By Nicholas Freyberger
Home Parish: St. Joseph Parish, Jasper
Seminary: Pontifical North American College
Ordination year: 2030
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.
Throughout my discernment journey, one person who immediately comes to mind in encouraging discernment of the priesthood is my mom, Pam. Her most powerful encouragement was not through words, but through her witness of faith and living out her relationship with Christ.
Growing up, I always knew that Christ should be central to my life because Christ was so central to my mom’s life. My mom would take my two brothers and I to Mass on Sunday, daily Mass when possible, and Confession. We would say prayers together on the way to school each morning and pray the rosary as a family. When my brothers and I would get in trouble, my mom would send us to our rooms, but we could get out early if we read part of the life of a saint or by saying prayers like the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Most important of all may have been going with her to Eucharistic Adoration. From that experience, a Eucharistic devotion grew that has sustained me in my discernment and desire for the priesthood.
She encouraged my discernment by teaching me to pray and to stay with Jesus in the Eucharist, that I might hear his voice and follow wherever he calls. The seed of a vocation can only grow in good soil, and my mom encouraged my discernment by tending this soil.