ABOVE: Seminarian Carlos Gonzalez holds the incense during a church procession.
Seminarian Carlos Gonzalez shares how his faith and discernment confirmed his path to priesthood
By Tami S. Scott, associate editor
Photos courtesy of Carlos Gonzalez
Local seminarian Carlos Gonzalez was 16 years old when he first felt a call to religious life – and it was initiated by a Liverpool High School teacher’s encouragement to consider the priesthood. Until that moment, Gonzalez had never even thought about it – he was thinking more along the lines of becoming a teacher or a police officer.
When asked why he thought his teacher, John Sheridan, also a youth minister at Baldwinsville’s St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, wanted to know if he’d ever reflected on becoming a priest, Gonzalez paused.
“That’s a great question,” he said. “I think that the Lord, for whatever reason, sees something in each [person] that he calls to the priesthood. I don’t know if there’s a particular reason why, but I think there’s got to be something that the Lord saw in me and said, you know, ‘I want you to do this.’”
On this year’s World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Bishop Douglas J. Lucia held a Holy Hour of Prayer at Syracuse’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. There, he addressed the congregation with stories of multiple people who listened to God’s calling. One was of a young woman who was a member of the Hitler Youth, eventually converting from atheism to Catholicism and finding her vocation as a Franciscan nun. Other stories embraced the lives of five young men today who were inspired to become Jesuit priests in their 20s and 30s after working several years in the secular workforce or the military.
“God is still calling people today, just as he called Samuel in the Old Testament times and the apostles and other disciples in the New Testament times,” he said. “And God is calling both men and women of all ages.”
Don’t rush it … take time to discern God’s calling on your life
Gonzalez, 23, didn’t decide to become a priest overnight. He gave it time and discernment. When asked what steps he took to arrive where he is now, he listed several.
“Certainly prayer,” he said, “taking time to be in the presence of God, daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration.” Those were the times when Gonzalez said he would ask the Lord for the grace of surrender. “It’s through those moments of prayer, of time with God, that slowly you feel the tug on your heart … even more as the days go on.”
Seminarian and youth minister Carlos Gonzalez (far left) poses with his youth group at St. Augustine’s Church in Baldwinsville.
The most recent study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) on the class of 2023 ordinands suggests that more than 72% of diocesan priests and over 80% of consecrated religious actively participated in Eucharistic Adoration before they entered formation.
Gonzalez attributes a trip he took as a teen with a youth group as the catalyst for his religious discernment. A component of the Steubenville Youth Conference includes Eucharistic Adoration. He said when there, it was the first time he’d had a personal experience with the Lord. He opened up to God through prayer, telling God he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life – he thought he might want to be a police officer, a lawyer or a teacher – but he just wasn’t sure.
“There wasn’t peace when I thought of [those careers],” he said. “But during Steubenville, during Adoration, there was a feeling of [the Lord saying to him] ‘I’ve got you. Follow Me.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know where it was going but it set a fire in my heart that I’d like to think never went out. It was really a wonderful experience because, after that, I continued to discern, I continued to ask the Lord where he wanted me and here we are.”
As the youth minister at St. Augustine and St. Mary of the Assumption parishes in Baldwinsville, Gonzalez has taken high school students each year to the same conference he attended at their age. This year’s pilgrimage is the largest to date with more than 30 teens registered to go. “It’s through Steubenville that we now have several teens of our own discerning the priesthood,” he said.
Gonzalez encourages anyone currently thinking about a religious path to be open to whatever the Lord is calling them to do because it’s “truly a gift.”
“When we follow the Lord’s call on our life, that is when we’re going to be the happiest that we can be,” he said. “So my advice would be just do it. Just allow the Lord to talk to you. Be open to it. Don’t think that, you know, you’re signing up for anything. My advice … take [it] into prayer.”
We are ‘chosen vessels’
Just as our Lord Jesus Christ used Sheridan as his chosen vessel to reach Gonzalez, he can use anyone to convey messages of hope, love, and God’s will for their lives. Bishop Lucia at the Holy Hour of Prayer asked parents to talk to their children about praying for guidance when choosing their life’s work and to have them pray themselves that one of their children might be called to serve the church ministerially.
“Or have we, ourselves, ever prayed to God offering to serve the church in a ministerial way? Or have we ever thought of volunteering a year of our lives to serve the Church?” Bishop Lucia asked. “[These] are just some of the considerations that we invite the faithful of our Diocese to reflect upon not only on this day but in their prayer[s] all year long.”
