My Calling Into the Priesthood

I didn’t have a say. It was fated when I was a child of just two or three that priesthood was my calling. Actually, it was mothers calling that I was to be a priest. She alone had set me on this path toward a life of spiritual obligation and self-sacrifice. By her decree, it was as assured as the rotation of the earth around the sun and water reaching it’s own level; as certain as my brother Zac’s destiny to become a doctor; and as inevitable as my sister Alice’s providence for marrying eventually into money, that I was to follow my uncle’s quiet footsteps and become a cleric of the Roman Catholic variety.

I have little if any memory of not being a priest. Mother’s obsession would certainly not allow me that void. Even as a young toddler, I was a priest, or at least one in waiting. I needed only but go through the proper steps to make it official. My mother’s words from my earliest years tell of her intent that the road my little footsteps should travel, as God had described to her, be unabated by the amusements of youthfulness. “Mommy’s little priest,” she would call me. Dinner guests would hear on each visit: “Look at that compassionate smile.” “Doesn’t he have the trustworthy eyes of a Pope?” “Are you my cute little Pope?” she would ask me in her best mommy-baby voice. It was a question to which I had no possible response.

My childhood was not unlike that of any other child’s. Like every young boy I would play make-believe Holy Eucharist with my mother in the living room after she had finished cleaning up the dinner dishes. She would place Ritz crackers on her favourite silver serving tray, and after summoning my brother and my sister and my father, I would gently place a communion host on each of their extended tongues as...

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...ough the newborn child is viewed as sinful, theologists argue that it must be understood that this state of sinfulness is distinctly different from the actual sins a person commits. After all, how much guilt can you put on a newborn baby? They have an entire life-time ahead of them for that.

It certainly seemed that sacraments were the basis of my play, at least at home.

I don’t recall any unhappiness in my home in those early years. There was great peace, abundant laughter, and music throughout our home - both religious and popular. My memories are of joyfulness and comfort. Under scrutiny of the brighter lights of reflection many years later I would wonder if my memories were indeed accurate or might have been artificially beautified by the comparison with the emotional and intellectual struggles of my later adult years. Yearning for the days of innocence.