Transitional Deacon Alex Marquette said he first felt the call to be a priest when he was in elementary school. Bishop Michael Izen was then Father Izen, the pastor of Deacon Marquette’s parish, St. Timothy in Maple Lake.
“He (Bishop Izen) asked all of us students at the school, ‘How many of you young men want to be priest one day?’” Deacon Marquette told Rachael McCallum, producer of the “Practicing Catholic” show, for an episode set to air at 9 p.m. May 9 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM. “And I had this welling up within my heart that I knew I wanted to be a priest. That next year, I started altar serving for Bishop Izen.”
He experienced a growing love for Jesus and the Eucharist at Mass through being taught how to altar serve at a young age, Deacon Marquette said.
For transitional Deacon Alex Hall, the journey of discerning the priesthood was less straightforward. When he was young, while driving to the store, his dad said to him, “Alex, the Lord might be calling you to be a priest. Make sure you think about that and pray about that.”
It was something that interested young Deacon Hall. But he eventually fell away from the faith.
“I considered myself an atheist for a number of years,” Deacon Hall said. “But even while I was an atheist, I would think to myself, I kind of have this desire to be a priest. But I thought the minimum requirement to be a priest is to believe in God and at the time I did not.”
While attending the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, Deacon Hall experienced a powerful reconversion at St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center.
“The reconversion was a really powerful experience of the Lord,” Deacon Hall said. “This desire for the priesthood came back with a lot of peace, and I realized if God does exist, if he made me for something, maybe this is how he’s trying to communicate his plan for me. It was after that, shortly, that I began discerning pretty seriously and then entered seminary two years later.”
Now, both transitional deacons are preparing to be ordained to the priesthood May 31 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.
To hear more about their journeys of faith tune into “Practicing Catholic,” which repeats at 1 p.m. May 10 and 2 p.m. May 11.
Also on the program, transitional Deacons Benjamin Eichten and Zachary Ochsenbauer share how they recognized God’s voice in their lives. And Bishop Michael Izen explains the importance of fatherhood in the Catholic faith.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, “Practicing Catholic” can be heard after it has aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcaster
