Me, a Priest?
I Didn't See That Coming
[Prologue] I delivered a shorter version of this essay at Monday morning prayer on May 4, 2026, at the Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University.
Every American child of immigrants understands the “out-of-place” feeling you have when your family observes traditions that aren’t native. This is why I have given up on trying to explain why Orthodox Pascha usually falls on a different date than Easter. I’ll let Pope Leo and the Orthodox patriarchs work that one out.
For some perspective: I grew up celebrating Christmas on January 7. Lent means saying goodbye to meat and dairy for 40 days. I didn’t pray in English until I was in my 20s. Oh, and my grandfather was the pastor of our emigre Ukrainian Orthodox parish in St. Paul, MN. A lot of kids tuned out of the Divine Liturgy. But not my older brother and me. Church captivated us. The chanting, incense, emigre piety, but above all, a sense that we were part of something much larger, much older, and much, much more resilient than anything else we had encountered.
To be honest, everyone in my family thought my brother would be a priest. I joined him on my grandparents’ staircase when we sang the Trisagion and gave our grandparents holy communion, “playing” church. I sang in the choir as a teenager, but was obsessed with sports and girls, and went to church to please my parents.
Something happened at 18. I had this deep urge to pursue ministry. I can’t explain it other than it was a voice from within, something saying, “go to seminary.” Or maybe someone was saying it.
“I didn’t see that coming.”
I collected information on the Orthodox seminaries in North America, and then my family poured cold water on my plans. You see, children of immigrants have a duty to advance beyond their parents. We needed to become engineers, doctors, or successful business people. Not priests! My grandfather was completely opposed to my plan, and my mother marshaled the spirits of all ethnic mothers in history through guilt. “How could you abandon us!” Her most common refrain was, “don’t ruin your life.” My grandfather told me privately to make sure I found a good wife. He spoke very little English, and when he did, you would listen, because it was important. Knowing the Orthodox church’s strict rules on the married priesthood - you can marry once before you’re ordained, but not after, he said, “no hurry up.” (these rules are softening now).
I enrolled in seminary in 1997. I was engaged to be married in 1998 and my fiancee and I were checking out possible parish openings. And then I wasn’t engaged any more (my fault, because of my immaturity).
“I didn’t see that coming.”
I did eventually marry, in 2002, and my wife was on board with ordination. Once I was a deacon and she had a taste of life as the minister’s spouse, she asked me to delay ordination to the priesthood. We found one reason after another to postpone ordination. The postponement became semi-permanent. I told a dear friend that I was giving up. He said, “you never know. You can only resist the Holy Spirit for so long. God will eventually find you.”
I didn’t believe it. It seemed to be God’s will that I not be a priest. I settled into my cushy academic life and postponed it.
In 2021, as we were creeping out of the pandemic, my wife told me that she was ready for me to be a priest. My heart leapt with joy.
The next week, while on a disaster response in Haiti, she suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. She died after six hours. [At another time, I will share my experience of reading the medical report - pure horror].
“I didn’t see that coming.”
While you might not think about fixing your family unit while you’re picking up the pieces from devastating death, others do. A number of people told me that I was too young to be alone and should get remarried. People in the church reminded me of our rules. I was not eligible to remarry as a widowed deacon. I would be deposed from the diaconate if I remarried.
Advice arrived like mail - some useful, some unsolicited, and a lot of junk. One if/then proposition after another. “If you don’t remarry, you’ll be lonely.” “If you don’t remarry, your daughter will grow up without a Mom.” Some old refrains rose from the dead - “don’t ruin your life.”
That period of time was truly a crucible. Learning how to form a new life when your beloved spouse, the one with whom you made “one flesh” in God’s blessed sacrament was taken from you, is filled with painful growing pains. I kept serving as a deacon during that time and felt very much at home in church, but I did feel out of place, because the road was lonely. I felt overwhelmed by the challenge and asked for a leave of absence from ministry, which my bishop mercifully granted.
I ended up returning to church and serving as a deacon before the leave had expired. It wasn’t just a matter of familiarity - ministry was one way I sensed I could bear witness to the truth that Jesus Christ has come to save humankind out of love - and to do so with the ripe knowledge of our finite time on earth. No more seconds could be spared. Nothing was more urgent than preaching the arrival of God’s kingdom.
In prayer, with plenty of fear and trepidation, I petitioned my bishop for ordination to the priesthood. Doubt surrounded me in the months that followed because ordination does not solve everyday personal struggles of self-doubt, health problems, and, in my case, acute periods of loneliness. I was in a frightening car accident on Christmas eve 2024. My car was completely totaled. I was almost completely uninjured. That seems impossible - I should be dead. Instead, I walked away.
“I didn’t see that coming.”
The ordination happened on January 18, 2025. I was a priest! And lo! After about a month-long honeymoon period, self-doubt returned in force. I was acutely aware of my own shortcomings, my unworthiness, the weakness of my flesh, the slothfulness of spirit. What had I done?! Maybe my mother was right and I had ruined my life.
“I didn’t see that coming.”
The rite of ordination includes a formula intoned by the bishop as he lays his hands on the ordinand’s head:
The divine grace, which always heals that which is infirm and completes that which is lacking, ordains the most devout Deacon (name) to the office of Priest. Let us, therefore, pray for him, that the grace of the All-Holy Spirit may come upon him.
Ministry is not about me. God is the one in charge, drawing people throughout the world to his covenant of love. People bring their problems with them, so ministry is not easy. There is no way to avoid pitfalls and challenges. They’re a lot like grief - you can’t set it aside or get “over” it - you can only move forward with and through it.
There was always a reason for me to say one of two things to the possibility of ordination to the priesthood: either, “I’m not worthy,” or “not now.”
Maybe I thought that God would let me be. And to be completely honest here, of all the possible paths for me after my wife died, priestly ministry was among the least likely.
So, no, “I didn’t see that coming.”
What I learned from this experience is something the Church has been teaching me since I heard her singing in my mother’s womb. We may waver, question, stray, and sin, sometimes even grievously. Through it all, God is constant in his steadfast love, his mercy “endures forever,” he doesn’t change his mind. He just waited for me to say yes.
This divine grace does indeed heal that which is infirm - and it doesn’t give me the gift of foresight. I know that there will be many other things that I don’t see coming. And this is true for you, too.
May God whose glorious longsuffering we have all borne witness to grant us strength and grace to cling to hope, and the courage to say yes, even when we can’t see more than a few feet of the path before us.
Axios. Gladdens me immensely to read of your journey. And to see the Studite cross on you. Our link. Amen.
thank God that he works with all of us - the broken and confused bits too! Wonderful post father!