Yesterday I met Keith Wagner, a young man from Chicago, who came to Bailieborough, Ireland in October to discern a vocation to the priesthood.

Direction for Our Times has created two community houses, one for men thinking about becoming priests, the other for women considering the religious life. Keith is one of the four men and three women – five of whom are American – who are spending a year of discernment with Anne’s apostolate.

Keith, now 22 years old, was playing in a rock band and using drugs regularly only three years ago when his life suddenly shifted. He had recently become engaged but was feeling the need for a change.

One day he arrived at a friend’s home, walked into a room and took a look at the drug use and said to himself, “I can’t do this anymore,” and walked out.

It wasn’t much later when he glanced at the back of a book lying on a table in his parents’ home where he was still living. It was Conversations with Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, volume 2 of Anne’s writings.

On the back of the book he read the words, “I was a humble man, who walked your paths of difficulty, want, and hardship.” Something in those words spoke to him and he began thinking more seriously about his Catholic faith.

Keith eventually attended a Eucharistic Day of Renewal sponsored by Direction for Our Times in Kentucky where he first felt the call to the priesthood. He decided to spend a discernment year in Ireland, but he had to tell his fiancée the news.

“You can’t just walk away!” she said to him. Are you “insane”? Then her parents came into the room – no one was happy about Keith’s decision.

Keith had decided, as he put it, to “take a chance for God.” But doubts lingered all the way up to boarding the plane for Ireland.

“This is going so much better than I could have imagined,” he told me with a big smile. He has been here just over a month now living in a small house with the three other young men.

He told me, “I don’t miss my old life, but I do miss my home and family.” The weather here is “nothing” compared to winters in Chicago (he had heard me complaining about the cold, rain, and overcast.)

Keith spends most of his time working with Re-Charge, the youth division of Direction of Our Times, directed by Nora McCarthy, also from Chicago. Re-Charge is presently offering day-long retreats to a number of high schools in the Diocese of Kilmore.

Nora has a great story to tell, as well. To be continued….