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by Jim Holman.
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20-Year Path
by James McCoy
Christ called Peter and Andrew, fishermen both, when they were riding in their boat. He called Matthew, a tax collector, when he was sitting in the custom house. And he called Andrew Sullivan, the kid from El Cajon, when he was standing for a whole hour in Holy Trinity's parish parking lot.
"It is true that my vocation was nurtured with holy hours before the Blessed Sacrament," Sullivan said. "If the church was locked (and this really was not too often) I would stand outside the church door and visit with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament," wrote Sullivan, who began making eucharistic visits when he was 16.
I interviewed Sullivan via email last month. A seminarian in Rome, he was in Oxford, England working 18-hour days for a conference called "Path to Rome," which was to feature converts such as Father Graham Leonard, the former Anglican bishop of London.
In an age when some church leaders whine that "Christ stands at the door and knocks, but young men won't open up to vocations to the priesthood," I asked Sullivan, from a family with 12 children, what it was like to be knocking on heaven's door while standing outside the locked door of the church. Did he feel his heart was open but the Church was locked?
"No," he wrote back. "I never felt turned away or blocked in following my vocation. As a matter of fact, I joined a vibrant order in the Church and always felt welcomed with open arms."
The order is Miles Jesu ("Soldier of Jesus" in Latin), which grew out of the Cursillo movement, and Sullivan is studying his third year of theology in its seminary program in Rome. It's not just an order: Miles Jesu describes itself as "an international family of 1,000 Catholic lay apostles bringing Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church to millions of people around the world"). As well as priests, Miles Jesu has consecrated lay members, and that's what Sullivan went off to become, two weeks after he graduated from El Cajon High School back in 1979. Sullivan, now 37, had heard Christ call for unconditional surrender. He surrendered.
Sullivan's yes took him from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to Ireland, Indiana; from Mexico to the the Ukraine (the Miles Jesu priests are bi-ritual, and Sullivan's seminary has Divine Liturgy [Mass] once a week according to the Ukrainian rite). It wasn't until 1995 that the founder of Miles Jesu, Father Alphonsus Maria Duran, asked Sullivan if he would pursue the priesthood. Sullivan wrote in one of his letters to supporters that he was not willing to act on his decades-old priestly vocation until God expresssed his will through Sullivan's Miles Jesu superiors. (Sullivan asked that anyone interested in receiving his letters, in providing spiritual or financial support, or in figuring out his vocation should write him at the Miles Jesu Seminary, C.P. 30096, Roma Succ. 47, 00193, Roma, Italia.)
"I had no interest in even attempting to apply to any seminaries or religious orders which were not serious in their commitment to the Holy Father and to the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church," Sullivan wrote me. "I knew that I would not be welcome in such places.
"In my opinion, the first thing the Church (not only of San Diego) could do to encourage vocations is to obey the pope, to boldly proclaim the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church. When these things are done, men and women have true conversions of heart and fall in love with God. The result of this is vocations."