Diocese of Leeds Website
It was with some surprise that I arrived at the decision to request formation for the Priesthood at the age of 46. It’s not something that I thought I would do, having been convinced for many years that my vocation was to be a lay person giving my life to the Church. I’m the second of four brothers who grew up in Cumbria. From primary school we were altar servers and it is perhaps natural that some people had expectations that someone in my family would become a priest. I was fairly determined to scrap that idea but it resurfaced at Nottingham University where I was reading Engineering and where others, including the chaplain urged me to consider it.
In my mid-twenties I had a very strong experience of the Church when I lived within a lay movement in South America and it gave me every impulse to take the Church beyond the walls of the church building, something that I have now been doing for twenty years through small, basic communities founded on Lectio Divina and through youth work. However, a few years ago I felt drawn towards priesthood. I couldn’t explain it, but echoes in my Lectio Divina and reflections on the Eucharistic prayers made me begin to intuit this. I spoke with my spiritual accompanier about it who said that I couldn’t ignore it and I would need to explore it carefully. I made a month-long pilgrimage to Rome and soon after returning I talked with my parish priest in Harrogate and later approached the Vocations Director for Diocese of Leeds. The spiritual director that was appointed for me helped me to give time every day to contemplative prayer and work through the questions as they came up. My spiritual friendships also gave me space to talk through what I was thinking about and this finally led me to make my application.
I am now in the first year of a four year course at the Beda College in Rome. There are five people in my year group all from different countries from around the world. We get on well and we enjoy academic, human, pastoral and spiritual formation. I have enjoyed a short Christmas break in the UK before the revision for first semester exams begins in earnest.
Please pray for me!