Bishop Salvatore Cordileone

By Bishop Salvatore Cordileone

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question captures the imagination of every school child, and I was no exception. It just took me a little while to figure out the right answer.

I grew up in what was probably a typical Italian Catholic family back in the 1960’s. Family, indeed, was the focal point of life, and I was blessed to be close to both sets of my grandparents and all of my cousins and aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.

Our religious practice, too, was quite typical for that time: my mother made sure that my brother and two sisters and I all attended catechism class and made it to church on Sunday, and often took us all to Confession on Saturday afternoon.

We also had some special devotional practices, most especially for St. Joseph’s Day, when special foods were prepared and we portrayed a reenactment of the Holy Family seeking lodging, quite similar to the Mexican posada.

While I always took my faith seriously (even during my teenage years I would go to church on my own), the thought of being a priest didn’t cross my mind until a little later in life. All through my school years, I had other plans.

My father and his brothers were all fisherman, as was my grandfather who had immigrated from Sicily. My father had also served in the Navy during the Second World War. Some of my earliest childhood impressions of a bigger world beyond home came from the times I would ride with my father down to his fishing boat when he would prepare it for the summer albacore season.

Pope Benedict XVI’s designated Year for Priests, which began in June 2009, concludes in June 2010. As part of the observance, The Catholic Voice is inviting some priests in the diocese to write their vocation story. These reflections will appear in upcoming issues. Oakland Bishop Salvatore Cordileone begins the series.

Of course, San Diego being the Navy town that it is, the impression of the sea and ships and the adventure of a life of military service traveling around the world captured my imagination. I was sure what I wanted in life: a career in the Navy.

While I applied myself to my studies and did well in school, I realized during my last year of high school that my original dream was not going to materialize.
 
Also around this time, and into my freshman year of college, I started pondering the big questions of life, not untypical for a young person of that age. What is life all about, anyway? For what purpose did God put me on this earth? What, in the end, is really important in life? The one constant in my life was the desire to dedicate my life to serving a cause greater than myself.

While always having had something of a spiritual orientation, I began to take this side of me more seriously. Right at this time, a young priest had been assigned to my home parish that I felt I could relate to. His homilies, in particular, always seemed to connect with whatever question I was grappling with that week. It was at this time that I began to think that perhaps God might be calling me to devote my life to the one thing that really is of ultimate importance: helping others respond to Christ’s call to salvation.

I finally got up the nerve to talk to Father Jim about the idea of becoming a priest. True to character, he was quite helpful: encouraging but not pushy, and giving me guidance in helping me to discern on my own.

He invited me to attend a weekend vocation retreat at the local diocesan college seminary, which I accepted and found to be most helpful. Sharing with other young men deciding about entering the seminary and getting to know the seminarians themselves was a great support.

Above all, I was attracted to the life that they had, their studies, their community life, and the opportunities for spiritual growth. It got to the point where I could not get the thought out of my head; God would not let me alone until I gave the seminary a try.

I say “a try,” because I learned on that vocation retreat that the decision to enter the seminary was not the same as the decision to become a priest, but rather it meant deciding to discern that call seriously. I felt strongly enough inclined that I could go that far, and I left it to God to show me the rest of the way if He was really calling me to this extraordinary life.

Through much prayer and spiritual direction, I discovered that God would still not leave me in peace until I gave in all the way. I enjoyed my years in the seminary very much, and this helped to confirm for me that this was, indeed, the life God was calling me to.

Every “yes,” of course, involves millions of other little (and sometimes big) “yeses.” God has continued to challenge me with my “yes,” and these have always been great moments of growth in my life. I’ve discovered that it is only through sacrifice that one can find happiness in the vocation of priesthood, and that when we keep giving God our “yes,” He will accomplish far more through us than we ever could have imagined.

I’ve also learned that we become the person God created us to be when we start by asking the right question. Not, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, but, “How is God calling me to serve Him with my life?” Finding the right answer and pursuing it is the greatest adventure there is in life.


From a recent survey that profiled men and women religious in the United States.

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