Street-wise sisters on a roll

A YOUNG EscuelaMóvil student is proud of his work, and Sister Ely Carrasco, C.D.P. is just as proud of him. The Sisters of Divine Providence in Mexico show up at the city’s outdoor market, Mercado El Tepe, on the same day every week.

Carol Schuck Scheiber is an editor of VISION

voCation guide and HORIZON, both publications of the National Religious Vocation Conference.

bycarol Schuck Scheiber

Many poor children in Querétaro, Mexico struggle to go to school. Thanks to the Sisters of Divine Providence, school comes to them.

FOR THE POOREST CHILDREN in Querétaro, Mexico, education is often a low priority. Hunger, violence, drugs, and family problems can consume most of their attention. Enter the Sisters of Divine Providence and their Escuela Móvil (“School on Wheels”). The Sisters—who minister in Texas and Mexico—and a cadre of volunteers bring a series of large educational bulletin boards and games six days a week to a place where homeless and very poor children gather. The sisters and volunteers play, read stories, and get to know the children. Their effort is part of an international movement of mobile schools founded in Belgium and sponsored locally in Querétaro by the food bank ALVIDA.

A primary goal of this unconventional school is simple: to build relationships. With a bond in place, the sisters hope they can begin to address the many needs of these children and their families and be the face of Jesus in their lives. =

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SISTERS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE OF TEXAS

VOLUNTEERS surprise one of their youngest visitors with a traditional Mexican sombrero.

BESIDES TUTORING, the Escuela Móvil volunteers listen to and share with young people who are drug addicts and lack life direction.

TWO CHILDREN have big smiles at Escuela Móvil.

SISTER LUPITA SILVA, C.D.P. helps an older student understand a lesson he did not master at school.

THE SISTERS’ Escuela Móvil is set up on a 20-foot meridian five days a week. Sister Lupita Silva, C.D.P. and volunteers (above) review geography with middleschool students.

LABOR AND compassionate hearts make Escuela Móvil work. This mobile school is pulled six days a week to its destination where their regular students and friends await the sisters and their volunteers.

Leslie Scanlon is a journalist and former religion writer for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in The Christian Century, the Washington Post, and many other publications.

Persistent call

pays off byleSlie Scanlon

FATHER PAUL Henson, O.Carm. (center right) with some of the men who entered his community in recent years.

“I wanted to do something that impacted people’s lives,” says Father Paul Henson, O.Carm. While that knowledge was sure, it took some false starts before he knew Carmelite life was for him.

FOR THOSE WHO THINK the road to religious vocation is a straight path, meet Father Paul Henson, O.Carm. Henson’s route to the priesthood wandered in and out of seminary, into a career as a teacher, through a season in his 20s of considering marriage and family—but he kept hearing a call to religious life.

Finally, at age 30, he answered—and his ministry since as a Carmelite priest has taken him to Mexico and Peru and into education administration as principal of Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, California. He’s now a vocation director for the Carmelites, serving the Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary in Darien, Illinois, living in a priory next to a Carmelite high school in Tucson, and

traveling to Chicago to serve monthlong stretches at the pre-novitiate house three or four times a year.

His advice to young people considering religious vocation: Pray for God’s guidance and take the time to “experiment with life, to look, to investigate,” to consider other paths and opportunities. Also, “trust what’s going on in your heart. God’s inviting you to this.”

How can I make a splash?

Henson has known his whole life what it’s like to grapple with figuring out your place in the world.

He grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles. While his neighborhood was ethnically mixed and his own family second-generation Mexican-American, his parish was run primarily by Irish priests. His family was not traditional in the American sense—when he was young, his mother died and his father left, and he grew up in his mother’s intergenerational, bilingual family, led by his maternal great aunt, Luz Salcedo, who was very religious and who gathered Henson and his cousins regularly at dawn to pray the rosary, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish.

Born in 1964, “I grew up at a time when you were assimilated,” Henson says. “You were supposed to be white. You had to speak English. You didn’t really want to speak Spanish with your classmates,” or to look different. There wasn’t, for him, a role model of a Mexican-American priest. Yet he felt called to be one.

When Henson was five, American astronauts landed on the moon. “I remember sitting in front of our little black-and-white TV,” watching those historic first steps and think-

Enter #103 at VocationMatch.com

Enter #283 at VocationMatch.com

ing “that I wanted to make a difference in the world,” Henson recalls. “I wanted to make a splash. I wanted people to remember me.”

As he grew older, that sense of wanting to be special shifted to a more selfless thinking that “I wanted to do something that would impact people’s lives.”

He had become an altar server,

and when he watched carefully as the priests celebrated Mass, he felt, “I want to do that.”

Maybe I should be a priest

He attended a Catholic elementary school, where, when he was in the sixth grade, a group of seminarians came to speak to his class.

His advice to young people considering religious vocation: Pray “ for God’s guidance and take the time to “experiment with life.”

He remembers they were nicely dressed—black pants, white shirts, blazers—and they talked about both the academics and the sports the high school seminary offered. “They made it sound so fun,” Henson says. He went home and told his great aunt, “I want to be a priest.”

So for high school, he enrolled in St. Vincent’s Seminary in Montebello, California. He was all lined up, it appeared, to enter the priesthood. Except that he wasn’t. Henson stayed in the seminary only two years—leaving after that to attend a Catholic boys’ high

HENSON MEETS with students at Salpointe High School in Tucson, Arizona. He frequently visits Carmelite high schools as part of his vocation ministry.

school after deciding the seminary “just wasn’t for me,” in part because he wanted to date girls (which he couldn’t even then, officially, because his great aunt was so strict).

After graduating from high school, Henson attended St. John’s Seminary College in Camarillo, California, graduating in 1986 with a degree in philosophy. He still felt pulled toward priesthood but not certain—he’d met a woman and fallen in love. He moved to North Hollywood and took a job with Catholic Charities working with runaway teenagers.

One Saturday he went to the local Carmelite parish for confession. But when he got there, he found the confessional empty. He walked outside and saw a guy wearing shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops sitting on the steps, and he asked him, “Do you know where the priests are?”

Enter #132 at VocationMatch.com

Enter #088 at VocationMatch.com

The man answered, “I’m a priest.” They went to the confessional, and after absolution, they continued their conversation outside. “I told him my story,” Henson says. “He said, ‘Maybe you should think about becoming a Carmelite.’ I remember thinking, ‘Wow, they’re not pretentious, they’re regular guys. They care about you as a person.’ ”

Carmelite on the second try

The priest introduced Henson to other Carmelites. He visited with them for about a year and in 1989 applied to join the order. “I got accepted, but I got cold feet, kind of at the last minute.” And he backed out. Henson began working as a teacher, first at a Catholic elementary school and later a high school. “There was always a sense of service,” he says, and always in connection with the church.

Because Henson had grown up with the loss of his parents, “I was just so grateful that God took care of me,” giving him a loving family nonetheless, Henson says. He eventually decided, “I’m going to live my life in gratitude for God’s care of me.”

In 1995—nine years after nearly joining the Carmelites the first time, this time at age 30—Henson applied to join the Carmelites again and was ordained in 2002. “Eventually I just said, this is where God wants me,” Henson says. “I just have to do it.”

In time Henson’s community assigned him to work at Crespi Carmelite High School, where he served as principal. Father Thomas Schrader, a Carmelite and president of Bishop Ward High School in Kansas City, worked with Henson at Crespi—Schrader was president there then. “He’s a really high energy person,” Schrader says of Henson, and also prayerful and committed to social justice. “He liked to put the students first, that was really his thing.”

Henson says he loved the “excitement and energy” of the classroom and the sense of creativity it sparked “to really become a mentor, to walk with the kids in their sorrows and their joys.”

Feeding a hunger for church

Before he arrived at Crespi, he worked in Mexico with Schrader at rural missions attached to a Carmelite parish in Torreón in the state of Coahuila, in the northern desert. “People were living in little shacks they kind of put together,” Schrader says. “It eventually became a neighborhood. People would put together what they could and build as they had funds. The real eye-opener here

HENSON TAKES part in a vocation fair as part of his ministry.

was the migration of the people to the church as a place that was a familiar home to them,” despite not really having homes of their own.

Henson said he worked with people who were “so hungry to learn about church, to learn about how God acts in our lives in very concrete ways.” Because there was no church building, on Sundays before Mass the children would sprinkle water on the dirt to keep down the dust. Week after week, “they would make church,” Henson says. He remembers also what a wise older man living in the Andes Mountains in Peru told him. “Be careful, Paul, what you do in these mountains. Recognize that God’s footprint is already there. God’s already there in the people. You don’t come in telling them what to do. You respect where they’re at.”

Later, he applied what he’d learned there to his work at Crespi. Every month, he’d offer “Coffee with Father Paul”—an hour-long chance for parents to discuss their concerns. He started each session with lectio divina, a form of scripture mediation, and prayer and then talk about issues. Parents would tell him they’d are known for praying outside of the box.”

Henson brings to his ministry a “great respect for the discernment process,” Moresco says. “It’s not about getting people in the door, it’s about walking with them, helping them discern their vocation. He’s very good at bringing his own experience to that. Yes, he joined a little bit later,” having earned a college degree and considered marriage and children instead. In working with inquirers, Henson focuses on “how to do this discernment really well, honoring the journey of each person.”

When it comes to vocation, Henson believes the contemplative, prayerful approach of the Carmelites is a good one. “When God calls,” he explains, “there’s no hurry.” =

Eventually I just said this is where God wants me. I just have to do it.”

arrived with so many worries and concerns, but after praying together, “it’s like the problem I came with all of a sudden wasn’t that big of a problem,” they would say to him.

Inspiring vocations at a quiet pace

In 2013 Henson took on a new role, as a vocation director for the Carmelites, traveling around the country and working with inquirers, visiting parishes, leading retreats, and visiting youth conferences and schools.

“He brings the same energy, the same enthusiasm, the same genuine interest in young people and their journeys,” says Brother Daryl Moresco, the Carmelites’ provincial director of vocations and pre-novitiate director. “He loves to be on the road” and “he always makes time for a personal contact,” but most of all, Moresco says, “He’s got kind of an infectious personality. He’s full of joy.”

Henson has now been a Carmelite for 20 years. When not working, he hikes and works out, reads fantasy and adventure novels as well as books on Pope Francis. While he may have been uncertain about his call in the beginning, he has thrived on the order’s charism of prayer, community, and ministry.

“Prayer has to be a daily part of our lives,” Henson says. “What Carmelite tradition has taught the world is that prayer can be anywhere and everywhere in the day. Carmelites

Enter #365 at VocationMatch.com

rElatED articlE: vocationnetwork.org, “Know thyself: A priest finds his way,” VISION 2014.

EARLY ON, Nicholas Collura was attracted to celebrating the sacraments. Here, he reads from a lectionary, dressed for ministry in a Roman collar, as is the practice among Jesuit novices.

What Carmelite tradition has taught the world is that prayer can be anywhere and everywhere “ Racing toward my in the day. Carmelites are known for praying outside of the box.”religious vocation bynicholaScollura

Nicholas Collura served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in San Antonio, Texas, and is now a novice of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in the West Coast Province in Los Angeles, California. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Boston College. He has written for National Catholic Reporter. This Jesuit novice was attracted to the priesthood by a love for the sacraments and service. The freedom to continue writing while being a priest moved him to join a religious order.

SHE BURST INTO TEARS as suddenly as if she’d been hit in the face. I stood there, stunned and staring, uncertain what to say. My job in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps was to direct a social service office in an urban parish in Texas. On that overcast day a week before Christmas, a big-hearted businessman had visited our little church with a stack of $500 gift cards he wanted to donate—anonymously—to the neediest members of our community. I had the privilege of choosing the recipients and making the deliveries.

When I arrived at the home of the young single mother whose tears I recall to this day, she and her four young children were piling into a dilapidated car where they would spend the next few nights while a local handyman repaired the roof of

Enter #254 at VocationMatch.com

her crumbling house. The tears that she shed when I gave her the gift card were ones of incredulous joy.

Stepping into this drama of hardship, charity, and gratitude, I knew that I’d encountered something to do with the meaning of life—and I knew that I wanted more.

In those days, I used to run around the track of the local high school, humming silly little tunes to set my pace. One day I found myself jogging to a simple refrain that came unbidden to mind: “I want . . . to be . . . a saint. I want . . . to be . . . a saint.” After a few laps, the refrain suddenly changed, and I picked up speed and went careening around the field: “I want . . . to be . . . a priest! I want . . . to be . . . a priest!”

Why in the world did those words—and that crazy desire—come

into my head? Why would anyone want to become a priest?

What moved me to this life

As I look back on the experiences that first moved me to enter the Jesuit novitiate (the first stage of religious formation), I see how my reasons for pursuing consecrated life have grown out of one another. One of the things that initially drew me was the allure of celebrating the sacraments. In my first few months of discernment, many years ago now, I would sing the words of the eucharistic consecration whenever I was alone in my car. But when chasubles and incense took a disproportionately large place in my early fantasies, I realized that a desire to be seen as holy is not the same as the desire to be holy. What makes us holy is not primarily ritual but rather love. It is our thirst for justice, our practice of kindness, our way of relating to people.

Working in a disadvantaged neighborhood, I saw the suffering of the poor firsthand. My eyes opened to tremendous needs. Moreover I saw how deeply our parishioners trusted the Jesuits, who had consecrated their entire lives to the cause of love in the midst of a world that otherwise held little but cruel disappointments for the poor.

Their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are not easy ones. While they are not necessary for a life of service, when I saw that so many religious found their vows to be freeing rather than a burden, I began to ask myself questions. Could taking religious vows be a way for me to devote my time—and more important the emotional and spiritual energy I have available for love—to single-hearted service of the people of God?

Marriage vows can liberate people, too. So can other forms of single and community life. No vocation is holier than any other. I hate to hear the priesthood described as a “higher calling.” How can one calling be better when they all come from God? The question is, which form of life will help each of us, with our

When I saw that so many religious found their vows to be “ freeing rather than a burden, I began to ask myself questions.

individual personalities, flourish?

Marriage and children will not hold the answer for everyone. Celibate priesthood and religious life—what Sister Sandra Schneiders, I.H.M. calls “an exclusive commitment to the unmediated Godquest”—offers a different, somewhat intense life of community, solitude, prayer, and service. I have always had a certain spiritual intensity myself, and it was ultimately this match between intensities—mine and that of religious life—that moved me to join the Jesuits.

Respond to two callings

Naturally I have faced struggles in

COLLURA prays the Office, a daily set of psalms, prayers, and readings used by many sisters, brothers, and priests.

the process of vocation discernment. One had to do with the fact that ever since I was a boy I dreamed of becoming a writer. That desire is deep in me, so when I first began contemplating the priesthood, I was afraid I’d be giving up not just marriage and family and a certain degree of autonomy but a major part of who God had created me to be.

So I was delighted to discover that some people are called to live out their priesthood in a religious community, which recognizes the possibility of a dual vocation. The Christian Brothers, for instance, are called to consecrated brotherhood and to educational ministry. The Franciscans, normally, are called

Enter #112 at VocationMatch.com

I was delighted to discover that some people are called to live “ out their priesthood in a religious community, which recognizes the possibility of a dual vocation.

70-20 Juno Street, Forest Hills, NY 11375 • (718) 480-1306 • www.maristbr.com

Enter #298 at VocationMatch.com

to religious life and to work with the poor. The Jesuits, whom I have joined, are well known for “finding God in all things” and often work outside conventional church settings. They have been described as “hyphenates”: for example, there are Jesuit-scholars, Jesuit-doctors, Jesuit-astronomers, Jesuit-activists, even Jesuit-filmmakers. I could, in fact, be a Jesuit-writer. It was liberating to realize that in the Jesuit community I could honor both the religious and creative parts of myself rather than having to choose between them.

I recall a wonderful story about a Chilean Jesuit who, after being

COLLURA worked at a food pantry as a Jesuit volunteer. The experienceof working with the poor moved him to consider a religious vocation.

ordained, went to his superior with a strange request: He deeply believed that God was calling him to become a circus clown, to make children smile in a world where so often their young lives were filled to the brim with sadness.

Rather than laughing this Jesuit out of the order, his superior decided

that if one of his guys was going to be a clown, he should be the best clown he could be—and he sent him to Cirque de Soleil for circus training! For this Jesuit, blessed with generous and understanding superiors, the priesthood did not exhaust but enriched his vocational call.

Waiting for God to surprise me

There have been other challenges in my religious discernment. The vows are not easy. The church is not perfect. While I’m still attracted to celebrating the sacraments, in today’s church I’m finding there are plenty of other ways to be a good shepherd that do not require ordination. So I wonder at times if perhaps I should become a brother instead.

I have come to realize that questions and concerns are not setbacks but gifts to consider. I’ve learned that God’s grace does not depend on whether we are celebrating the sacraments—or in fact whether we are doing any one particular thing— but on the extent to which we have surrendered our lives to God in love and gratitude. The fact that there are innumerable ways to do so means that God overflows with creativity, and we can, too. This is cause for joy.

My vocational confusion has taught me a great deal about trust. Vocation is a mystery that grasps us; it is not something we can ultimately grasp. Many priests report that they entered the novitiate or seminary for their own reasons and wound up staying for completely different ones—reasons known in advance to God alone.

As I continue my novitiate, I reflect on the many dimensions of my desire for religious life: a love of people, a longing to serve them, an attraction to sacramental ministry, a wish to consecrate my time and love to the drama of the human soul before God. Yet I have no desire to live out my expectations for my future. Rather, I wish to discover how God will surprise me.

In the end, I’ve found that the surest sign of a divine call has nothing to do with total certainty or absolute comprehension. For me it has more to do with whether thinking about a particular form of love—life as a religious order priest—quickens my pace as I run around a racetrack, filling me with excitement and joy. =

Embrace God's call with joy

Consider a Monastic Vocation

Mary Mother of the Church Benedictine Abbey Richmond, VA

A BROTHERHOOD OF MONKS DEDICATED TO PRAYER AND WORK IN COMMUNITY

804-708-9653

richmondmonks.org

Enter #507 at VocationMatch.com

Enter #177 at VocationMatch.com