By Allen Lasher
Home Parish: Good Shepherd Parish, Evansville
Seminary: Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
Ordination Year: 2032
Editor’s Note: This year, Diocesan seminarians focused their annual seminarian articles on the theme: “Encouraging Discernment.” Our seminarians wrote about a non-ordained person from our Diocese who encouraged them to discern priesthood.
I bet everyone can remember a moment when someone encouraged them to make a leap of faith, an encouragement whose importance they never would have imagined, leading to decisions which can lead to our most defining moments in life. And these encouragements may occur as a simple question, like: “What’s one good reason why you shouldn’t try?” For me, it was a role model questioning my low self-esteem and expressing his belief in my goodness and potential.
On a sultry summer afternoon after Mass, I walked with the man out of the narthex. He approached me rather forwardly:
“Allen, what are you doing nowadays? Are you working?” No need for pleasantries.
Employed by a local farm cooperative, I shared about my job. He sensed my air of dissatisfaction. I mentioned returning to university to complete my Catholic studies degree.
“What do you want to do with that?”
I mentioned ministering to the youth. Seeing this as his opening to say what he really wanted to say, he commended my perseverance in my search for fulfilling work. But then he offered his humble observations of me — which I received openly — that I was not aiming as high as I should. When his son had aspired to become a nurse, the gentleman encouraged his son to think grander, to consider medical school. (Today, his son is a medical doctor.) He paralleled his story with my own lack of vision, neatly adding his suspicion that I had a vocation.
This short interaction kicked off the long process of re-writing my own self-narrative, opening my heart to the love of the Father in a new way, and finally considering the path to seminary and priesthood as a real possibility.