BEAR — Students from Aquinas Academy and Saint Mark’s High School, as well as several homeschooled young men were advised to be mindful of three things while discerning what God is calling them to do.
Bishop Koenig asked them to hear, believe and act.
The bishop joined the high school students, diocesan vocations director Father John Solomon and several seminarians on Feb. 25 at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church for “Pass the Word.” The annual event is an opportunity for high school students to hear more about the priesthood and to get to know some of the men studying to be priests for the Diocese of Wilmington.
Father Solomon greeted the students before the Mass, when they had time for quiet prayer. He told them about his experience as a priest.
“There have been difficult days, there have been easy days, but they’ve all been wonderful,” Father Solomon said.
The goal of Pass the Word is not to have the students signing up to be a priest on their way out, he continued. It is a time, he said, “to say, ‘Lord, what is your will for me?’”
Both the reading and the Gospel were about Jonah, the prophet who tried to avoid God’s command to preach. He is swallowed by a whale and is released after three days when he repents and ministers to the people of Nineveh, sparing them from God’s judgment.
Bishop Koenig asked the boys to hear what God is saying. Jonah didn’t hear God at first.
“Ultimately, he did listen,” he said.
Jonah, at first, did not believe in God’s merciful love, the bishop said. There are times when we hear but don’t believe. God will strengthen us when he calls us.
The bishop talked about Pope Leo XIV, who attended Catholic schools in Chicago and Villanova University before becoming a priest.
“He heard God’s call and believed,” Bishop Koenig said.
That led him to becoming a missionary in South America and eventually a bishop in Peru. The future pope was thinking about his retirement a few years ago, but God had a different calling for him.
Finally, be ready to act, he said, as Jonah did in Nineveh after being released from the whale’s belly.
“Jonah is successful in his preaching because he acts,” Bishop Koenig said. “As a result of that, God did amazing things.”
After lunch, seminarian James Kimmel spoke briefly about his road to the priesthood. He said he was raised Catholic but wasn’t sure how to connect with God. A mechanical engineer by trade, he wondered why God couldn’t be studied like math and science. His desire to know God has energized him in his studies for the priesthood.
“God’s closer to us than anyone else and everyone else,” he said.
Dom Gaunt, a senior at Aquinas Academy in Bear and a parishioner at St. Patrick Church in Wilmington, said he enjoys the opportunity to talk about the future.
“I came out today to dive deeper into what I believe I should be doing and just listen to the word of God,” he said.
Gaunt said he will attend a trade school after graduation, but he’s open to whatever God has planned for him. This was his third time at Pass the Word.
“I think it’s the fellowship. I think it’s being around other people who have a similar idea of the future. They want to stay faithful. It’s really nice.”
