 9). One of the things that was comforting to realize at a Catholic university was that there are many people considering being priests, and just the outlook on life that I have, going to mass daily, and participating in Catholic life on campus just attracts those people. So, I’ve met several others, and though I haven’t talked about it much it has been a great comfort. “If I am confident in my beliefs, and I have love and good will for the other side, then it would be my duty to try to persuade them. And if I want to persuade them, then how can I vilify them? People are not persuaded by those who attack their character” (“Wesley Theological Seminary Commencement” by Fr. John Jenkins – Moreau FYE Week 10). I think that this sentiment has been integral in my relationships at Notre Dame. I am confident in my beliefs and my values, and I still love the people that disagree with me. As Jenkins says, if I love the other side, then it would be my duty to try to persuade them. On many occasions I have reached out to invite a friend to mass or to something that would help expand their horizons, but I could always do more. One area I could particularly improve upon is respectfully speaking up when someone disagrees with me and faces no opposition, especially when there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the other side. “Community is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received” (“13 Ways of Looking at Community” by Parker J. Palmer – Moreau FYE Week 11). When I arrived at Notre Dame, I was welcomed into the band family, the smaller clarinet family, and the family of my friend group. I have appreciated the willingness of people to reach out. I thought to myself the other day, those people are the best friends because they don’t simply walk by but recognize me as a person. I realized that this was something that I should do more often. I received the gift of community and family from others. We had a night where the clarinets sat outside at dusk and we talked about the first week. I thanked everyone, and said, “I just hope that there is someway that I can repay you all.” The response I got was to pay it forward, that when the seniors leave, the rest of us inherit responsibility for welcoming the new freshman into the community. “And if only the will to walk is really there, he is pleased even with their stumbles” (“The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis – Moreau FYE Week 12). This line expresses my hope that I’ve had, with all the discerning I’ve been doing. Much like the Thomas Merton prayer read in Moreau, I have no idea what I am doing, but I know that the desire to please God does in fact please Him. Now, I could be wrong about everything I have written in this essay (I also greatly oversimplified my story in order to make it a somewhat reasonable length). Maybe I never heard God, or maybe it’s unreasonable to think that God would ever tell me something as a means to an end. And I am okay that I could be wrong. I trust God that whatever happens, it will be what is supposed to happen. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to get married, but I know that I can. And depending on how my relationship with Meg goes, maybe I will find out that answer. There is still a lot more to understand about God, about dating, about life, but I have already learned so much here at Notre Dame. What I’ve learned is priceless, and somehow even more valuable has just been the time I’ve spent, the experiences I’ve had, and the people I’ve met here.