Landon

bring me slightly later to the Priestly Discernment Program. The Program gave me the spiritual and fraternal support I needed to get through a rough first semester of college, and the prayer commitments reordered my prayer life to be more liturgical and Eucharistic. Learning to pray with the Psalms deepened my sense of praying with and in Christ and taught me how to open up my heart more fully to God. The regular meditation on the Psalms and the short readings of the Hours also enhanced my receptivity to the Word of God. Lastly, through the book Time for God by Fr. Jacques Philippe, which all of us in the Program received that year, I slowly practiced being attentive to and resting in the Presence of God with simple, repetitive phrases to keep me focused. With the Psalms and the Eucharist, this more affective or contemplative kind of prayer throughout my college years brought me more regularly and far closer to God in my heart than ever before.

Going into my second semester with an improved human and spiritual formation, the Lord started leading me to an actual discernment of the priesthood. It was at the beginning of this semester that the Lord placed on my heart the deep desire to be a father and a teacher or catechist. This was a strange experience for me at first, as I had never really desired to be a father or teacher before, at least not in the strong way it seemed to emerge constantly from my heart. The type of fatherhood was not specified, but the formation I was receiving in the Program that semester emphasized the spiritual fatherhood of the priesthood, which I consider providential. My silent retreat that semester, my first silent retreat at all, was also very significant. During a Mass, the Lord broke through a barrier in my heart against ministerial priesthood, a wall I did not realize I had until He had broken it. Before, I could not actually see how the person I was then could be contiguous with a future priest. Afterwards, I could see the continuity in a way I simply could not beforehand.

During the following year, my sophomore year of college, both my prayer life and my brotherhood with the other Program guys deepened. With the experience of the brotherhood, I began to consider religious life more in my discernment due to its close fraternal life as well as its deeper commitment, in my perspective at the time, to prayer and spirituality. Based on my own inclinations, I started to think that diocesan priesthood would leave me vulnerable to a kind of isolation and workaholism that would destroy me. I had also grown closer to St. Augustine at this time due to his writings, such as the Confessions and the City of God, coming up in my courses. These factors led me to discern with different Rules of Life to better understand religious life, and, among them, the one that struck my heart while reading it was the Rule of St. Augustine with a commentary by an Augustinian friar. This work was what led me, while still discerning the ministerial priesthood, to focus primarily on religious life in my discernment, though I was not yet discerning with any particular order. At the end of my sophomore year, I became a member of Koinonia (at the time, the more serious branch of discernment in the Priestly Discernment Program), taking on the daily commitments of a holy hour, Mass, Morning and Evening Prayer, and a Marian devotion.

During the first semester of my junior year, the emphasis on brotherhood at our Koinonia retreat drew me further to the fraternal aspect of religious life in my discernment. In researching the different mendicant orders, the Order of St. Augustine struck me with its emphasis on fraternity and its charisms of Truth, Unity, and Charity. These seemed to be the exact charisms that resonated most with my heart. The spirituality of the Order seemed also to be based in the spirituality of St. Augustine that had already drawn me.

By March, I started scheduling a Come and See in June. That visit gave me further confidence that the Lord was calling me to discernment and formation with the Augustinians. My second visit for All Souls’ and Saints’ confirmed to me that the Augustinian community was a true brotherhood that I thought I could fit well in. Lastly, during a visit by Fr. Tom in February, I realized that my discernment with the Augustinians was all I wanted to focus on after college and asked to begin the application process. Four months later, on June 25, I was accepted as a prenovice in the Midwest Province, and I now look forward to my upcoming time of formation with my fellow prenovices in August.