(“Role Call” resumes on a regular basis with this issue, having yielded the back page to advertising last week.)

I thought this might be a good time to reprint here a text from the vocation program Fr. Adamski and I ran around the archdiocese. It was accompanied by a slide presentation which obviously couldn’t be reproduced here. However, I hope you won’t miss too much of the picture. Hopefully, this will tell you something of the “reasons why” behind a decision to try the priesthood: All of this talk about decision making comes to a grinding halt at the point where you try to make one. Particular choices are just that–particular-unique-no two are alike. Even if you and I decided to do the same thing we’d probably be doing it for different reasons or in response to different influences.

Take a guy who thinks he might like to become a priest. Why? What could he be thinking about? Ask a group of priests why they are priests and you’ll get a group of answers. What motivates a man to take that kind of step? There can be any number of reasons.

A man becomes a priest because he believes that faith and especially faith in Jesus Christ helps to put meaning into man’s life, helps to make sense out of man’s problems, helps to lift man up so he can see beyond himself to a Father calling out to him. He believes there’s value in living his life to help people see that faith is feasible and that believing is possible.

He believes that he can help to close gaps and build bridges in the human community by a lot of different styles of work. He believes that people like you and me need the assurance that there is more to life than what meets the eye; something beneath the surface, beyond the here and now.

He believes that there is value in spending his life trying to be with people at the deepest levels of their lives somehow helping them to face the most significant questions of their living and dying. He believes that he can be a part of doing more beneficial things for more people by trying to help them get more closely in touch with the Lord, who makes a difference.

He believes that there is value and purpose in spending his life this way, because he feels that man needs more to believe in than a Buick, more to come through for them than a Plymouth, more of a real thing than Coke and contrary to Eastern Airlines, he believes that sacrifice and courage, not planes, are the wings of man.

Notice how many times I said HE BELIEVES. Choosing to do anything is always a matter of faith – a matter of believing. Believing in yourself, that you can be happy at it. Believing in God, who has a hand in inviting you to do this or that.

Choosing to give the priesthood a try, to take a good hard look at the seminary, is especially a matter of believing because it looks like such a totally different kind of deal. But it isn’t.

What does it take? Basically the same material that a successful marriage or business career would: a capacity to love, to live beyond yourself for others; a willingness to work diligently in developing your talents, an ability to laugh as best you can when everything around you starts to break down.

It asks a man to gear himself for an uncommon kind of holiness which simply means that you, more than other men, make yourself generously available to the Lord and His Spirit, who might lead you some places you hadn’t thought of going.

It calls you to suffer a little, like married life, through free will sacrifice and loneliness. But suffering isn’t what’s important. It never is since we’ll have a good measure of suffering no matter what we choose to do.

What’s important is that your life makes a difference. Most of you probably have what it takes to be a priest as far as personal assets are concerned. Some of you may even have the necessary openness and interest to find out more about it and even give it a try. We hope so–we’re looking for help.