Meet Parishioner Joe Schon: Answering The Vocational Call In The Seminary

As November kicks off with National Vocation Awareness Week, it is the perfect time to take a moment and thank God for the men and women He has called to the priesthood and religious life. Here at Ascension, we are blessed to have a young parishioner who has just started to answer that call and follow a path to the priesthood. We are delighted that Joe Schon is now in his first year of study at Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C.!

Joe has been a parishioner at Ascension since 2012 when his family moved here from the Spirit of Life Parish in Mandan. While he was a student at St. Mary’s Central High School, Joe heard the echoes of a call he had first experienced as a young child.

“There was an initial call when I was in second or third grade,” he says. “There was an assignment where I wrote that I wanted to be a permanent deacon and be married. Then [the call] kind of went away until my junior year of high school. We have an event called ‘The Rock’ and during adoration, I got another call to go. I started going to daily Mass more after that, and during Lent, I did a 40-day Mass challenge and went to Mass every day.

“Then I went to Rome with my school, and I dedicated that trip to discerning the priesthood,” Joe adds. “That November, my mom’s cousin became a bishop and we all traveled to the ordination. So through all those things, a very clear call came.”

Reflecting on their son’s path to the seminary, Joe’s parents, Troy and Deb Schon, realize that there were signs that Joe had a uniquely strong connection to their Catholic faith from early on.

“When Joe was about 3, he made a cross out of Play-Doh and said, ‘Jesus died on the cross,’” Deb recalls. “Then when he was in public school, he had to write a report, and he chose to write on St. Benedict. So, things like that were just kind of little inklings [of his vocation].”

Religious vocations have been an important part of life in the Schon family. In addition to Deb’s cousin, Bishop Austin Vetter, who serves as a bishop in Montana, the Schons also have a nephew that attended seminary for some time before discerning a different vocation. With these experiences in their family background, both Deb and Troy — as well as Joe’s three older siblings — have been fully supportive of Joe as he follows a call to the priesthood.

Deb is thankful that Joe has decided to pursue seminarian studies, knowing that God will use Joe’s time in seminary to continue shaping him into the man he was made to be.

“I just want him to be open to whatever God wants him to do, and I want him to enjoy the experience of a new environment and new friends,” she says. “I want him to learn about himself — the good, the bad, and the ugly, all the things he needs to work on. I think every priest has a calling about what they specialize in. He will start defining what he will do as a priest, what it is that he is called to do as a priest.”

Troy is also excited for Joe and the wisdom he is sure to gain over the next several years.

“I think being around that group of young men is really going to help him mature because there will be some older ones, too,” Troy says. “I think whenever we get to see him, we’ll be able to see how he’s grown into becoming a man. It will be interesting to see how it changes him.”

As he pursues a vocation in the Church, Joe looks forward to learning and growing by leaps and bounds along this journey to the priesthood.

“I’ve been told not to expect anything, but I want to just grow, as a man, and spiritually and academically as well,” Joe says. “I think there will be a lot of great things happening. I’d ask the parishioners at Ascension for their prayers. Prayers always help! And I give my prayers for them as well — my prayers for the community.”

Seminarian Joe Schon (back left) with his family

Seminarian Joe Schon with his parents, Troy and Deb