Have you ever thought about being a priest?
“Have you ever thought about being a priest?” This was a question that many people asked me throughout my life, and it took me a long time to answer it sincerely. Whenever people asked me about the priesthood, I would thank them for the compliment and then quickly change the subject. Throughout high school, my pastor would ask, “How is that discernment going?” I recall one time looking at him and responding, “It isn’t.”
“Have you ever thought about being a priest?” This was a question that many people asked me throughout my life, and it took me a long time to answer it sincerely. Whenever people asked me about the priesthood, I would thank them for the compliment and then quickly change the subject. Throughout high school, my pastor would ask, “How is that discernment going?” I recall one time looking at him and responding, “It isn’t.”
Growing up, I was an altar server and lector. As a teen, I was active in the youth group and assisted with a Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA, now known as the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, or OCIA) program as a young professional. I never missed Sunday Mass, even in college, and my faith was a source of happiness. Yet, I thought the priesthood would be “someone else’s job.” Someone else’s son would make that sacrifice, not me. I had my own plans, and God was going to help me realize them.
That was, until my plans hit a wall. I had been hard-driving and aspirational my whole life. From being recruited to play football at my top-choice college, to working at a prestigious think tank in Washington, D.C., I constantly pushed myself to “achieve.” But honestly, in my heart, I just wanted to be happy. That happiness, I found, had nothing to do with what I could accomplish and everything to do with relationships with loved ones and, more importantly, my relationship with God and his church.
When I realized there was no upward path in my career, and as personal and life pressures began to take their toll on me, I made a dramatic change. I left my job and joined a startup run by fellow Catholics in the D.C. area. Three months into the job, however, I asked myself, “What am I doing?” I realized that the answer to the pain I experienced was not to find a new job but to discover God’s plan for my life. I began to wonder if those who encouraged me over the years could see something in me that I could not. Perhaps the Lord had been trying to reveal the joy he set aside for me from all eternity through one recurring question. And so, for the first time, I began to ask myself, “Is God calling me to be a priest?”
My soul moved swiftly, and a feeling of joy and peace overcame me when I finally said out loud, “Yes, I think he is.” After speaking to trusted priests, donating most of my possessions, hearing words of affirmation from my friends (one of whom said, “I knew it!” when I told her I was going to seminary), I moved home to Austin, and it was the best decision of my life. Now, in my final year of formation for the priesthood here in Rome, I am so grateful to those who posed the question, “Have you ever thought about being a priest?” I pray that many more men may come to know the happiness of saying, with their whole heart, “Yes.”
Deacon Scott Fyall grew up in St. Martin de Porres Parish in Dripping Springs. He will be ordained to the priesthood on June 14.
