After listening to the request for prayers and the homilies on Vocation Sunday, I started thinking how blessed I am for the vocations God has given me; especially since through the years I have had vocations both to the religious life and the married state.

     It all began back in 1946, when my family moved into St. Scholastica Parish in Detroit which was, at that time, in the care of our Sylvestrine-Benedictine Order.  Even though I was around four years old, I can still remember when I first met Fr. Boniface Lucci, O.S.B., the pastor at that time.  The distinguished man with graying hair and heavy Italian accent had an effect on me which may have been the seed of my religious vocation.  During most of my years at St. Scholastica Grade School and Benedictine High School my thoughts were of becoming a monk and a priest; of course, the close contact with and the example of the monks who taught at the high school just increased this desire.

     Then it happened, three days after graduating from Benedictine High School in 1961, I entered the novitiate of the Sylvestrine-Benedictine Order here at St. Benedict Monastery.  But it seemed God still had work to do with me away from religious life so after two and a half years at the monastery I left to pursue a life in the world.  Going to work for a major retail store I met my wife while at the same time obtaining a degree in Accounting.  When my family came along and began to grow I left the retailing industry for a position as a photographer for one of the “big three” automobile companies, where I retired from as a Testing Supervisor after 33 years of work.  But deep down the Holy Spirit kept the vocation to the religious life alive in my heart.