Hometown: Ashland, OR
Year in Formation: Temporarily Professed – 4th Year in Vows
High School: Ashland High School (Ashland, Oregon), 2008
College: University of Portland (Portland, Oregon), 2012
College Major: Mechanical Engineering
Graduate School: University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN), Current Student
Graduate Degree: M. Div
Previous Jobs: Engineer at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility
Patron Saint: St. Jude is my patron saint and confirmation saint. Saint Jude was a family devotion when I was growing up and continues to be a devotion of mine.
Favorite Movie: Dead Poet’s Society, Shawshank Redemption, Back to the Future
Favorite Books: The Life Around Us, Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage, Jacob the Baker, Harry Potter Series
Favorite Music: Archie Bell and the Drells, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac
Hobbies: Hiking, reading, swimming, cooking
Most Memorable Prayer/Liturgy you have Attended: I still have memories of an Easter Vigil as a child. From the sleepy grogginess of that late hour, I was startled to joy as the lights flicked on and the bells rang and everyone sang the Gloria. I think I will always remember that Easter Vigil because I can’t forget that joy.
Place of Pilgrimage you Most Want to Visit and why: Any mountain trail will do. I love to contemplate the wisdom embedded in creation and the beauty with which God arranged the cosmos.
Favorite Way to Pray: I love to sit with Jesus and review the day. I’m always surprised at all the ways God was at work.
Favorite Devotion: If you can call it a devotion, I love to sit and gaze at the cross and ponder Jesus’ love.
What Drew you to Holy Cross: I think meeting a couple priests at the University of Portland opened the door. Eventually the Holy Spirit nudged me through it.
Your Vocation Story: I think I always was pondering a call to the priesthood, even from childhood. By the time I was in middle school, I wasn’t comfortable talking about it. Through high school and college, I wasn’t comfortable talking about. Even after college, when I was working as an engineer in Hawaii, I remember receiving the Ave Crux magazine and hiding it from my roommates. It wasn’t until about six years after college — after working and staying active in my parish — that I was finally able to talk about it freely. God gave me the courage and the joy to say yes. I sold my sailboat, car, and other toys and left the beloved Rainbow State Hawaii for Crossroads Indiana. And if you will believe it, I left with joy. I look forward to where God will lead me next.
Ways that you resonate with the Holy Cross charism, “Educators in the Faith”: I am inspired by the charism of Holy Cross as a much-needed gift in our world. Education is too often seen only as a means of reaching a higher income bracket. The aim of a complete education should be to enrich lives, elevate the mind, and move the heart to believe more fully in the Good News, to see the sacramental life of Christ in which we are immersed at every moment, and to love God and neighbor more completely. Developing an individual’s knowledge and skills must have education in faith as its core.
One aspect of Holy Cross spirituality that speaks to you the most and why: Seeing hope in our daily trials is an essential aspect of Holy Cross Spirituality. I find depth in contemplating Mary at the foot of The Cross. Mary, though sinless, was not spared suffering in her life, as we will not be spared trials and suffering in ours. But it is not the trials and the suffering that have the last word. When we spend time in prayer, placing ourselves in Mary’s shoes, we begin to accept the mystery that all suffering is a share in the Cross, that Jesus suffers with and for us, and that we, like Mary, must stand with Jesus, who is alive in every person who suffers. In spending time with Mary at the foot of the cross, we may learn to see and to hope in the redeeming action of the resurrected Christ, who suffered and died with us, who is helping us to endure all our trials and the trials of our brothers and sisters. Through seeing and attaching ourselves to Jesus in the paschal mystery veiled in the ordinary circumstances of each day, may we join Mary in heaven and experience the fullness of our resurrection and glorification in Christ Jesus.
Favorite Verse: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” – John 4:33
Favorite Quote: “It is better to limp along the way than stride along off the way.” – St. Thomas Aquinas
Favorite Bl. Basil or St. André Quote: “Walk in Jesus’ footsteps and may all your sentiments be conformed to those of the heart of your divine master.” – Bl.Basil Moreau, Sermons
How can visitors to this page pray for you? “The footsteps of this men who called us to walk in their company left deep prints, as of men carrying heavy burdens. But they did not trudge; they strode. For they had the Hope” (Constitution 8:122). That I may stride on the way with hope and with my brothers. But for those times when I cannot stride, that I may stumble along the deep prints and stay on the way.