Tony Foy leads training for a group of NET missionaries. NET Ministries Ireland has continued to place God in the hearts of young people around the island, with a large number of missionaries finding their vocations to religious life and marriage in recent years.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Executive Director Tony Foy said that over the past 18 months, six young men have entered the seminary from NET.
Mr Foy said this was “incredible” with the year everyone has just had. He said it could be viewed from one of two perspectives: these vocations were going to happen anyway, or that “God has shown us that if we’re faithful to him, he will be faithful to us”.
“To come out again fighting for another year, and just all these vocations happened to come at this time,” Mr Foy said, “I would be inclined to interpret it through the lens of…God has actually shown his faithfulness to us, and shown there’s some fruit there”.
These are “discerned” vocations according to Mr Foy, “they’re tested”.
“It’s not to say all the guys… who are entering seminary are going to end up being ordained, but they’re being very seriously discerned,” he said.
Seeing success on the marriage front too, Mr Foy said people don’t come to NET to find a husband or wife intentionally, but that it sometimes happens.
“It might be at the back of their minds, but lots of really incredible marriages have come from it,” he said.
The secret of the missionary group’s success is a three-pronged approach to ministry: encounter, discipleship, and a “lighthouse effect”.
With the encounter ministry, they’re “setting up situations where young people get the opportunity to encounter Jesus,” Mr Foy said.
The discipleship stage sees more time invested in the young people they encounter, the goal being “journeying” with them in the Faith.
The “lighthouse effect” is “the hope of knowing there are missionaries on the ground in Ireland, giving hope to the Church, be it to people who are going to Mass, supporting the missionaries…to the priests,” Mr Foy said.