"i felt at home and my heart was at peace"
Br. Pier Giorgio shares his vocational discernment journey:
My semester abroad in Rome with the University of Mary’s Rome Campus was the time when I decided to really dive deep with the Dominicans. Thankfully, I had a supportive community of 32 other people who knew me well and kept me going. The chaplains from the Pontifical North American College were a huge support in my
discernment, and they gave me great advice and fraternity. Living with 32 other people for four months is a challenging thing, yet there are many times of joy in which I learned much about what it means to live in a community. There were two experiences that defined that Rome semester for me that pushed me deeper into my discernment.
The first experience was my encounter with St. Hyacinth at the Basilica of Santa Sabina. Within the first week of arriving in Rome, I wanted to visit Santa Sabina because it was the headquarters for the Dominicans, and a very beautiful basilica. I convinced a friend to go with me, and we took the buses toward Santa Sabina. As I entered the very old Roman style basilica, I fell in love with its simplicity, and its side chapels. One of the side chapels was the Chapel of St. Hyacinth, and in that chapel, there is a fresco of St. Hyacinth being vested with the habit by St. Dominic. When I first saw that fresco, I knew that my heart desired that moment and that life. From that moment and for the rest of my Rome semester, I would always frequent Santa Sabina because of that chapel, and I would go to be reminded of that desire in my heart that the Lord was stirring up. The next experience involved meeting a friar from the Central Province in Rome.
The second experience was a meeting with a friar from the Central Province teaching at the Angelicum. I was connected with this friar by the Central Province vocations director, and this friar was teaching at the Angelicum. I took one of my weekends to spend time with the friar at the Angelicum. He gave me information about the Central Province and told me the goals of what the Central Province wanted to do. As he was telling me these things, my heart became inflamed with love of the Order. I invited the friar to the last community meal that we had as a Rome cohort, and he got to see the great community that I have lived with in Rome, and the friends I would have going back to Bismarck for my final year. It was clear to him that my heart was desiring to enter the Order, and he encouraged me to do more visits once I got back, and that is exactly what I started to do.
My next visit to the Dominicans was during the summer when I was doing my last summer semester of Year-Round Campus. At the University of Mary, I participated in that Year-Round Campus program that allowed me to graduate in 3 years and have less student debt. It was during my second summer of this program that allowed me to leave for a week to attend a Biblical Studies seminar at Augustine Institute. Before I attended this seminar, the vocations director and I set up a visit to the Novitiate house in Denver. This visit was a great way to see the end of the Novitiate life of the Dominicans. I got to hear about the struggles of the life, but I also got to experience the joy the novices had for the life. Every time I walked into the chapel to pray with them, I felt at home and my heart was at peace. I felt the Lord moving me here to be with the Dominicans. I left Denver pretty confident that the Lord was at least calling me to apply to the Dominicans, and I would wait until September of this year to make the visit in which I would begin my application.
My last visit to the Central Province was at the start of my senior year. I was going to Chicago to visit the Provincial Office where the Central Province vocations director lived and worked. Where he lived was the retirement priory for those Dominicans who were not able to serve in the province in a certain capacity. I was among 80–90-year-old friars who had a lot of wisdom, and a youthful fraternity that touched me deeply. During that visit, my prayer became caught up in that I could see myself dying there as an old friar and being very content with it. It was my favorite visit out of the three visits I did to the Central Province because I got to experience the holiness that accompanies a friar into his old age. It was here that I had a meeting with the Central Province vocations director, and I was accepted as an applicant to the Order.
Throughout my visits to the Dominicans, I got to experience every stage of the life for the Dominican. I have been blessed to be supported by my parents through this process. My parents have blessed me with paying for most of my college because of the great demand of study that I have to undertake. Now, my younger sister is in college, and it has become harder for them to help me pay for college. I am excited to see what the Lord has in store for me because he has constantly surprised me throughout this discernment process with the support of friends, families, and many of the friars. I know the Lord that will not make student an obstacle to this vocation which is a great freedom to live out of, and I have learned over my entire life how important dependency on God is for my spiritual life and material life.
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