Hometown: Bloomington, IL
Year in Formation: Temporarily Professed – 4th Year in Vows
High School: Bloomington Central Catholic (Bloomington, IL), 2009
College: University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN), 2013
College Major: Science Pre-Professional Studies
Graduate School: University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN), 2015
Graduate Degree: M.Ed Secondary Education
Previous Jobs: Teacher and Coach at Memphis Catholic Middle and High School
Patron Saint: St. Maximilian Kolbe for his courage and selflessness.
Favorite Movie: The Shawshank Redemption
Favorite Books: Anything by C.S. Lewis
Hobbies: Piano, Playing/Watching Sports, Cards
Vocation Story: Though I did not know any priests or religious in my family, I am grateful to have grown up with family who instilled in me the importance of family and faith. My parents sacrificed much to send me and my three siblings through Catholic schools, and their fidelity to their faith and their vocation of marriage has encouraged me in my vocational journey.
I attended Notre Dame and, after graduation, I joined the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program, which sent me to teach math and science at a Catholic high school in Memphis, Tennessee. I taught there for five years, working and living with others who shared a similar commitment to working in Catholic schools and helping young people know, love, and serve God. I had many opportunities to accompany my students and their families in their journeys of life and of faith, and I believe God called me to discern religious life and the priesthood in and through these people and experiences of community and ministry.
After exploring this call for a couple of years, I visited the Holy Cross community at Moreau Seminary and immediately felt great peace — a feeling of being home within another community of people. I am grateful for the way in which we live, pray, and work together within a community, as well as our commitments to being educators in the faith wherever we are sent to minister.
Ways that you resonate with the Holy Cross charism, “Educators in the Faith”: Education was what brought me to Holy Cross, first as a student at Notre Dame and then as a teacher in a Catholic high school. I was able to see the ways in which Holy Cross religious foster the education of the whole person, particularly within the dorm communities. As a teacher myself, I sought to engage the mind, heart, body, and soul. I learned very quickly that in the education of young people it mattered far less what or how you taught than who you were.
One aspect of Holy Cross spirituality that speaks to you the most and why: The Cross, Our Only Hope. This global pandemic has really allowed all of us to realize how little control we have over our own ways of life. How easy it is to see the Cross in our lives or in the lives of our loved ones – sickness, isolation, social unrest, political divide. Fr. Moreau certainly had his fair share of crosses, but instead of despair, he responded with the conviction that the experience of the cross was a sign that you were exactly where you needed to be. A trust in Divine Providence allowed him to continue his mission with hope and zeal.