A young newly ordained Dominican priest has described how the call of vocation never leaves and can even turn up in the most stressful of circumstances.
Fr Chris Gault OP was a doctor in the emergency room in a Belfast hospital. “It explains instances like the one I experienced in a Belfast hospital’s emergency department late one night, in my third year after qualifying as a doctor. Despite struggling with understaffing and a high volume of patient presentations, everything was put on pause when an ambulance crew rang ahead into the emergency room, warning the staff about the gravely ill patient they had just picked up. The man was young and asthmatic, suffering from an attack which was surely threatening his life. When he was wheeled into the ‘resus’ area of the ED, he was unconscious and grey. As one of only two doctors in the department at that hour of the night, I took my place at the head of the gurney to tend to the man’s airway, and listened as the paramedic recounted the details and the treatment he had received thus far. As we worked to bring the man back from the brink (which thankfully we did), I found it strange that there was only one thought in my mind: “I could do so much more for this man now if I were a priest.”
Fr Chris says the explanation for this is “that the priesthood is not merely a job or career, like being a doctor or a lawyer or a professional footballer. Rather, the Lord has ‘chosen’ His priests from the very first moment of their existence in the womb.”
Writing in this week’s The Irish Catholic Fr Chris admits that he had “years of vocational angst” but “in fact I had always known that I was called to be a priest. Despite broadcasting widely that I was praying for signs of a priestly vocation, in truth I was praying for signs in the opposite direction, because I was afraid.”
He says that once he accepted the reality “ it brought with it immense peace, and although there have been ups and downs, I have never looked back. I loved training for the priesthood, especially in the context of the adjacent vocation to religious life in the Order of Preachers, and I am immensely happy now in my new priestly ministry.”
Read the full feature piece here – The gift of Vocation