January 24, 2019

Year for Vocations: Seminarian Valentine Nworah

REGIONAL

Seminarian Valentine Nworah

During this Year for Vocations in the Springfield Diocese, Catholic Communications has invited seminarians and priests, both active and retired, to participate in a “mini-survey” by submitting answers to three questions. Their answers will be posted in The Catholic Mirror, on iobserve.org and the Catholic Communications Facebook page, and in the Parish Packet for use in parish bulletins.

Here are the responses from Valentine Nworah, a third-year theology student at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass.

What gives you the most joy as a seminarian?

 As a seminarian, my greatest joy is found and experienced in the opportunity that God has given me to be able to answer his call: to become a priest, an epitome of love in the example of his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, every day I give thanks to God for calling me into this life. It also gives me a great joy to know that I am not alone on this journey. Together with the other men in the seminary, we strive daily to conform our lives in the line of this quote from St. Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Being a seminarian presents me with the greatest occasion of my life to respond to God’s infinite and unquantifiable love for me through the small things of this life. 

What do you find most inspiring about the Catholic faith?

Having been a Catholic for three decades plus now, there is certainly more than one inspiring thing about my faith. But most of it all is the fact that the Catholic faith made it possible for me to fall in love with Jesus, and to make him my everything. Each time I kneel before the Most Blessed Sacrament, Christ himself ever present in our midst, I am lost in awe of his abundant love for me. Nothing is more gracious than to discover in a renewed way who Jesus is and what he did for me and the whole world, laying down his life that I may live. 

What gives you hope for the future of vocations in the Catholic Church?

John 15:16. The Word of God says, “For you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” This verse gives me hope for I know that the Lord has not stopped nor will he ever stop choosing men and women and drawing them to himself for mission in the church. He promised never to leave us orphans. He will continue to come to us through those he chooses to be his servants.