If I Knew Then What I Know Now

"Hindsight is 20/20." "If I knew then what I know now." These are phrases that we often hear with a negative context. Usually, they hint at the notion (and the truth) that you can’t change the past or that you made a choice with the best knowledge you had at the time, and it may not have been the right one. But there can be a twist of sorts to our past.

I’m currently the Chaplain and Director of the Catholic Student Center serving Texas Tech University and the surrounding colleges in Lubbock, Texas – known in these parts as Raider Catholic. I grew up in Oklahoma City, a six-hour drive away. And prior to my being assigned to this ministry, I had never been to this part of Texas. I grew up in a family of six children. My parents came to the U.S. before I was born and eventually settled in Oklahoma City. I grew up speaking English and Spanish, was immersed in Mexican culture at home and at Church, and in mainstream American culture at school and pretty much everywhere else.

I was in middle school when Selena was killed. I was 12 years old when the World Cup was hosted in the U.S. I was in high school when Star Wars Episodes 1-3 came out. I was a college freshman during the September 11th attacks. And it was the summer before my senior year of college when Mean Girls was released. These aren’t highlights of my life necessarily, but they are all a part of the culture that I grew up in. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it — a celebrity that I followed, a movie I really liked, a nation-defining event. In those days, they didn’t seem all that life-changing, but looking back, God was preparing me for the future, for what I’m doing now, and for things I don’t yet know. I mention these specific events because they have all come up many times in the two and a half years I have been at Raider Catholic.

I didn’t go directly from college into the Dominican Order. I worked for three years before discerning my call to the Dominican friars. All through the novitiate and studium (our seminary) these experiences that I lived were not very useful. The "currency" of my time in religious formation, to use a phrase of Fr. Walter Wagner, OP, was chanting, singing, organizing, and knowing the "ins and outs" of the philosophy and theology we were studying, not trivia about Selena, the World Cup, or the film Mean Girls.

But hindsight is 20/20, right! My first few months at the campus ministry I learned just how valuable my life experience was, in addition to all of the studies and religious formation. Who knew that Selena and Mean Girls would have such staying power!

In her book Forming Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell talks about the five thresholds of conversion, and the first of these is trust. She says, "Without some kind of bridge of trust in place, people will not move closer to God." That bridge of trust can be Selena or Means Girls or Star Wars.

Did I know I was going to work in campus ministry when I was in middle school or high school or even college? No. Did I know I was going to work in campus ministry during my formation as a Dominican friar and priest? I knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t expect it right away.

I was ordained a priest in June 2015 and moved to Lubbock one month later. And I’m so thankful! There are lots of misconceptions about the priesthood and about religious life — it’s tedious and boring, it’s the same old thing every day and every week. After five semesters of campus ministry at Raider Catholic and five semesters as Associate Pastor of St. Elizabeth University Parish, one thing that being a priest is not, is boring.

It's challenging getting to know students, young families, older parishioners and everyone in between. It’s challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun, there's no opportunity for boredom. And there's also no opportunity to stop learning more about everyone.

God has a funny way of taking the knowledge and skills of a misspent youth and applying them to help save souls. And not just souls in the abstract, but helping the people that we come into contact with grow closer to Him.

Campus ministry suffers from a lot of stereotypes — its just a bunch of feel-good retreats and praise and worship music, only men and women who are discerning the priesthood or religious life get involved, only those who went to Catholic school and know the faith inside and out participate. The reality is somewhere in between these caricatures.

It has been my experience that college students come to our campus ministry because they want to grow in their faith. There is also the stereotype that the priest campus minister needs to be a hippie at heart or a young priest. While I am a young priest, our community of four Dominican priests consists of myself in my 30s, the pastor in his 50s, a priest in his 70s and one in his 80s. And all of us get to know the students. The students do not so much want a young priest as they want someone they know cares about them and wants to walk with them and guide them in their struggles in life and faith.

What are those aspects of your life that you think are useless? You might play D&D or Final Fantasy or Call of Duty. Maybe you play Magic: The Gathering (I do). Perhaps you're a major sports fan or trivia buff. You like going to the movies, any movie (I do). If you worked a fast food job, at an airport, at a hospital, or at a funeral home, that experience will be more valuable than you could ever know. If you know how to fix cars, play an instrument, read construction documents, do graphic design, you will be able to spread the word of God further than perhaps you dreamed.

Then there are those things in life that aren’t so pretty, or even fun to talk about. Dealing with a death in your own family or knowing a close friend or family member who was killed in violence or by cancer. Dealing with an addiction of some kind or seeing their effects first hand.

These kinds of things aren’t taught to us in the studium, but they are things that will build trust with those people that we encounter in life.

At times we think that we have to be perfect, we have to have everything ready and orderly before we can take that next step. But if we’re waiting for that time, it won’t come. It won’t come because there is always something that’s going to be messy, there’s always something more to work on.

During the Advent and Christmas seasons, and throughout the liturgical year really, we hear a great deal about the incarnation of Christ. The world that Jesus entered into was not a perfect world. The situation of Mary and Joseph, in fact, the situation of all the saints of history, was not a perfect situation. But their yes, their trust in God for the present and the future allowed them to do great things and to spread the faith.

So what now, knowing that your encyclopedic knowledge of The Lord of the Rings or your mad basketball skills will be in service to the Lord and his Church in some way? First, don’t stop improving or practicing or getting better. Second, just let it happen. Don’t force something that doesn’t seem right. If you’re really good at off-road dirt biking but find yourself anointing someone at the hospital, the two situations may not mesh well together. And third, don’t be afraid to say yes to what God is calling you to be. In other words, answer the call.

Answer the call to the priesthood. This is the easiest thing to say and the hardest to do. Saying yes to the priesthood means saying no to other things. No to a wife and children, but also no to being a multi-millionaire, to owning that yacht or classic car collection.

But a yes to the priesthood guarantees an exciting life. I won’t be doing campus ministry all my life. Eventually, I will be reassigned to any number of ministries — a parish, a school, ministry for the province, further studies perhaps. And each of those situations will present its own challenges. If I trust God and my superiors, of course, I know that I will be able to bring the people who are entrusted to me closer to Christ. And after some reflection in a new assignment, I know that I’ll be able to see that my training and preparation started long before I knew I would be there.