EP. 7 "Seminary a place to cultivate your virtues." Fr. Henry Purcell

Season 3 Episode 7 of the Fishers of Men Podcast "Seminary a place to cultivate your virtues." Fr. Henry Purcell, Pastor of ISt. Theodore

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome back to the Fishers of Men podcast. I'm your host, TJ Messler. Today we're joined by Father Purcell, the pastor at St. Theodore's. Thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

So happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Awesome. Do you mind starting us in a prayer through the intercession of St. John Viani? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

In the name of the Father, hand of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, we ask you to pour forth your grace upon us. Especially pour forth your grace upon all those who are discerning a vocation. Bless their hearts abundantly, Lord Jesus. Bless them with the virtues that they need. Bless their hearts with peace in your call. Bless them with zeal for the gospel. For zeal for souls. Bless all of our hearts. And we ask that through this intercession of Saint John Viani, vocations may flourish all over the world, especially in our archdiocese, that many young men may receive that call to the priesthood and will respond with a generous heart. You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Amen. Thank you, Father. I appreciate that. Um I've been so excited to get you on here. I've had the pleasure of working with you in the past, uh, and I truly mean a pleasure. It was awesome. I I'm really excited to just get to hear a little bit more about your story and for you to be able to share that with everybody. So if you don't mind, tell me a little bit about uh, you know, as a younger child, when did you start hearing that vocation come into your life? And when did you kind of start answering that? Like what is your vocation story?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Of course. Yeah, when I think about my vocation story, I think there's different pieces of it. Part of it is how our Lord was preparing me to hear the invitation, and part of it starts when I actually heard the invitation from a priest. I didn't get directly asked. Well, the time I remember getting directly asked of if I had ever thought about the priesthood was after junior year in high school. But I I can't say that's the start of my vocation story. That goes back a lot. Uh that goes back a lot earlier than that. I had good relationships with my priests at my home parish. I grew up in St. Gabriel Parish in South St. Louis City. It's a lovely parish. I grew up uh just a half a block away from the church. Cool. And uh most of my assignments I've had to walk further to church from the rectory than I did growing up to church.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And you know, there's just there's things there there's things of uh uh there's things about that. I had the same pastor from when I was in kindergarten until when I entered the seminary. Father, Father Charlie Bagoon was the uh was the pastor there. I had a variety of associates, and I I uh I I knew uh I knew uh I knew them knew them all. And so that was uh there was a little bit of remote preparation, uh preparation there. Uh yeah, there was uh a gentleman that lived down the block from me at the at the corner, he lived closer to church than me. And he uh I I found out when I was in seminary, he was a man who went to church every day for a couple of holy hours and he was praying. And uh he probably saw me walk to school every single day. Well, if he wasn't in church already, but yeah, but you know, he's the kind of guy that'd been praying for vocations his entire life. And I, you know, you know, as I was in seminary, I was reflecting back on uh when I realized how much he was in church praying. Oh my goodness, like that yeah, I started thinking about the people that have been praying for vocations from my parish, and he was yeah, one of them, and yeah, our Lord working through all of those, all those prayers. Uh, I became a server when I was entering sixth grade, and uh when I was at Gabriel's uh for most of my time there, we had four daily masses there six, seven, eight, and nine a.m. Wow every single day. And they had us assigned to what uh to one of the masses. There was plenty of opportunities to serve mass. And so I got closer to the altar there. I remember uh even before that having a uh a sense of awe at the space of the sanctuary, yeah. Where my uh younger brother once ran up real close to the tabernacle. I had I had to go grab one, I'm like, oh, I'm I'm two feet from the tabernacle. So and I'd never been that close to the tabernacle uh before. So all those little pieces coming uh coming together. And uh when I so I think all those were building up to the moment after junior year in high school when I heard the priest ask the question. Uh but then I'd begun to own my faith. I'd begun to uh uh say, I want to follow Jesus, I want to get to heaven, I want a relationship with God. And I had begun to uh to own it personally by then. And then a priest actually asked a whole group of uh guys on a retreat. Uh he uh it was a Christ power retreat which was held at this seminary, and so there were a bunch of high school uh boys and girls where we were all there, we were doing service project through the week, and at the end of it, Father Michael Butler got up and said, Gentlemen, you should think about becoming a priest one day.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

And I'm sure I'd been asked that question sometime in my life before, but that's the time that it got asked where it got in my head and it never left me. Never left, yeah. It hit me. I was stunned, I was frozen at that moment, and I realized, okay, yeah, this is this is this is settling in a whole new way. And I proceeded to ignore it. Smart. Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, God, God had other plans. Yeah. So I was going into my senior year in high school, and I remembered that it happened. I uh but what ended up happening is every time I got quiet, it started pounding in my head. Wow. Just like the idea of the priesthood. And then I started watching the priests, and uh what they did began attracting me more. It began drawing me my eyes just kept getting drawn up to what the priest was doing, not just worshiping Jesus, but serving in uh serving in that way. So everything began to draw me in a little more deeply. And so I was go anytime I'd go to adoration, that kind of came to my head. If I went on a retreat and got away from the busyness of life, that came into my head. And that was happening a lot over the first semester. Yeah. By February, I knew as this was I can't avoid this anymore. I I can't uh I can't ignore this anymore. I will not be at peace unless I do something about it. So I uh went and chatted with Father Butler vo at the vocation's office. I began talking to him about what it meant a little bit more, learning more about the learning more about the priesthood, learning more uh about what it means to be a priest and what it means to serve and uh everything else a priest does. I knew the most important parts brings the sacraments. Yes. And I knew a lot of other things too, but uh but there's so much more that he was talking about in the spirituality and was learning more more and more from him. On uh in April that year, I went on uh I went on the come and see at the seminary, and uh and that was April of my senior year, and I remember going on it and at the end of it just discerning you know I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna figure it out once I finish with college. So that was uh Palm Sunday weekend of my senior year in high school. So we're into April by now. Uh three days later, it was spy Wednesday in adoration again. And well, in adoration, that's where God starts talking, uh starts talking. And I was sitting there in adoration, and it was just it just was there. And it the I could feel the draw, I could feel my attraction to it, uh, I could feel how nervous I was about saying yes. Oh yeah. I could also feel I also knew that I need to figure out what God is drawing me to. Right. And uh by then I already knew from talking to Father Butler that you're not signing the dot line when you enter seminary, it's the place of more intense discernment. But I knew all those things by then, and it was still in my right and attorney, but I knew if I didn't say yes right now, if I didn't go in right now, I would not be at peace. And that I wouldn't be at peace before our Lord. And I wouldn't be at peace until I went and discerned, is this Lord, is this what you're calling me to do? And so it was Wednesday of Holy Week. That was uh in my senior year in high school, 2004. That was when I uh said, okay, Jesus, I uh went home after that and I already had an application from Father Butler from a couple of months earlier. And I I don't think my hand's shaken so much as I've ever filled out some. Yeah, seriously. And and uh entered seminary. Uh and then you know, we think of vocation story, how did I become a priest? It was all that, and then the life of the seminary as well. And uh our Lord kept opening doors and drawing me more and more more and more in. And yeah, it was funny. All through seminary, I was at the end of every year asked about going on, and I knew, yes, I'm called to go on, and I'm pretty sure I'll be a priest. I'm pretty sure I I think this is what God wants me to do. And there come there there needs to come a point where it's like, yes, yes, I save something among us, save something huge. Uh uh I'm gonna be asking Bishop to ordain me. And uh I was in seminary for seven years, and it was uh going into my third year of theology when I had that, and there was of course a lot of stories in seminary about preparation and formation, but I remember what that was. I went on the Ignatian spiritual exercises, so an extended extended silent retreat. And going into it, I was pretty sure. Yeah, I I I'm I am I'm 99% sure I'm writing Archbishop and S and become a deacon at the end of this year. But when I got quiet in an extended time of worship of our Lord and conversation with the Lord, adoration of our Lord, when I got quiet for that extended time, the question never came up. It was simple absurdity. That's beautiful. And I I knew I came off that retreat and and if someone asked me, Are you gonna be asking to become a deacon? The answer was yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Because when I was quiet with our Lord, when it was me and Jesus, when I got away from all the other distractions and uh the uh and all the other things of the world, uh good and distracting, it was a very simple, it was very simple. That's like God was calling me.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

It's so wonderful to hear, it's like it seems like, well, first I love hearing about the parishioner that you were able to recognize later in life the prayers he was making for vocations. I think sometimes as parishioners, it's hard for us to understand the the role we play as laity, number one, but the role prayer plays in the call of vocations for our priests and for their continued vocation, that continual conversion through life. I s I'd love hearing that, and I I really want to encourage our you know our listeners to be aware of that. Their prayer matters and their day-to-day really matters, and our priests are aware of it. If they don't always show it, they're still so deeply aware of it and so thankful for it.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Absolutely. And and it's a beautiful gift, you know. It's when we think about being generous, some of our generosity is physically. I can see the generosity when I give somebody something, when I write a note and give it to somebody. I see it, I see the effect of it. And and that's actually a gift from our Lord. Our Lord designed this universe so that we share in his generosity and so that we can share in his encouragement by being the vehicle of that encouragement. Yeah. We see that when we give a gift. But our Lord also designed the world so even greater ones in our spiritual life, even greater ones that we win by grace, we have an even greater connection there. We don't get to see those ones. Yes. In some circumstances, we do. But a lot of the graces we win, a lot of the vocations we encourage, we have no idea. Yeah. We get to find out that in heaven. But our Lord's promised and love these graces work.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

I think the other thing I really want to hit on is like there was a certainty, but only in those moments of stillness and silence did those, like, did that desire become certainty. And I I love that because you know, we hear throughout the gospel that God speaks in the stillness, or you know, uh Samuel's confusion about here I am, Lord, and him calling him. It's like we when we stop the you know, quote unquote rat race or the the culture that we're so drawn to, and we take ourselves out, we truly listen to God, he'll be very clear with us. And I love that you're like, I'm there, I know I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. And then when you sit down, it's like, oh what what what else was there? It's always been this.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, and that happened when I was discerning answering seminary, and then again, that moment of yes, I'm writing Archbishop. Yes. That was both both of those times. It's every time I got quiet that that our word's working. And yeah, uh Samuel is one of those times I think of Elijah as well. Yes. A lot of times we're we're looking a lot of times we're we're doing what Elijah didn't see God in. We're looking for the firestorm, we're looking for the earthquake, we're looking for the wind. Yes, and God wasn't there. Yeah. And then there was a whisper, and Elijah hit his face. Uh God's power is even more present than that was more present in the silence. We gotta get used to it. Yes. It takes, it takes it takes uh it takes a getting used to. But uh our Lord speaks and he's very living, he's very active in our prayer lives, but we have to learn how to hear as our Lord speaks to us.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Oh yes, and doing that by frequencing the sacraments and by frequencing adoration. And you know, he makes it so easy for us to come to him, especially when we live deeply in, you know, our parish life. I I similar to you, I I only live a couple houses down from our church. And so I I think as you're saying the story, like, oh, my my children are gonna be able to say, Oh, I I used to walk to church every day, and they do, and thinking that the sacraments are right there, they can go grab them and they can uh be within them in those moments and be able to say, Okay, God, speak here to me. I'm making myself here for you. But uh, you know, as you said at the very beginning, the vocation story, there's multiple parts to it. And the first one is the cultivation of the ground, like the seeds fall on you know, ground that's not cultivated. It's okay, well, they might they might grow, they might not, who knows? But when it's a cultivated thing, it makes it so much easier for that seed to grow and to develop. And so it's the same idea, you know, if if we cultivate our lives, we till the soil to, so to say, with the sacraments and with with mass and like getting to serve so frequently. Four four daily masses a day is crazy. I can't even imagine priests trying to do that now, especially with you know the parishes and the things we're given. Uh, it's so beautiful because then when those moments come up of saying, like, you know, you get hit with this question, have you ever thought about being a priest, and it really hits you, it's like you can fall back on that tilled soil of your soul and say, Okay, speak to me in this way.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The Lord's been so good working through my life, he's been so good in my family, so good, and my parish so good in so many so many different ways. And yeah, I right, it all got ready for that question to stick. And again, I might have been asked that question by I'm sure uh knowing as priests a couple of the associates that I had. They had to have asked me. Oh, for sure. There's no way, there's no way I got through that sacristy without being without being asked. Um he did. I actually I have I remember the story. I remember I remember I remember what happened. I was in the sacristy because I I was in the sacristy and I asked him what he was whispering at the auditory. There were a couple prayers. Um there was it was the prayer when he washed his hands. I I I I I was I was I was trying to hear, I couldn't quite get it, but he was whispering his prayers. It's his private prayer. That's yeah, that's fine. But I guess I was nosy. Like, what do you say? Yeah, what do you what are you saying right there? And he got out the book and showed me and he's like, Are you gonna say that one day? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. He'd asked me, so that wasn't that wasn't the first time in high school. I remembered it right then. That's fun.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

I love that, and also like all of our priests are part-time vocations directors, right? Like we're right there in the thing. And what a great moment of like beautiful curiosity. And like, it's okay to ask those questions. And like, I'm sure you want, like, you want your server to come like, ask me why we did this thing and why you brought up the gifts over this time, or you brought the cloth for me to wash my hands. Like, I encourage everyone to ask those questions, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, I love I love showing I love showing them all those things. I uh you know, one of the uh homies I give every once in a while, I um I go to the altar and bring over the uh bring over the chalice and everything. And I was like, okay, this is what I'm doing up here during the offertory. And and so this is you're gonna be seeing me do this. And like, this is the corporal, this is this is its purpose, this is why it's folded like this, and it's all this is about love of Jesus. It's folded like this for love of Jesus, and all all the all the little details about the purificator, the chalice, and then mom gave me the mom and dad gave me this chalice, yeah. And my siblings gave me this chalice one when when I got ordained. So like just all those little details built into it. Uh, one of the uh chalices we have at Saint Theodore uh was from uh Monsignor Orf. He's a priest, he was uh he served in the Jeff City Diocese, and uh his chalice is at St. Theodore, and I use it for Friday school mass. We uh and we have that mass in the gym. We're very blessed to not fit our schools, yeah. The whole school into the church. And uh on that chalice, uh in the uh in the node in the in the stem of it is the word Sitzio, I thirst. And Jesus at the Last Supper. And it's just like this beautiful little detail there. And so it's this perfect union, right? Because Jesus is thirsting for me. Uh and he says at last supper, Father, these those you give me are your gift to me. And a lot of times think about the gifts we receive from God, but we're those you give me are your gift to me. Like we're the gift for Jesus. He thirsts for us, but but at the same time, I I I want to drink. Um I'm thirsting for what's in that chalice as well. So there's this thirst going, there's this thirst going both ways there. And so I I love showing the all the students that I want them to know all of these, I want them all these pieces so that, well, no matter what their vocation is, yeah. All of our vocation uh in is marriage, priesthood, religious life, our vocation is to love Jesus. Our vocation is to love the Eucharist. We're all called to get to heaven, and Jesus desires that for us from all eternity. Yes. And and yes, I want a lot of those boys to be priests one day. Of course, of course. So we're trying to do those extra little nudges.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Oh, I love that. I mean, it's it's only when we go through uh, you know, uh marriage prep. It's you you love God first, then you love your spouse, then you love your children, and it's like understanding that hierarchy of love and being like, we are all striving for Christ. But how we go about our vocations is different based on our own gifts and the way God calls us. Oh my gosh, I love I've I love that detail in the chalice. What a beautiful thing. So tell me a little bit about how, you know, in the process of seminary and in that process of discernment, um, did you have any moments of doubt? Or um tell me about the moments that really just continually solidified. What was your conversion like through seminary life?

SPEAKER_01 21:17

When I think of conversion through seminary life, I'm thinking of uh a couple things are coming to mind. One of those things is informing the habits of the priesthood. Yeah. And that's a piece of it. Uh one of the habits of the priesthood is a disciplined life of prayer. Yeah. And there's the time we have our personal prayer, and then there's uh the prayers that healthy priests pray. Yeah. And that every priest promises to pray. Uh, I did not have much exposure to liturgy of the hours before entering seminary. A lot of my Classmate centered already knowing how to use a brevery. I got this book and had no idea what I was what I was doing when I entered seminary. I had to get shown all the ribbons and work my way work work my way through that. So uh part of was the formation in uh in this is part of the priesthood is praying with and for the church with all these voices all over the world. And so that's that's part of so so the habits of priesthood. So the prayer, service to others. And then there's another question there too, is do you find joy doing this? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Because what a good question.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

So part of the discernment is not just can I do this? It's um habits are really good. And but if you're called to the priesthood, these are things that lead you to joy. I I m I I I I long for it, I expect it. It's not like it's not a chore, it's not a burden, it's something to find joy in. And it takes the building of the habit first in order to experience that.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

But that was that was uh that was one of the conversions, building the habit and then finding joy in it. I think uh learning to pray in the quiet for extended periods of time. That was another uh that was another conversion experience. I had time in prayer before and I had habits of prayer, but consistent uh extended habits of quiet prayer. That was another conversion as time went on, especially doing quiet silent retreats and things that really stretch my ability to handle the silence and encounter our Lord in silence.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

I love that, you know, it we hear like we've talked about this in the pat on the podcast in the past that the diaconate is a life of service, that's what you're called to, and the priesthood is a life of sacrifice. I think sometimes when we hear the word sacrifice, we think of it in a negative connotation or as a difficult life. Uh, but our God is such a good God, he doesn't call us to a life of misery, he calls us to a life of joy in the mundane because to be honest with us, it's every day is a little mundane, that's part of you know the day today. But I love that you said that the habits we do can bring us joy. You know, it's like when we allow ourselves to become slaves to God's will, we're truly free. You know, our obedience leads to f leads to freedom. And I think of freedom not as doing whatever you want, but in feeling joy in what you're doing. Um, and I think that's a great way to do put that. Like, seminary allows you to experience the daily habits of a priest and to learn how to love them. And that's why discernment's so important in the seminary. You may have never seen a brief read and you could put your hands and go, not for me, or you put in your hands and go, okay, this is where I'm called further, and I'm finding more detailed love with our Lord in that way.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think the only other, yeah, the only other thing that I was thinking of when you were saying that was um I love and when I think of the marriage vows, I tell every couple I prep this, uh, but uh it's you know the vow of fidelity and it's the vow of the adventure. Like you are saying, I will love you and and yes, there yeah, for life open to children, the all three vows, but that that's the fidelity, that's the adventure. Yeah, like together we are living this adventure of life together. We're seeking heaven together, right? That's the vow of the the it's the joy that's built into that, that's built into that vow. And that parallels uh, of course, over to the precept. We have the the vow of uh as I it's like I want to live the my life seeking heaven and joyous found following our Lord and our vocation.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Oh, that is so beautiful. I love that, and I'm excited because I feel like as people are hearing this, as people are hearing this, you know, they'll be able to see how your calling and the vocation of priesthood uh it it can be lived out in every different vocation, a consecrated single life or a married life. God doesn't call us uh to to experience different things bec or whatever. It's he's calling us to vocations to love him through the different ways that we can experience that love with him. Um I just think that's so beautiful. Do you mind telling me if if someone was discerning the priesthood, what would be some words of encouragement that you could give them?

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Absolutely. Uh so first of all, praise God. I think that's the first thing. Even if even the consideration of it is Lord, I want to do your will. And that's a heart that's a heart that wants to do God's will, that's a that's a good place, that's a good place to start. Uh so a couple of things I'd always encourage. Uh one, prayer. There's no getting around that. When we encounter our Lord, our uh a priestly heart is one in love with the Eucharist. So love the Eucharist, love Mass. Oh and love uh love all the gifts that uh go to confession regularly. Because we see we we receive our Lord's great gift in the Eucharist and the other sacrament he gave us to receive the greatest blessings of the cross for our regular use. That's confession. He heals us, he he and he and that enables us to hear his voice more clearly. So that's one place. Another place I would uh think about is uh growing the virtues of being a holy man. Yeah. Uh discipline, um, generosity to others, uh life of uh some sacrifice in there too. Like what are the disciplines that make or what's what's what are the virtues that make a good man? And that's gonna serve you no matter what. Um but you need those to be a priest. So if so start working on the things that make you a great man and got and that just tills the soil for God to cultivate, and then talk to your priest. That's yes, tell your priest, I I I I thought about this and just ask it. Like I don't even like what's it like being a priest? Ask ask about those stories because when one if God's calling you to the priesthood, that'll excite you. Yes, it will, it'll draw you, you'll you'll feel drawn into it, and that's our Lord's so good to us. And if you if you're called to the priesthood, follow our Lord, he'll it'll bring you joy.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Pray, cultivate, discipline, follow. I it's just so it it it seems so obvious, but it's so great to hear it because sometimes those obvious things we need to be said to us to go, oh yeah, of course. Um, Father, thank you so much for being here. I this has been absolutely a personal uh pleasure of my own, but I know our listeners are going to love this absolutely so much. So uh, do you mind ending us in a prayer through the intercession of St. John Vianne?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Absolutely. Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Holy Spirit, descend upon our hearts, descend upon the hearts of all those who will hear this podcast, especially upon the hearts of the young men who hear this podcast and are discerning the priesthood. Ask it to bless us all abundantly. Give us the grace to follow you today, to love you more today, to love the Eucharist more today. Give us the grace to seek heaven today. Draw us closer to you, to you, Holy Spirit. Saint John Bianni, pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you. Appreciate it.