Today’s Vocation Story comes from Jim Romanello, seminarian for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in his 4th year of Theology (6th year as a seminarian). Jim is a son of Holy Trinity parish in Norwood, OH.

The discernment of my vocation to the priesthood has been, and continues to be a very humbling experience. Many times when I was a child I felt that I wanted to be a priest, even though I really knew nothing about who a priest is and what they really do other than celebrate Mass. As I grew up, like most teenagers, those thoughts went away, as did my interest in Church. Although I was at Mass pretty much every week, I went to Mass because I knew it made my parents happy. This is how I grew up. Church was a part of life.

            The problem was I was working in the restaurant business. The busiest time of the week in the restaurant business is on the weekends. There were many times when I had to work Saturday night and again Sunday morning. Needless to say, I had to use a wide network of parishes around town to get to Mass on a regular basis.

From the beginning of my restaurant career, I knew this was not what I wanted to do with my life. My true desire was to work in the field of Information Technology. So one day, after several years of working in restaurants, I went to ITT Technical Institute just to check things out. By the time I left the campus I was signed up and in September of 2002 I graduated with honors and received my Associate degree of Applied Science in Computer Network Systems. This changed my life drastically. In November of that same year, Fifth Third Bank hired me as an entry level Technical Services Rep. Finally I was free to go to the Mass I wanted to go to at my home Parish.

I slowly became more involved in Church and as a result my faith was growing. I joined a Men’s Fellowship Group and the Knights of Columbus and began spending time with men who cared about their faith and wanted to know more, just like me. The more I got involved, the more the question kept popping up: “Should I be a priest?” I tried as hard as I could to push this question away. One night, at one of our fellowship gatherings, one of the men asked me if I had ever thought about the priesthood. I laughed and said “who me?” and blew it off, just like I did every time the question popped up. I could not see myself being a Priest. I was not holy and couldn’t see myself living a life of service to others. I did want to serve my Church and faith community, but I couldn’t see myself serving at that level. I guess I didn’t think I had that much to give. Over the next few years this question would pop back up in my face, over and over from those in our group and from inside of me. No matter how much I tried to push it away it just kept coming back like it was haunting me.

One evening I was sitting on the couch reading my Columbian magazine from the Knights of Columbus. The back cover of the magazine always profiles a priest or religious brother or sister and tells their vocation story. As I read the profile of the Seminarian, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The Seminarian’s story was the just like mine, This Seminarian had been pushing off the thought of being a priest for a long time. The question kept popping up and would not go away. Finally he decided to talk to someone about it and here he was in his last year at the Seminary about to be ordained a Priest. This person was just like me. He had the same questions, the same doubts and fears.

I thought about the story for a long time. At this point, there was no pushing the thought away, so I talked to my parents and asked them if they thought I should be a Priest. Of course, they were elated at the thought of it; they had always hoped that one of their seven sons’ would follow that path.

That night I made a decision that I had to get more information and seriously pursue the thought of being a Priest. I was not sure where it would lead me, but I had no choice at this point but to start discerning where God was calling me. I am now in my sixth year of seminary formation, and the more time I spend discerning my vocation, the stronger I feel called to the Priesthood.

Name some of the times in your life when you knew the decision you were making was one that would change the way you lived your life from that point on. How did you finally make those decisions?

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