Catholic News

The Church asks all Christians to conform to the example of Christ, but deacons are called “to do so with great intentionality,” he explained, while encouraging the candidates with a passage from the Gospel reading (John 15:9-17), in which Jesus said that the disciples did not choose Him, but that He chose them and “appointed them to go and bear fruit that will last.”

In the process of this spiritual growth at seminary, however, the consolation of God’s love has been constant. “The best part about seminary is receiving the love of God the Father through all the difficult places in the journey. He has poured it out through the Sacraments. Also, His grace has been through the priests who have formed me and my wonderful brother seminarian brothers.”

Despite his Protestant convictions, two of his closest friends at the school were Catholic. “One kept telling me about this guy, Father Nathan Dail, and the wise things he’d say. She also told me about this thing called ‘Adoration.’ She would just go and sit with the Lord in adoration in peace and quiet, and she would cry with the Lord. I never heard of anything like that in my life.”

John was deeply concerned for the spiritual care of everyone in his archdiocese — clergy and laity, rich and poor alike. He treated his clergy with fatherly care, ensuring they had adequate income and housing so they would not be tempted by bribes. He also arranged to sit in a chair outside the cathedral every Wednesday and Friday, assisted by only a few staff members, so that anyone could approach him with spiritual or physical needs.