E30: All About Vocations & Discernment (with Fr. Corey Bruns)

What are vocations, and what different kinds of vocations are there?

How do we hear God’s call when our own hearts feel uncertain, restless, or afraid of choosing wrongly?

How do vocations and discernment reveal that holiness is not found in controlling every detail, but in surrendering our lives to the One who knows us best?

Join us for this month’s episode of Catholicism 101 as I sit down with the Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Owensboro, Fr. Corey Bruns, to reflect on vocations, discernment, and the ways that God leads each of us toward the life He has prepared.

Owensboro Vocations

Passionist Nuns of St. Joseph Monastery

St. Meinrad Archabbey & Seminary

The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia - Nashville

The Fathers of Mercy - Auburn, KY

Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco - Daughters of Mary Help of Christians

The Abbey of Gethsemani

Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus

Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

Permanent Diaconate in the Diocese of Owensboro

Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph - Maple Mount

Transcript

– Intro & Episode Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Catholicism 101 Forever Learning and Living the Faith. Today I have with me Father Corey Bruns. And Father Corey is the director of vocations for the Diocese of Owensboro. So this month I uh pretty much dragged him here.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Unwillingly.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Oh my goodness. Pretty much asked him, uh, and he he ever so kindly and graciously complied to come speak about vocations. Um and I do have to say, Father Corey and I go kind of back, he was my camp counselor when I was in like middle school, high school, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Now they know how old I am. First, I have the seminarians pull white hairs out of my head this morning when they seem like you look old. Now I have you saying that I was your counselor.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Well, I'm also old, so I hope you feel even older. But uh, Father Corey, other than the fact that you're old and people pull white hairs out of your head, um, who are you? What would you like to share about yourself before uh you tell us your your own vocation story?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I am Father Corey Bruns, and I serve as the director of vocations for the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky. I've been in this role going on almost a year, and I'll celebrate that anniversary next week, a week or two, something like that. But uh I've been blessed to uh step into this role and uh be able to journey with young men and women as they ask the simple question of God of where are you calling me and how can I love you and love others best in my life? And it's been a year of grace, so you're blessings. I celebrated my fifth anniversary of priestly ordination last week. Uh sometimes that feels like 45 years, but uh time goes on, time moves on, all is grace. But um, yeah, it's uh it's a joy to be with you this afternoon, Miss Gibson.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Oh, thanks, Father Corey. Happy anniversary.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

So in celebrating five years of priesthood, I would love if before we even get into everything, vocational discernment, I would love if you would share your vocation story um and what that path looked like that led you to

– Guest Introduction: Fr. Corey Bruns

SPEAKER_00 2:10

saying yes to God's call on your life to become a priest.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Uh always say that my vocation story began uh when my mom found out that she was expecting triplets. So I'm a triplet. Uh my mom doesn't like when I say it's a geriatric pregnancy, but she was older in her late 30s uh when she found out that she was expecting triplets. And my mom made the prayer uh to God where she said, you know, if you let me have my children safely and bring them into this world and raise them, then they belong to you. They don't belong to me. And so um she made that prayer, and uh I was born uh safely, biggest one out of three of us. Uh my sister, she got the looks, my brother got the smarts, and I'm just trying to make up the difference, is usually what I say. But uh, we moved a little bit as a family, and when we were apart from our uh extended family living in Nebraska, my mom and dad would bring us to make a holy hour on Saturday mornings at our parish, and my siblings and I were getting ready to make our first communion that year, so it was instrumental really just to spend time getting to know who Jesus was in the Blessed Sacrament, being able to learn how to pray in silence, being able to uh read the amazing, amazing lives of the saints and the scriptures. And so my mom was a lifelong educator, and we always had good books to read, and so she always made sure that we had good holy things to kind of spark our sacramental imagination uh when we'd go to pray. But uh I remember there the importance of that year of just getting to know Jesus present in a blessed sacrament, making small acts of faith. Uh, when we moved to Kentucky then the following year, there's a program called Children of Hope uh with Father Antoine, and he's uh with the community of St. John, but Father Antoine is French, if you didn't get that from Antoine. Uh but uh he does these this program called Children of Hope, which is teaching young children how to make a holy hour and how to spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. And so my mom would do that with us and the kids of the parish uh when we moved to Kentucky, and I always hear Father Antoine's voice, make yourself very, very small before Jesus. And you'd walk into church, and I've done this with uh kids and students uh over the past, I don't know, 14 years uh in seminary and after, but uh you walk into the back of church and you have all these kids with their butt stuck up in the air because they're making themselves small before the Lord, because they're learning to prostrate and they're making themselves in these little bitty balls as they kneel before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. But it was just a beautiful experience of learning to pray, learning to spend time before the Lord, to make acts of faith, acts of love. And it was really through that holy hour as a family, which continued on when we moved to Kentucky on Saturday mornings, uh, being able to just spend time before the Lord that I really began to fall in love with him. And when I was in the third grade after we had moved, I was uh my brother and I were the two kids who always showed up for Saturday morning mass. So our pastor at the time, Father Bruce, uh, taught us how to serve, and uh we began to serve, and then he got moved, we got a different priest, and my love for the liturgy though never kind of stopped. And so uh we kind of used to be a thing you'd call it like boy bishop, but it was the head MC uh of the servers. And I was in third, fourth, fifth grade, and I was bossing around high schoolers

– What Are Vocations?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

on how to serve mass, on what they needed to do, just because I had a natural knack for it. And that love of the liturgy was nurtured uh by the priests at our parish, uh, but also by my family, just making sure that we showed up for our holy hour, that we were there 20, 30 minutes before mass, that we could get ready to serve, we could help set things up. And it really just nurtured that sacramental imagination sense. And so eventually, uh my siblings and I, we were, obviously, we were one of three Catholics in our school system. Uh there were other Catholics in the school system, uh, but we were three of the really like practicing ones. The other ones, they came every so often, not frequently. But uh my siblings and I really noticed that there was a difference being down here in the Bible Belt and with Protestants in a parish that had under a hundred families. We were the minority in town. And I still remember going into school on Ash Wednesday. Her pastor had like a 5:30 a.m. mass that morning for us so we could get ashes before we went to school. And I remember sitting there and my teacher coming up and licking her thumb and trying to wipe it on my forehead, which I'm a germaphobe to begin with. So I'm like, over on the side, get off me, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Stop trying to lick me. And she's like, You've got dirt on your face, Cory.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And I'm like, It's my ash, leave me alone.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Stop licking me.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

But I just remember uh it was Catholicism was something that was extremely foreign to those teachers and our faculty and staff at our school. And so uh it was a challenge. And so when we got to the fifth grade, my siblings and I, we knew the saints, we knew our faith. Uh, my mom spent time reading the about things with us. We did apologetics when we drive back and forth to Illinois. And so we asked our pastor at the time, we said, could it would it be possible for us to be confirmed and receive the sacrament of confirmation early in our fifth grade year because we wanted the fruits and grace of the Holy Spirit. And so he said yes and uh worked to make that happen. And I remember um sitting down with him, we had this thing we'd call keeping in touch Saturdays kits. And uh one of the priests of our diocese, Father Josh, was assigned to us as a seminarian, and he was our teacher for our confirmation class. And uh, we were sitting there playing kickball one day, and priests kind of called me off to the sign. We were talking, and I remember him sitting there and saying, You know, Corey said, You have a lot of gifts and talents serving at Mass and a love of the liturgy and prayer. And he said, I think you might have a vocation to priesthood. I said, I just want to encourage you to just be open to it, to think about it. And my pastor who had baptized me when I was a kid, Father Bauer, God rest his soul, I still remember as a little three, four, five-year-old walking out of church and him asking me, Have you ever thought about becoming a priest? And I was like, you know, I could be a priest and I still wanted to be like a farmer, I want to be a construction worker, and you can't really distribute holy communion to the animals, uh, to cows. That's not allowed. Uh, but uh that that seed had been planted. So when this priest brought that up to me and said, you know, I really think you might have a vocation, pray about it. Uh, it really sparked that in me. And so as I began to keep going with my holy hours with my family, I really heard uh God open me up with grace uh to the thought of that life. And I still remember being at Youth 2000 one year and uh during the Eucharistic prayer service on the conclusion of Saturday night, I remember just asking God the simple question. And the priest I'd gone to confession to that day had told me, he said, No, ask, ask Jesus this when he visits you tonight uh during the procession, and he said, Ask him how I can how you can love him and you can love others well. And I just heard him, just the the the response in my heart was just priesthood, that's the way I can do it best. And so uh I would never really had a moment, big moment of God saying, Corey, you are called

– The Call to Discernment

SPEAKER_01 9:30

to become a priest, or some I mean, most people don't have moments like that of vocation, but uh throughout uh the application process for seminary, I started that my junior year of high school, went through that whole process, graduated high school, still didn't know that I if I was gonna be accepted or if I was going to seminary, and then I got the phone call while I'm burying my dog. That hey, congrats, you've been accepted. What are you doing? And I'm like, oh, I'm I'm burying my dog, she died. I was like, I was like, oh, that's so sad, Maggie. Um, but um went to college seminary, uh, went to major seminary after nine years of seminary formation, was ordained a priest, and here I am today. And I mean that that vocation, that call, it's confirmed along the way. There's always saying no, there's so many gifts and talents that God's blessed me with, things I'm interested in, things I do. And the question for me all in seminary was where can I use these well? Uh is I was always raised to not be selfish, and that's probably being a triplet. Like, you if you can't share, like you're gonna get put in time out. So I had to had to learn to play well with my siblings. But um, having a generous spirit, that everything that God has given me, it's it's been it's doesn't belong to me. Uh St. Francis, my patron, always said, you know, uh the only thing that we can claim for ourselves is our sins and our vices. Everything else is pure gift from God. And so throughout Sunday, I asked myself I would always ask, you know, where can I use all of my gifts, my interests, music, photography, agriculture, woodworking, um, the weird things that I know about like sewing, investment making, and weird things like where can I use all of these things? And there's not one single job or way I could live my life where I'd get to use everything except as a priest. And so I don't use them all every day, but different moments uh each month, each year as a priest, I get to use those different gifts that God's given me. And so it's a confirmation that you know I'm I'm exactly where He's called me to be. And uh He He fulfills that which is lacking in us. So um that's a very roundabout way with a vocation story. I always tell the seminarians, no, you need to work on getting your vocation story to like the forward focus version, the Cadillac Escalade version, you know, the Lamborghini, whatever. Like you need to determine it out. And I've fallen out of practice a little bit about that because I usually don't like to talk about myself.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I love that in your story you uh talk about how it was that that call was just really nurtured um and brought to your attention multiple times throughout your life, uh, especially whenever the priests would say something to you of, you know, you have these gifts and talents. Have you ever considered this? I would encourage you to be open to it. Um and so kind of what I wanted to talk about is not only discerning priesthood, um, but just when it comes to just discerning vocations, we we like to use the word vocation in a lot of different ways. But when we talk about discerning a vocation, um, can you talk about like what is that vocation or what are those categories of vocations that we are discerning?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, so vocation uh it comes from the Latin word vocare, which means to call. And in our secular world, we do tend to say, you know, I'm a construction worker, that's my vocation. I'm a farmer, that's my vocation, and that's nice. Uh, it's sweet. You can you can definitely have a have a calling to be a teacher, to be a physician, those different things. But in the church, we tend to refer to uh those things more as jobs, and we focus on what the Psychovatic and Council reminds us that our universal vocation is to become a saint, it's to be holy. And so capital V vocation is union with God. Uh we're called to be saints, to be with him forever in the kingdom of heaven. The way that we get there, we might call it and refer to it as a particular vocation. And so while your particular vocation might be lived out through your job in a different way, uh through something that you do with how you spend your time, those particular vocations the church gives us, uh she's very kind of specific with. And so the one that most people are common are most familiar with is marriage. Uh, then we have holy orders, which contains within it priesthood and the diaconate. We have consecrated religious life, so being a religious brother or religious sister. We have consecrated virginity, which is open to uh women that are virgins, and then we have the uh order of hermits, um, which is the fifth one, and that's order of hermits, the order of virgins. Those are two vocations that really don't get a lot of tread in the church. Uh, it's very kind of small, uh, but uh there's uh been a kind of resurgence in them, uh especially within the past like 10 years or so, of different men and women feeling called to those ways of life. Uh but those vocations, those we would say are particular vocations. So it's the way that God's called me to become a saint. So my parents, the way that God called them to become a saint was for Larry and Sue to get married and to smooth out each other's rough edges constantly, uh, but to encourage each other to become saints. My vocation as a priest uh to become a saint is to help get the flock, those people that I've given my life to, the church, to help get them to heaven, to help them to come to know Jesus Christ, to be a saint. So our universal vocation, become

– How God Speaks in Discernment

SPEAKER_01 14:50

a saint, particular vocation, uh that's that's the way that we live that out, whether it's loving one or loving the many is a good way to sometimes kind of look at it. And so marriage, you look at loving one person. We're Catholic, we don't believe in polygamy. Uh, it's monogamy, one spouse, one husband, one wife. But uh then those other kind of consecrated vocations that we have in the church, those other uh four, uh, those are ones that a vocation has to have, uh it's it's measurable in the sense of you have promises or vows that you make. They can be, they should be usually public. Sometimes uh there's some private vows that come up in different things as steps along the way in the church, but it's follows a rule of life and it follows uh making those promises. So marriage again, but with no polygamy. Like you promise when you give your consent and profess uh that consent, those vows to one another on the day of your marriage, I choose you, Pikachu. You say until death we do part, you are the only one. I'm not going to have any other uh sexual relationships, I'm not gonna have any um other people in my life except you uh as my spouse. I'm gonna love you, honor you until death we do part. Uh the priest, the religious, the consecrated virgin, etc., uh they make those promises of uh we would say celibacy or chastity, of uh poverty, which is lived down in different ways uh between religious and diocesan priests. So I have simplicity of life. Religious tend to have what we call poverty. So uh I can keep a hundred bucks, they have to turn a hundred bucks in. It's an easy way to kind of look at it. So if I want to buy shoes, I can go buy myself a pair of shoes. If they want to buy shoes, they have to ask their superior, hey, this is above this cost, can I go spend this money? Um so it's it's different ways that that's lived out. But then there's obedience. And obedience really, our world would be so much better if more people were obedient and understood obedience. And we tend to think about it even in marriage, we're like, oh, uh, obedience, that's only for the religious who make those promises. But each of us is called to be subordinate, to, to be obedient. We're obedient to God the Father, we're obedient to the church. If you're married, you're obedient to your spouse. That's not a blind obedience of, you know, they say, make me a sandwich, and no, you can't do things like that. But it's a sense of uh it's a sense of giving oneself and surrendering oneself and trusting uh that when we give of each give of ourselves to another, that we're gonna be respected and cared for. So as a priest, when I made the promise of obedience to Bishop Medley and to his successors, I did so knowing that there are gonna be times in my life where I struggle uh with my superior, with the bishop. I'm gonna have moments where I'm not gonna understand something, I don't want to do something. But with God's grace, I'm saying, I'm gonna, I know that God's acting in this and I'm gonna surrender myself to this through the promise of obedience and know that good is gonna come out from it. And that obedience, if if more people were just understood it and that we don't have to be individual all the time, we don't have to be the one that's in control, sometimes it's a good thing just to kind of shut up and just say, you know, I could worry about this, but I'm not going to, I'm just gonna do this anyway. And it's that whole kind of virtue. No, Jesus talks in the scriptures, I'm going down a rabbit hole, but Jesus talks in scriptures, you know, like uh turning the other cheek and stuff, but it's it's related to obedience in the sense of that we we surrender ourselves and we say, you know, God is the one that's leading us, like whatever happens is gonna happen. And people live their lives so much more free when they just say yes to the Lord and they don't worry and sweat the things of this life. We can get so caught up in things that we see on the news and politics and happening over five, six, eighteen thousand miles away across the world, and oh my gosh, this is so terrible. Well, yes, it's terrible, but what are you doing to build the kingdom of God up at your house, in your neighborhood, on your street, in your city, in your community? If we're focusing so much outwardly versus focusing interiorly and what we can do, uh, then we lose sight of that. And so obedience, having that sense of obedience to a community, to a person who's over us, to a spouse if we're married, uh, that sense of obedience just really helps us to be able to go to sleep well at night and be able to say, you know, I don't have to be in charge of this, I don't have to know what's going on. It's gonna happen. And life is meant to be lived, and we live it. And at the end of the day, we might have some things that were said, you know, you can't do that or you should do that. And we say, okay, and you move on, and it's great.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Beautiful. So I know you think that that's a rabbit hole, but I really don't think it is. Um, because there is that sense of obedience whenever the Lord places a call on your heart and a call on your life um to a certain vocation, to your particular vocation. Um, and I actually recently got some really good advice in confession of, you know, this whole Easter season, it has been peace be with you, peace be with you. And we that that is just saturated in everything, especially just this past Easter season and culminating on Pentecost of just peace and how it's like you said, surrender. We have to surrender to that peace, which means we have to cooperate with it. And um, I know in my screaming, cooperating. That's how most of us do it. Oh my lord. Um, but you know, thinking of my own journey

– Types of Vocations in the Church

SPEAKER_00 20:15

um in discerning vocation and that like own conflict that I had on multiple occasions of do I join a religious order or do I do I think I really am called to marriage?

SPEAKER_01 20:27

No, just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Okay, returned in my own path of discerning vocation, just choosing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit when it's not always fun. When it's not always fun, um, and I do have to be obedient to the Holy Spirit because he's trying to gift me that peace, and being obedient is how I can receive it. Um, and so I know oftentimes whenever we talk about vocations, there are a lot of people that whenever you say, Hey, I see this in you, um, I think you would be a really you I think you would make a really great priest, or I think you would be an incredible sister.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Um and I don't make a really great mom.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Or yeah, or you'd make a really great mom. You know, I can see you being an incredible husband and father someday. Or I don't know that I've ever heard someone say, you know, you'd make a really great hermit.

unknown 21:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

I'm I'd like to hear that sometime. Not to me, but I would just like to overhear it.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

I can tell you right now that's not your vocation, Emily.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Oftentimes, whenever people notice those gifts in us, some of us do have that immediate reaction of anxiety and fear. Um and you know, I feel I think sometimes that comes from misunderstanding what that particular vocation is. Um and so if I would love if you can kind of speak into that a little bit of um, you know, how to discern well, no matter what vocation you're discerning. How what are some things that we can do to discern? Well, and be open to God's call.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

I think one of the big things that people don't always realize is the sense of freedom that comes in discernment of a vocation and choosing a vocation. And we also don't use the language of vocation, which that's a big goal of mine as director of vocations in the diocese, is changing how we talk about marriage and things instead of just talking about it, but talk about, you know, is there discernment that goes into this? Is have you spent time in prayer? Is God calling you to this, to this person? We often say, you know, religious life or priesthood is he calling me to this community or this place? There's a freedom that comes from that. And so when a couple is declaring their consent before God, we have the questions before the consent that takes place in the nuptial liturgy. And so the priest or the deacon, uh, or if you're in some strange part of the world, sometimes a catechist, uh, they ask you, uh, have you come here freely and wholeheartedly? Is there basically anything that anybody's forcing you into this? And when we say yes to cooperate with a vocation, we don't get forced into by the church. God doesn't force us into it, the Holy Spirit doesn't kick us down the stairs and say, haha, there you are. Uh we have to choose it freely and we have to accept it freely. If we don't freely accept that vocation, then there's an issue there. If I'm called to marriage and someone forces me into it, it's not a we say it's not a valid marriage. Vocation has to have freedom with it. Freedom, though, also looks differently uh in the sense of uh, you know, JP2 often uh JP2 and um Jermaine Pink Airs, whatever his name is, you talk about you know the freedom to to uh where am I going to do what we ought, not to whatever the line is.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Uh but but what is freedom and oh oh the freedom it's not license.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

It's not yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

It's you can't do what you wish, but to do what you ought.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yes, you can't just do whatever you want to do. And so uh I think one of the sad things for me as a priest, not just as a vocation, but as a priest, is when you meet with somebody and you can visibly see the Holy Spirit pointing them somehow. You can, whether it be toward a person in marriage, whether it be toward religious life, uh, whatever it is for their vocation, you see them being led there, and the person is kicking and screaming and putting up wall after wall and saying, No, not me, no not me, no not me, no not me. And you're sitting there like, oh my goodness gracious, like let the Lord in, like, calm down, it's gonna be okay. We get scared, and that's human, it's a human response. Uh, but there's a great sense of freedom, and so God always pours his freedom, uh pours his grace into those moments where we cooperate with his freedom, and he he gives us the grace that we need to live that live those vocations out faithfully. Yeah, so discernment, Latin root de seniere, uh to listen with the ear of one's heart, really, uh, but to discern means to decide, and oftentimes young people will be like, I'm just waiting for Jesus to to put the the most handsome, most Catholic man in my life so that I can marry him. And the guy's like, I'm praying my holy hour, and God's gonna lead me to the right woman. And I always look at him and I go, So what are you doing to date, like find a person? Well, God's gonna put him in my life. Well, I'm sorry, but God is not a gumball machine. You don't put in your prayers like a quarter and then expect him to pop out a gumball in this perfect spouse. Like, that's not how it works. If you're not actively working toward a vocation, you're not discerning a vocation. So you we have the line we say sometimes uh comes from Father Brett Brandon, but God can't drive a parked car move. You have to be going towards something, or you're not doing anything at all. And so if you're gonna discern priesthood in religious life, then you have to be talking to priests or religious, you have to be going to visit communities, you have to be talking to vocation actor, like you have to be doing something actively. Uh, you have to go to seminary. If you're gonna discern marriage, you have to actually be dating people. And the dating world's crazy. I hear it all the time from people. Uh it's it's bonkers out there. Uh, that's okay, but put yourself out there, like, like do it. If you don't try to find a spouse, you're never gonna find a spouse. You're gonna be 60, 70 years old and be like, well, God just decided to not give me a spouse. Well, no, you didn't do anything for it. Like cooperate with God's grace. I think that's one of the hardest things for

– Fear, Freedom & Decision-Making

SPEAKER_01 26:40

us, especially in our mindset with this younger generation, is that uh younger people don't like to actually do anything at all. They don't like to commit. I'm constantly the applicants for seminary. I was talking to one earlier today, and I said, I'm everybody's favorite Nagy Nancy right now because it's like pulling teeth sometime to get them to fill out a paper. And I'm like, it's just it's just like your biographical info. It's not hard, like takes 30 seconds, and they're like, Oh, I'll work on it in two weeks. I'm like, no, I need it now. Uh, but nobody younger people, they they really struggle with commitment. They struggle, I think also there's a there's a human fear there of rejection. And so if you're gonna expose yourself uh to someone uh for for love for um discernment of something, then you have to be able to make a risk, take a risk, and have the freedom to do so. One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis says, There's no safe investment in love. If you want to avoid heartbreak, love, nothing. And I absolutely love it, and I have it on my phone. I just write it off here because I keep it with me, because I look at it so often, because any vocation is always a cooperation in God's love. And so if we're gonna discern well, I think those two questions, how can I love God well? How can I love others well? Is God calling me to love him and others well through loving one person only, or is he opening my heart to love many people through a vocation to religious life, priesthood, et cetera? But no matter what it is, if you're gonna discern a vocation, it's not safe. It's it's not uh something that's gonna make you feel good, it's not something that's gonna just be happy, good thoughts. If you're actually entering into the good world of discernment and the good work of praying and asking God where he's calling in your life, then you have to be willing to take a risk, whether that be going on a date and being turned away, rejected by somebody, and they're like, oh my gosh, this guy's a freak or whatever. Uh you have to be willing to entertain some of that. Uh, but if you do it as C.S. Lewis, as he said, you know, if you there's no safe investment in love. So if you don't want your heart to be broken, if you want to avoid heartbreak, then don't love anything. Love nothing. And that's not what we're called to. God is love. Uh, we hear in the scriptures, you know, uh, God is love. Those who love are in God, God in them, and we're called to participate in love. And so if we're going to discern well, I think we have to be willing to open our hearts up to love, whatever love is. Uh love is of God. So is God leading me to love someone? Is he leading me to love many people? Uh, is he leading me to love a particular community, a place, a charism? Uh, those are some questions that should be going through our head when we start thinking about the role of vocation and those that disheniere, the hearing in our heart, then, that's where we begin to find God answering those questions. So does God come and say, Emily, this is what I'm calling you to do? No. Uh, very seldom does God speak in a big booming voice like Morgan Freeman. Uh, it'd be great if he did, but he doesn't. How does God speak to us? How does he answer our prayers and our questions about discernment through the community, through those around us? I had so many little ladies and younger, not old so old ladies, uh, when I was a high schooler and kid, they would come up after I'd be praying in church or something, they'd say, Have you ever thought about becoming a priest? Uh my sister, uh, when she was uh discerning, uh uh entered into a relationship with her now husband, uh, she had lots of people that would come up and say, You know that guy that you had worked on that project with? Like, I think you all you all had some chemistry there. Like, people point things out. We're the dummies that don't like to hear it because it's like, oh, and I'm worried about my self-esteem or something, and so I'm not I'm I'm unsure. I don't I don't think that can be well. No, like God created you and he creates you, he creates you good. He looks and he says, you are good. And so it's the lie of Satan for us to sit there and be like, oh no, I don't have these gifts. Oh no, I don't have like stop being prideful, and that's a false sense of humility. Just say, yes, you know, I can do this thing really well. I have this gift for this. I can I I this person I we have a we have a connection. Own it and then dig into it. Dig into it and ask the Lord, you know, where are you calling me? Where are you giving me grace? Where do I find the fruits of the spirit present? Am I at peace with this? Is it something that causes me worry? Is it cause me to break out in hives or something? I don't know. Uh, there's a discernment practice I'll sometimes do with folks uh that we it follows kind of ignition style, but um taking a choice. So if I'm discerning between marriage or priesthood, or if I'm discerning between uh asking this person out or um going on a discernment retreat with a religious community, whatever, uh living like I've made that decision for a week and praying through that. So the whole week I've I've made that choice. Okay, this is what I'm gonna do. And that whole week, at the end of every day or the very end of the week, I write down these are what things I experienced this week. These are the good things, these are the bad things, this is where my heart really beat fast, and I was really upset and nervous, and this is where I felt a lot of peace. And then you do that for the next week and you compare the two of them then after that time, and you look and say, Okay, where was the Holy Spirit active? Now that's going on a um that's a very kind of superficial way at some time, some point as well, of looking at things. And so you also have to talk with a spiritual director, talk with your friends, talk with your family, uh, talk with those who know you well and say, you know, this

– Marriage, Priesthood & Consecrated Life

SPEAKER_01 32:10

is where I've seen some movement of God in my life. Have you ever seen this in me? And if someone truly loves you, if someone truly cares about you, they're gonna tell you the truth. And uh they're gonna say, Yes, I see this, or no, I don't see this, or you know, I could see this. And uh but that that again, that whole idea that, you know, discernment, it's it's listening within our heart, it's listening for love. It's listening for love himself as he speaks to us, as he calls us, as he invites us, to not be afraid, uh, not be obedient in the sense of blind obedience, but being able to sacrifice, to surrender ourselves, and to say, you know, God, if this is what you're calling me to, you're gonna see me through. This your grace is gonna give me what I need. And he does. And he pours himself into us, and then hopefully, eventually we can say yes with with resoluteness, with faith. And so when a man's ordained a priest, he's gone through seven to nine years of seminary formation. So when he stands before the bishop, and the bishop asks him, Do you promise celibacy? Do you promise to pray for the people of God? Do you promise obedience and respect to me and my successors? Do you promise to conform yourself daily to the mystery of our Lord's cross? The man can say with full heart, yes. When a couple stands before the priest or deacon and he says, Have you come here faith freely? Is anybody binding you? Are you open to life? I'm rephrasing those questions because they're really long. But uh, when he asks that of a couple, they can say, Yes. They can say, We we have been brought here freely. There's nothing coercing us into this. And so that freedom that exists, then that's the response that the soul makes when we're cooperating with God's grace and with his love. And we're surrendering ourselves and we're saying, God, you're gonna pour your grace in here. I've seen you at work, I'm trusting, I'm I'm being obedient, I'm I'm giving myself over to this. And then he he takes it, he runs with it, and we live life. And we we what's the little adage they put on bathroom walls, live, laugh, love or whatever?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Like live, laugh, love. That's that, yeah, that's awesome. There's a there's a a lot of really beautiful insights packed in there. One that keeps ringing in my mind is when you mentioned, you know, that just we have this human response of fear all the time, especially when it comes to vocations. Um and some advice I received a good while ago, um, and I I kind of like to rephrase it through like a sports analogy of if you have someone who is like really good at soccer or basketball, um, or just like someone who on the other team, you know that like they are incredibly valuable to that team. If you can knock them down, then you can like you can win the game, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:48

You're like kick the knees, kick them down.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

If we can slide tackle this guy, we know they're gonna score five less points, right? Um, and so you kind of go all hands on deck on that one person, right? Because it increases your chances of success. And so I kind of put that in the opposite perspective of like when it comes to vocational discernment, since our vocation is our path, like our particular vocation is our path to our capital V vocation, which is eternal life with God and in the communion of the saints and communion with the Trinity. Um, he's gonna go full force against our call, right? Um and so I kind of wanted to hear your input on that, um, because I know I've experienced and I've seen others experience um like the thing that the Lord is calling you to, He has very blatantly blessed you with the gifts and talents and the graces for that, but that's exactly where the lies um from the enemy come in and try to like make you disbelieve. So I'd love to get some of your input on that or your own experience on that.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Do not be afraid, Noli Tay Timore. Don't have have faith. Uh again, you know, faith, we say no, faith drives out fear. Uh it doesn't mean that life is easy, it doesn't mean that we're gonna always make the best decisions, but again, that's the risk of love. Is that we're sometimes gonna screw up and we're gonna screw up royally. But when we do, do we have a community around us that supports us, that loves us, that offers the correction that leads us and guides us back to the Lord and back to where we're being called, or do we tuck our tail between our legs and run? Uh but don't be afraid, you know.

unknown 36:38

It's a scary thing to say yes to God.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

It's a scary thing to say yes to God. It's a scary thing to say yes to enter into a relationship with someone, to cast aside the fear and take a risk for love. But it's worth it. Like the older I get, the the older I get, the uh that I recognize my own wounds. More that I recognize my own wounds and failings and sufferings that I struggle with in my life, and that Christ's power triumphs over, like the more I realize has no place and fear has no place. And uh I mean people will ask you as a preacher, no, do you get scared like when you're blessing a house or somebody says they hear voices? Or I'm like, no, I'm like, Jesus has fought the good fight, like there's nothing to be afraid of. And uh, even like you go to some of the crazy medical things, and people are scared about this thing or that thing, and I gotta do I'm like, okay, like I'm living my life in a way that I believe pleases God, and I'm cooperating with his grace. There's nothing that I have to be afraid of. I'm I'm called for union with him. Like when that day comes, when he calls me home, like I can't wait. I love the line in the third Eucharistic prayer for the commemoration of the dead when we say uh that that there will be be no more tears, uh, but we shall see our Savior face to face. Like, I can't wait to see Jesus face to face. Um, I see him enough now in the little things in life, but to actually stand before him, like it's gonna be amazing. But you can't be afraid. And so if you're in discernment, if you're somebody that you love, worried about somebody that you love, if you're worried about if God's calling you to something, like I told being guys this all the time, and like stop being afraid, don't be afraid. And they're like, but father, and I'm like, yeah, and I'm like, I've been there, like, but don't be afraid, like it's human, human response, what is it, fight, yeah, flee, fear, fight or flight. Like those are natural fight or flight, they're they're natural responses, but we have to get past it. And so if we if we believe that God's calling us towards something in love, that he's gonna pour his grace out into us, and when we cooperate with it, it's gonna be okay. Uh don't be afraid, no late tenere. Um it's crazy again to it's it's crazy again to to answer God, to think where God is calling you, um, to think um that God's going to continue

– Prayer & Practical Discernment

SPEAKER_01 38:55

showing up for you. Um this is a weird aside, but when the bishop asked me to consider uh being the director of vocations, uh which I say consider uh after the bishop asked me, I paused for a moment and changed like seven different shades of red like a tomato and uh looked at him and I started crying. And I I remember I I he said, Well, what do you think? And I said, Well, I paused collected myself for a moment, I said, Bishop, I said, on the day of my ordination I promised you respect and obedience. And I said, So I say yes. I want that to be my first response to is I say yes if this is what you're asking of me. I also, this is a really big ask, and it's I said, I I have several things I'm worried about with this. And it was fear. And I I told him, I said, I'd like to take this to prayer, and I'd like to talk to you and ask some questions. And he said, Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. And um that whole day, I was an absolute mess. And when the bishop calls you for something, says the Seer Simon, you can't tell anybody, so I'm just a mess the whole time. And um of course, like I run into him, we're at the same group table thing, and he looks at me like, G Corey, your face is red.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

And I'm like, Bishop, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

This is all your fault. Uh, but I remember the whole day I would just like randomly just start crying. I was like, I'm a crier to begin with. But I'm like, I was like, God, I was like, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, and I I was afraid, and I said, I I can't do this unless you give me some peace, unless you let me know that this is what you want of me. And so kept making that prayer all day, and I went in the chapel, uh, made a holy hour before all the priests came, and we all made our holy hour together. And the gospel uh that was proclaimed that night, uh, I just turned around from the organ playing No Solitaris, stand up for the gospel, and it was the gospel from my ordination. Peter, do you love me, feed my sheep? And I just started weeping, and I I knelt down and I looked at our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I said, Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you. If this is your will, I say yes. And from that moment on it's been peace. But it took God giving me that little reminder from the gospel of my ordination, which it's my favorite gospel, but from that moment of of reminding me, you know, I called you to this, I'm gonna give you grace, I'm gonna help you in it, and you can do it. And so it it again, faith drives out fear. If we turn toward the Lord, if we turn from being selfish and we turn toward generosity, we turn toward others, like there's no place for fear. We can we could only find more love. And you get to the end of the day in whatever vocation it is that God's called you to, whether it be priesthood or marriage or something, you're there with your watching your little two-year-old poop on itself and waddle around the room or whatever. And you just you're looking at this little alien thing walking around, I don't know, alien thing walking around with a poopy diaper, and you look at him and you're like starting, you're like, God, this is the most beautiful thing, and I'm just so full of love right now. And it's like, where does that come from? Well, it's it's God confirming our vocation, but it's God letting it's us cooperating with his grace. And so, like, any vocation God's called us to, like, he's gonna drive out fear, he's gonna give us courage, he's gonna pour out those fruits of the spirit in our lives. But at the end of the day, like, it is it's a relationship of love, so it requires freedom. And so we have to say, yes, I'm gonna respond to God in this, I'm gonna surrender myself, I'm gonna be obedient, and God's gonna answer and show up. Or I can say, I don't want this, God, I want something else, and we can choose something else. And I've got friends who've told me, I was not, you know, I'm married, and I was not called to marriage, and I ran from my vocation to become a priest, or I ran from my vocation uh to be a religious sister. And I love my family, I love my spouse, I love my children, but I know that that's not and it's only years later as I've grown in my faith that I've realized I turned away and I kept telling God no to something. Does God not pour out his grace? No, that's the vocation that you freely chose, and he's gonna pour out his grace in there. And so I think sometimes we risk, oh, I'm gonna disappoint God. Well, you're not gonna disappoint God. I mean, if you sin or you turn away from him, then yes, but if you're choosing to become a saint and you're choosing a particular vocation and everything around it's confirming it for you, like don't be afraid that you're gonna make a mistake. God at the end of the day is always gonna show up, he's always gonna pour his grace, he's always gonna give us what we need. But it takes taking that leap of faith sometimes, of surrendering ourselves, taking the risk to love and saying, God, here I am. And let that love, let that faith drive out fear.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, yeah, just just do not be afraid and have that spirit of openness um and and how this all needs to be just imbued with prayer. Um and I I do kind of I kind of want to move into the concrete of, you know, if someone is interested in discerning a call to the religious life or to priesthood, um, where should they start?

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Don't call me. I'm completely kidding with that. Um again, I think vocations, no matter what it is, priesthood, religious life, marriage, it should be born out of The f and be the fruit of prayer. So if it's not coming from a relationship with the Lord, then I'm not in a healthy place to be able to discern well. I'm not in a place where I can receive that, where I can enter into discernment. So you should be praying. You should be spending time with the Lord, uh, specifically quiet. We don't like quiet as humans, as Americans. Noise, noise, noise. Put my AirPods, iPods, whatever pods, something in my ears, uh, Tide Pods, whatever it is. Put those, put those pods in my ears and just walk around and have something like we don't like silence, but silence is so key in our lives. I was at a come and see weekend with some guys uh this spring, and I was sitting next to one of the younger guys, and we finished the holy hour, and he looks at me and he goes, Wow, father, how was it you were able to sit there that entire hour and not read or pull out your rosary or like look around or do anything? Like, I was so bored. I just like laughed. I said, Well, I said, when I was your age, I said it it I was more like you. Like it's taken practice of being with the one that I love and trusting and knowing that, you know, that I forget who it was. Somebody had said once, you know, when you're with a true friend, like you don't have to say anything, you can just be silent. And I think of my best friends in my life, and really like we can just be sitting there, having a glass of bourbon or wine or something, and just sitting outside and not say a single word. And it's like just enough to be in the presence of the other. And our my relationship

– Obstacles to Hearing God’s Call

SPEAKER_01 45:30

with God, everyone's relationship with God should be like that, that we don't have to really say anything all the time. We're just in his presence. And so the importance of silence and discernment is super, super important. That we're placing ourselves with intentional silence, not two minutes of silence, not five minutes of silence. I mean, start small, build up, but you should be able to spend a good 20, 30 minutes sitting with the Lord and just letting his love wash over you, letting uh him speak to you, letting him cause your mind to wander in different ways, and then dig into that with your spiritual director about where you're going and what you're praying about. But that brings up the other point, have a spiritual director. Especially if you're thinking of priesthood or religious life, you should have a spiritual director. Uh, if you're thinking about marriage, spiritual direction is also good, uh, having a priest or a religious, uh, someone who's trained as a spiritual director that you can sit with and you can process some of those movements of your spirit to make sure that it's not just infatuation, the puppy dog love of, oh, this is such the most beautiful, beautiful woman or the most beautiful man, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Like, we don't want infatuation. Love is something deeper because 30, 40 years down the road, they're not going to be the most beautiful thing ever. They're going to look ugly and fat, and you're going to look at them and be like, oh my gosh, what did I marry this troll for? Uh, that's life. So love has to exist. And love is based on a relationship, it's based on knowledge of someone on a deeper level. And so, whether that be the person, whether it be God, whether it be a religious community, uh, getting to know them is super important. So a spiritual director helps us to dig into those movements to discern and make sure it's not just infatuation. I didn't just go visit a religious community and oh, this is the one for me, and it's the only religious community I've ever seen in my life. Like, okay, that's nice, but you should at least like open the door a little bit wider and see what else is there. Uh oftentimes, um, when someone starts beginning to think about priesthood or religious life, they do tend to reach out to their pastor. Uh, so the priest that they know in their parish, they'll say, Hey, father, I'm thinking about this. What do I do? Sometimes pastors will have time to sit down with them, give them really good advice. Other times they're like, Hey, you need to call Father Corey. And uh, so that's one of the joys of my uh ministry as uh in full-time vocations for the diocese, is that I do get to meet with people. I have a lot of phone calls. I usually meet with two to three people a week thinking about vocations, whether it be priesthood, religious life, uh, consecrated virginity, threw that one in there, just different things. Uh, I get to meet with people and just kind of talk to them and walk them through that process of are you having a life of prayer? Is there is do you have a relationship with God to begin with in your life? Do you have a spiritual director, somebody you're meeting with? If not, then my goal and my job is to help connect them with somebody. Once I get to know them a little bit and kind of figure out what they who they might vibe well with, to use the the language of kids these days. I don't even know if they say vibe anymore. I'm so old.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

I do.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

Um but uh connecting them with that. And then again, God can't drive a parked car. You have to move, you have to do something. So there comes a point where if you're thinking about religious life, you need to go visit some religious communities. Uh within the Diocese of Owensboro, we're blessed to have uh three uh religious communities that have uh houses uh within the diocese, uh, or four, I guess really, if we count the Glen Mary sisters, uh, because they're based here. I might even be forgetting one of them, but uh Ursulin Sisters, the Passionist Nuns here in Whitesville, Whites Vegas, uh at St. Joseph Monastery there, and the Fathers of Mercy down in Auburn, Kentucky. Uh and then we have lots of other religious that just work in the diocese. Uh St. Mynred, Archabbey, uh, Benedictines are up north of us. Uh the Nashville Dominican sisters are south. There's there's lots of religious communities around, but it takes kind of looking in your region, because most people don't want to become like a missionary to a strange place. Sometimes you do, and that might be part of it. Uh, but finding some communities around to go visit. Go on a discernment weekend, which is usually intentional prayer. You get to hear from people who are in that role, that vocation, people who have uh prayed their way through it, people who are uh in the middle of like uh an oviti or an aspirancy program, so they're just beginning it, they can tell you about, you know, this is what helped me to be able to say yes to go here in the first place. Uh or if you're thinking about priesthood, the Austin priesthood, then you go on to come and see to the seminary. Uh, you start talking with the vocation director myself, meeting with me regularly. Uh, I try to meet with guys that I'm in regular discernment with as they're getting closer to a point in life where they can make a decision. So if they're in high school, when they start getting a junior senior year, that's when I'm kind of knocking on their door and saying, Hey, uh, you at church today, uh, would your parents care if we just sit over here on the side and have a conversation? Um, if they're in college, going up and setting up a meeting for coffee or something just to visit and check in, uh, but also being available just to visit with them and pray with them and things. And so, uh, but that importance of of prayer, of having a spiritual director, uh, and then talking about it with someone uh that that lives that life or at least uh is connected and can connect us with others that are living that life. Uh it's really somebody used the phrase the other day, you know, it's it's like apprenticeship in a lot of ways for a priesthood, for religious life, in the sense of there's an academic component and you learn things. But at the same time, I look to my mentors, uh, several of the priests of the diocese are now deceased, uh, but several of our senior priests and my childhood pastors and whatnot, of being able just to talk to them and say, hey, you know, I'm thinking about this uh thing. And sometimes it comes from fear, and it's like, you know, I really like girls. What am I gonna do with this? I always laughing, like, yeah, me too. Like, okay, welcome, you're a human. Uh, you can redirect that energy. Um, being able to talk about fears though and worries and questions about things. Um, brother priests, uh, when I was nearing ordination and things saying, you know, like, what's this thing? Like, what what do you do for retirement? What how do you tithe as a priest? Like, you have to ask people who are in those vocations, how do you live this life? What do you do with it? Um, and you don't, again, like you said, no, we don't always enter into it knowing everything, but it's having trust and faith that God's gonna see us through. It's not gonna be perfect. None of us get out of this alive. So it's like, make the best, biggest mess that you can. Like, enjoy life. Don't don't mess up, like, screw up, like do something great, grey. But uh, don't be afraid to get a little messy with following the Lord and with surrendering yourself in love to him because uh none of us are perfect,

– Trusting God’s Plan for Your Life

SPEAKER_01 52:05

none of us are in the same boat, uh, but we're in here to help each other, we're in here to guide each other, to lead each other toward holiness. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

That's beautiful. Yeah. The whole um you're never you you you never are fully ready in the way you think you're ready um to enter into your vocation. And uh something I I spend a lot of time and have spent a lot of time thinking about is like, hey, the whole purpose of your vocation is to get you to heaven. And so your vocation is gonna smooth out your rough edges and it's gonna purify your hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

And it's it's if you cooperate with it.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yeah, yeah, it's it's gonna bring up all the crap so that it that you allow the Lord to heal it if you will continue to cooperate. Um so I guess the last thing I wanted to ask you um are maybe just I feel like you've given a lot of words of encouragement.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

I do like to word things. I'm very verbose. Always happy to talk.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Oh my goodness. All all of these words of encouragement and just uh support uh and just pastoral love and fatherhood and all of this. Um But the the last thing I want to ask you is um just what resources? What are some good resources that you know of or have or have found?

SPEAKER_01 53:25

Resources. Yeah, you know, resources, it's it's a good good thing. Um there's a lot of things you can read. There's a lot of things that you really shouldn't read. Uh Catholic blogosphere, Reddit, Substack. I mean, the list goes on and on. You keep digging your hole on X. Like, uh there are things that can be very helpful. And so I often talk to guys and they're like, yeah, this, I read my way into this. It's like, okay. And I'm like, are you still involved with that? And they're like, no, and I'm like, okay, good. We've grown, we were a little bit healthier. Um, things serve a purpose uh online, but be careful with things like that. Um, you can you can do some good discernment work, uh, but there's also some crazy things. Your local vocation website, uh, so here in the Diocese of Owensboro, Owensborough Vocations.com, uh great resource. We're constantly putting more things out on there uh for discernment help, uh, being able to contact us to receive books and different things on such things, uh, stopping by the vocation booths that exist at youth gatherings, young adult gatherings, etc. It's a great way to uh find some resources. Again, reaching out to priest, vocation director. Uh we've got a lot of stack of stuff. When we kind of figure out who you are, what you're thinking, what you need, that's where we can really be a little more particular about this is what you need to, this is what we want to send you, this is what you should look at. Um But again, that's there's a lot of things out there, and there's a lot of things that are done well. There's some things that are not done so well. So always try to encourage people, you know, like make sure you're visiting some good sites, you're uh looking in good spots, uh, but the personal recommendation uh is always the best, I think, of coming from a priest or friend, uh somebody who lives that life that you're thinking of, uh being able to ask them, hey, what are some things that you read that you've used that helped you in this? Uh that's a good way to kind of proof and weed through the things that really won't do you much good. Um so there's there's uh again lots of resources out there, uh, but uh reaching out to the personal things important.

SPEAKER_00 55:24

So whenever I said that those are the last thing, um, I just came up with one actual last thing. So the real last thing uh I wanted to ask you is actually um, you know, you you said you had people point out to you that you would make a really good priest, you know, would you is this is something I think you should consider. What kind of um advice would you offer to others? Because I I know a big thing uh since you have entered into the office of vocations for our diocese is just building like a culture of vocations in parishes and families and communities. And so what are some ways that we can do that and to nurture vocations um in our young people?

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Prayer. Uh prayer is the first thing I always say. Like if we're not praying for vocations, uh we're not we're not doing what God has asked us to do. Jesus says, you know, pray and ask the Lord of the harvest to send

– Final Advice on Discernment

SPEAKER_01 56:20

out labors for his harvest. That's been our big initiative with the Office of Vocations in the Diocese this year, uh, with Vocation Tuesday, but sponsoring holy hours and different things around the diocese with youth, opportunities to to kind of let us shut up and let God be the one who does the talking, super important. So I think as a parish, as a community, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, again, prayer, super important. Uh the other thing is don't be afraid to what do the kids say? Shoot your shot, is that is that legal? Yeah. Um, like, don't be afraid to say something. Like the number of times that I've gone up to somebody random at Kroger. I did at Kroger the other day. But I've I went up to somebody at Kroger. I was like, hey, I was like, I've seen you at this thing. Like, have you ever thought about becoming a priest? Uh you don't lose anything. You might feel a little awkward doing it, you might not be in the best space. Then the person's gonna be sitting there being like, I'm just trying to pick up my roast beef or whatever, my cucumbers and my for my salad. And this little old lady came over and was like, I see that you spend some time after mass on Sundays. Like, have you ever thought about being a priest? That's okay. That's how that's how those seeds are planted. And so don't be afraid to be awkward. Don't be afraid to just reach out and to just say to somebody, hey, you know, I've saw the way that you were interacting with those kids. Uh, I think you're gonna be a great mom one day if that's where God's calling you. Um, you know, the way that you really helped that uh group of scouts in that project, like you've got some great skills. I can really tell that you've got a fatherly instinct. Have you ever thought about marriage or being a spiritual father? Like there, there's ways that you can you call forth gifts that people have. I think being very direct and acknowledging the gift, not just being like, have you ever thought about becoming a priest? Have you ever thought about being married? Like, that's weird. Don't be that weird. But call forth something and say, hey, you know, you gave this presentation to a youth group the other night, and you just it was so awesome hearing you up there and giving a reflection on the gospel. I could see you preaching one day. Like, have you ever thought about a vocation of the priesthood? Like, call forth something that's substantive, something that the person recognizes that they know, acknowledge it as a good in their life, something that you really enjoyed watching them participate in, and then invite them to give it away. Invite them to share that gift with others because that's what our vocation, again, God is the eternal vow. Our vocations are always about you, not you, Emily, but you. If they're always about taking us outside of our selfishness, helping us to love God and others well. And so we do that best by giving our gifts, giving of who we are away. And um, my favorite line from Sega Vatican Council, I preach on all the time, but man only truly finds himself through the authentic gift of himself. If you want to know who you are, if you want to know who God has called you to be, well, you have to love. You have to be willing to lose everything, to risk everything,

– Closing & Resources

SPEAKER_01 59:10

to surrender everything, so that uh God can call that forth. He can he can call that good from you. So uh recognize the goods that others have, call it forth to them, acknowledge it, and say, you know, I could see you doing this, and then you can walk away. But when you walk away, go back to prayer. Pray for that person, pray that their heart might be opened. Uh pray before you go walk over to them and say, you know, Holy Spirit, help open their heart to this. Uh, it's gonna be awkward for me, help not to be as awkward for them. Uh but but really recognizing that again, the church, she discerns who her ministers are, she just discerns uh vocations, it's her responsibility. And so she has to call those forth. But you are part of the church, like you're helping the work of discernment and opening others to that life and that freedom of a vocation of saying, you know, I think you could do this, and calling it forth, giving it to them, be like, hey, here you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Beautiful. Thank you so much. I will say, I'm so glad um that the Lord has just continuously, um, I say this with love, but I think you get it, has continuously just like thrown you out into the deep.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Um and thankfully my mom taught me to swim when I was a kid, took me to swimming lessons at the Y. I was a little guppy and then I wasn't like a catfish or something and swam on the bottom and I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

Oh my goodness. Well, I'm I'm so thankful that you know you just you just keep you keep swimming, and once you think you're reaching the top, that uh the bishop says, Hey, I I think you'd be great at this. Um and you kind of drown in your own tears. But I will say I am very thankful because you you have done uh just an absolutely incredible job over the past 11 months and 12-ish days. But yes, so thank you very much, Father Corey. I'm gonna have um the Owensboro Vocations website linked in the show notes or description or whatever you want to call it. Um but yeah, any any last any last words from you?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Um be a saint, you know. Um at a funeral today, reminded of a quote lived on as my childhood, you know, um, we're made for heaven and we're we're made to become saints. So uh risk yourself for love, risk yourself for following the Lord, and it's the most wild, crazy adventure and ride. But at the end of the day, like there's there's nothing better than it. My mom asked me the evening after my ordination, I was over with my family at the house they'd we're all staying at, and everybody's walking around having food or whatever, and I'm out of it because I've been ordained and around people all day. But I remember walking uh in and mom walks up and she said, Was though were those nine years worth it? Would you do it all again? And I looked at her and I said, To be able to celebrate Mass, to be able to hear of confession, to anoint this. I said, I could die right now and I would I would have done those nine years just for just for today. And I think when we're in our vocation, like that's a gift from God that we know he's called us to it. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to love, don't be afraid to open yourself up to where God's calling.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Ah, beautiful. Thank you again, Father Corey. And until next time, I hope you all have a blessed day.