Pizza Night with the Bishop

WAYNE  For every man who is called to the priesthood, the journey to answer his call to a priestly vocation is different.

A group of young men, mostly high school students, learned about these different journeys to the priesthood at “Pizza Night with the Bishop,” a vocations-awareness event sponsored by the Diocesan Vocations Office at DePaul Catholic High School here Nov. 10.

Father Edgar Rivera, assistant vocations director and pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Passaic, and also a student in martial arts, recalled attending Mass with his mom regularly during his youth. Father Michael Lee, chaplain at DePaul, reflected on a life away from the workplace. Father Kevin Corcoran, vice chancellor and priest-secretary to the Bishop, served in the U.S. Air Force before answering his call to the priesthood.

Bishop Serratelli told the young men, no matter what calls you to the priesthood, “It is first and foremost important to have a deeply personal relationship with Christ. Religion isn’t just about going to Mass every Sunday, but getting to know Jesus. Just be open to it.”

The Pizza with the Bishop event — the first of three such vocation-awareness gatherings with the Bishop Serratelli over the next few months — started with the Bishop helping to nourish the young men’s souls with prayer, a reflection on vocations that focused on a Scripture passage and Eucharistic adoration.

In his talk, the Bishop spoke about the Gospel passage of the rich young man and his encounter with Jesus. During this meeting, the rich young man, who kept the all the commandments, asked Jesus, “What must I do to get to heaven?”

“This is something we all want to know,” the Bishop told the young men. “Hopefully all of us want to get to heaven one day. The rich young man is a very good person. Three things show that he is good — he is deeply religious, he is very humble and he is very courageous. But he doesn’t have his priorities in order. He is so wrapped up in the things he has that he can’t see that what Jesus is actually offering him is something better than what he already has.”

Further explaining the story of the rich young man, the Bishop said, “Material possessions make us think a little too highly of ourselves than we should. It is important to say that this is the only time in the entire Gospel tradition that Jesus says to someone, ‘sell everything and then come follow me.’ Because this is the only case, it should make us stop and think for a moment about what Jesus is actually doing here. A good teacher makes a point by exaggeration. Perhaps Jesus is exaggerating to impress upon this young man the sacrifices he has to make to be Jesus’ disciple. Even deeper, perhaps Jesus is saying, ‘heaven is a gift and there is nothing that we could do. Our salvation is a grace — it’s a gift. We are saved because God loves us. He loves us before we even do anything. So Jesus is exaggerating this point to make us realize what the gift is that he is giving us.”

Nicholas Savastano, a high school junior and parishioner at Our Lady of the Magnificat in Kinnelon, is exploring the possibility of a priesthood vocation. Active in his parish as an altar server, an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharistic and as a catechist for students in the parish’s Confirmation program, he believes the Pizza night was helpful in helping him discern what God may be calling him to do.

A sophomore in high school, Arturo Calderon, a parishioner at St. Anthony’s in Passaic, asked the Bishop, “What is the process of becoming a priest?”

The Bishop answered him: “You have to pray about it and have the desire to be a priest. You have to consider if you want to be a diocesan priest, who serves a diocese or religious priest, who serves a religious order. From there you apply with the diocese or the order. There is a period of preparation and study. If you study for the priesthood right out of high school, there are four years of college and then four years of theology.”

The Bishop spoke about the importance of vocations to the priesthood in keeping the Catholic Church alive, especially in the United States. “Jesus is asking you to offer your life to his Church,” he told the young men. “In our country for almost a decade religious liberty has been under attack. We saw that with the Little Sisters of the Poor, who had to go to the Supreme Court over the Obamacare mandate and fight for their religious rights. We need strong young leaders in the Church and we are called to be missionary disciples. You have to be happy and joyful and have Jesus in your life. When you live a good life, you have a real joy.”