2008 Woodie Awards
A Different Idea of Love
Micah Smith
Issue date: 2/15/06 Section: Faith
I'm Micah Smith, a freshman at Gonzaga and a seminarian at Bishop White Seminary for the diocese of Juneau, Alaska. I've lived in Alaska for the past 11 years except for the previous year, which I spent on foreign exchange in Norway.
For almost my entire life my greatest dream was to one day have a family. I grew up in a Protestant family with four sisters and wonderful parents and I developed a strong sense of God's love for me early on. I envisioned my future self as responding to God's love by devoting my life to my wife and children. I viewed myself as, definitively, a family guy.
Then three years ago my entire family, after half a year of extensive research and constant theological debate, converted to Catholicism. Immediately I fell in love with the sacraments. Every week I looked forward to the Eucharist and went to daily Mass when I could, and I can still remember how the powerful words of absolution in my first confession broke me down to tears. I began imagining how amazing it would be to bring the sacraments to others. Within a year this desire became deep enough that I thought it could be a calling from God to the priesthood.
But this calling blatantly clashed with my life-long dream of the married life. On the week of my sister's wedding, the reality hit hard. I still felt the calling to priesthood, but now I thought that it was a calling to a life of loneliness and hardship. I thought I would have to feel the harsh pain of not having a wife and family every day for the rest of my life, and I dreaded the future.
Finally, at the end of the week, celibacy in my mind went from a painful requirement of priesthood to a driving force in my pursuit and discernment of it. Through the week of intense prayer and meditation I realized that this sacrifice would be an amazing gift of love to my God. Becoming a priest would give me the opportunity to offer up to God my greatest desires, dreams, and my entire life for the sake of His Kingdom.
As I enter the seminary this year, I am by no means certain that I will be a priest, but for now I have a new dream for my life. I dream of a life of intense love for others, a life of serving the sacraments, and most of all, a life of sacrifice.
For almost my entire life my greatest dream was to one day have a family. I grew up in a Protestant family with four sisters and wonderful parents and I developed a strong sense of God's love for me early on. I envisioned my future self as responding to God's love by devoting my life to my wife and children. I viewed myself as, definitively, a family guy.
Then three years ago my entire family, after half a year of extensive research and constant theological debate, converted to Catholicism. Immediately I fell in love with the sacraments. Every week I looked forward to the Eucharist and went to daily Mass when I could, and I can still remember how the powerful words of absolution in my first confession broke me down to tears. I began imagining how amazing it would be to bring the sacraments to others. Within a year this desire became deep enough that I thought it could be a calling from God to the priesthood.
But this calling blatantly clashed with my life-long dream of the married life. On the week of my sister's wedding, the reality hit hard. I still felt the calling to priesthood, but now I thought that it was a calling to a life of loneliness and hardship. I thought I would have to feel the harsh pain of not having a wife and family every day for the rest of my life, and I dreaded the future.
Finally, at the end of the week, celibacy in my mind went from a painful requirement of priesthood to a driving force in my pursuit and discernment of it. Through the week of intense prayer and meditation I realized that this sacrifice would be an amazing gift of love to my God. Becoming a priest would give me the opportunity to offer up to God my greatest desires, dreams, and my entire life for the sake of His Kingdom.
As I enter the seminary this year, I am by no means certain that I will be a priest, but for now I have a new dream for my life. I dream of a life of intense love for others, a life of serving the sacraments, and most of all, a life of sacrifice.