Home Parish: Good Shepherd Parish in Evansville
Anticipated Ordination Year: 2027
Parents: Donnie and Mary Folz
Siblings: Lacie (DJ) Hodges, Nicholas Folz, Paul Folz
Our own gifts can be the most difficult to recognize. At least in my vocational discernment, I’ve often found that to be the case. I first started seriously feeling a call to consider the priesthood in my last couple years of high school, but I didn’t enter seminary until after I graduated college. What kept me from entering seminary for those five or six years? In large part, it was that even though I could hear God calling me, I couldn’t see in myself the skills that I knew a priest would need.
As I struggled with discernment, though, I began to become much more aware of the gifts that God had blessed me with through friends, family, parishioners and a college chaplain who were willing to point out things about me that I myself had been blind to. They were able to help me recognize the qualities I already possessed that were pointing to a priestly vocation. That was exactly the kind of support I needed to move forward with my discernment and apply for seminary.
So how can you support someone who is discerning their vocation? It can be as simple as telling them the God-given gifts you see in them. Letting a young man or woman know the qualities you’ve recognized in them that would make them a good priest or religious brother or sister can be extremely impactful. It might be just what they need to encourage them to continue their path of discernment.