nothing is more important than this day

in the top picture, the monastery taken thru a window block

notice the little cross that appears,

amidst all the abstraction

Today Domenick asked us to visit St. Vincent's Seminary with him. What more need I say?

I have so much more to say......

Every time I've told someone he's planning to go there in the fall, there's this hushed question "how do you feel about that?"

I have thought about it a lot, and have felt a few things as well. I wrote about it a little here last month, around his birthday and concert for his 'discernment trip'.

His name means 'of the Lord'. He is God's, as we all are...but he was intentionally named: of or belonging to God. We didn't know what that meant then, and maybe it means nothing more now. He is still just Dom, the same kid he's always been. But I've been thinking back on that kid's little life.

He was conceived just days before my husband's mother died at the young age of 49. She suffered an aneurysm on the way to the 80th birthday celebration of her mother. She was in the back seat of the car, her husband was driving, their youngest, who was 12, was riding in the passenger seat next to her dad, so mom could take a nap.

She left four kids who still lived at home, and two who were already married. The oldest had just had her first baby and my husband and I had just celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

When we announced we were expecting one afternoon as we were at the grave site everyone was touched, it was as if God and her were telling us 'life must go on..."

I don't remember anything else extraordinary about Dom until Lent one year, he was about 5 or 6. One afternoon his sister and brother called us out to the backyard for a show. Nothing unusual in our house!?!? But as we stood there and watched we were amazed that they were re-enacting the story of Jesus' crucifixion. Dom was Jesus, carrying the cross, and dieing on the cross. His little brother was the guard forcing him along, and nailing him to the cross. His sister was all the weeping women along the way and his mother at the foot of the cross.

The next year he went to first grade. Parochial school. And one day for religion class he was asked to act out the part of the priest for a mock baptism. He had a little costume he wore and they had a little baby doll that was 'baptized' in front of both first grade classes with parents in their chapel.

After that at bed time when we'd tell 'the today story' he'd share that when he grew up he wanted to be a priest....OR a bus driver!

And so goes Dom's life...our quiet, musical, kid. He played piano and organ a little at mass when he was small and as he grew. In high school our parish music minister invited him to substitute for her when she was not able to do a mass. Now he is the parish music minister.

And he has written his own mass!?

He goes away this past fall for a retreat, just by himself at a little hermitage. He comes home and I remember hearing him answer a friend who called him on his cell phone...'no, I'm going to try to not hang out so much anymore......"

And the next thing he tells us is he's going to go back to school...at seminary!?!?

And that he's going on a pilgrimage to discern more clearly God's vocation for him in his life.

He makes it very clear that his vocation includes a woman and children....

but he realizes that may not be what God has intended. So he is seeking.......discerning.....

I would love for him to be a husband and a dad. He is so good with little ones, and one of the most sensitive and gentle men I have ever met. He'd be a wonderful husband and father. I think being a diocesan parish priest could be a little lonely. I think living with an order in community more closely resembles what God created us for...community...But we will see.

I know we need parish priests. Domenick has seen that need as well, just in our own small community. He has seen the good and the bad come and go far too quickly. I think Dom is good,

wonderful, perfect...I am his mom....I think he would be, could be a wonderful priest, the kind we all want to have and want never to leave....

And if he could do that, be that, what more could a mom want?

He's trying to figure out his life just like our other kid's are trying to figure out theirs. With the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit and much prayer...by all of us.

He is the Lord's. But right now he is just my Dom.