you will be made well
Ryan shares his vocation journey:
As a kid, I heard about how a priest would receive a calling to the priesthood. In the 4th grade, I was in religion class when my teacher asked a question. I put up my hand and answered, and he must have liked what I said because he then said in front of the class, “Ryan, one day you’d make a great priest.” I went home and cried to my mom that night and told her that I had just received my call to the
priesthood. She calmed me down and assured me that I didn’t have to become a priest if I didn’t want to. I felt good about that, but from that day, the idea never totally left my mind. When I was in high school, I still believed in God, but I was focused more on partying and trying to be popular. In grade 11 (2015), four of my friends and I got into my friend’s car, and he took us joyriding on country roads. We were driving way too fast, and the driver lost control of the car. We went off-road, and the ditch caused the car to roll. Our car rolled half the length of a football field in total. The police and Doctors could not explain how we didn’t die. There was a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror of the car, and while the car was rolling, the rosary went flying. My one friend caught it mid-air, mid-crash, and he walked out without a single scratch on him. Our Lady was protecting us that night, and she saved our lives. As blessed as I was to survive the crash, I was pretty banged up. I broke my sternum, mildly ruptured my spleen and developed a head injury. The last thing I remember from the crash was smacking my head on the window, which I assume knocked me out, explaining my memory gap. While unconscious, my head collided with the head of my friend beside me, breaking his skull. I am explaining this, not to be graphic, but to show the trauma my head went through to shed light on the struggles to follow.
Miraculously, I did not have any concussion symptoms, but in the years to follow, I noticed my brain was not working quite right. If I didn’t work out, didn’t get enough sleep, or spent too much time watching TV, my brain would become foggy (far more than normal), I would feel a pulsing on my forehead, and I would develop a stutter. I would then rest, sleep more, and exercise, and it would get better. But every time the cycle would repeat, the symptoms got worse until rest no longer helped. In February 2020, I could no longer look at screens (phone, TV, Computer), not even for 1 second. I went to many doctors, and many scans and tests were done, and we weren’t getting any answers. In the meantime, my head was getting worse, and I couldn’t even see screens in my peripheral vision. When I would go out in public, I would wear a baseball hat low over my head because screens are everywhere. In October 2021, I found an osteopath who noticed that the sphenoid bone in my skull shifted and was putting pressure on my optic nerve, causing my central nervous system to become slowly overworked, explaining the long onset and continued worsening of my condition. The bone was put back in place, and I noticed significant improvements, but at this point, it had been injured for over 7 years, so rehab was required. I struggled with this by pushing it too hard and then not hard enough. I was really struggling, and my sister said a prayer for me. She said it was the first time she had prayed in years and the first time she felt her prayer was answered. She felt weird, excited and knew that I needed to go to Lourdes in France. I told my spiritual director, and he agreed I needed to go, so I bought a plane ticket. In the months before my pilgrimage, I continued to struggle with rehabbing my head, and I was losing more abilities, like reading and walking. I could physically walk, but it would strain my head, and the month before we left, I was in a wheelchair.
My sister came on the trip with me, and when we arrived at Lourdes, we went to the grotto to do the water gesture. I was filled with peace and heard God tell me, “Trust Me”. I checked my phone to see if I was healed, but I was not. I was disappointed, but I focused on his Words and was trying to trust. We ended up on a road trip, as neither of us had been to Europe before. We went to Rome to see the Vatican, and there just happened to be a papal audience while we were there. Pope Francis came out and blessed everyone, and when he did, I felt a deep sense of peace and heard God say, “You will be made well”. I accepted that, I did not test it, or mention it to my sister. I did not think I was healed in that moment, but I accepted that one day I would be better. We carried on with our trip, and I was in a church before mass in Switzerland when I looked at the priest getting ready. I thought about how fulfilling his life must be and, for the first time, I really started desiring to become a priest, which was odd for me, as I had been running away from that call my entire life. Then, for the first time, I prayed that God would make me a priest. Less than 20 seconds later, a woman was at the front praying for vocations to the priesthood, and I knew that was of God.
When I returned home from the pilgrimage, I discovered that I was fully healed, and I told my sister that I believed it came from the blessing of the Pope and what I experienced in that moment. She said that in that moment she didn’t say anything to me either, but she felt that she got punched in the gut with the knowledge that I would be healed. We both heard the same thing at the same time, and it came true. In total, it was over three years that I went without technology.
When I arrived home, I told a priest friend what had taken place on my pilgrimage, who advised me to meet with the vocation director. I also enrolled to go back to school to get my bachelor’s degree. When I met with the vocation director, he was excited to meet me and told me to accept my philosophy offer at the University of Western Ontario, and he gave me a tour of a seminary and told me to align my schedule with the seminarian philosophy schedule, as it was too late for me to apply for this upcoming year, but I could attend as a lay student. I felt called to Nova Scotia even though I resided in Ontario. On my first day of class, I sat beside a seminarian from the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, and I knew that this was from God. He got me in contact with the vocation director. In February of that year, when they came down to meet with their seminarians, he and the Archbishop met with me as well, and they said they liked me, and they were interested in my vocation, but informed me that I needed to move to Halifax to finish my undergraduate degree there to continue to discern a new province. In the meantime, I went on a come-and-see at the Seminary, where I felt God telling me to keep discerning. In Halifax, I met the Companions of the Cross, and I went to Detroit to their Seminary for a come-and-see. There I felt God tell me that I needed to go on a come and see what the CFRs. When I went to New York to meet with the CFR’s, I felt that this was the life I was built for. We were instructed to review our conversion stories because many times our vocation is hidden in there, and during the screen this year with my head injury, I was forced into radical simplicity that even though I was healed, I still craved and felt it could be fulfilled in the life of the Franciscan Friar of the renewal. God also chose to heal me through a Pope named after St. Francis. Whenever I visit the friars, my desire to love God with my whole heart grows, and it feels like the right next step.
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