On August 5, I will be packing up a duffel bag (or two) and driving to South Bend, Indiana, where I will step into the undergraduate seminary for the Congregation of Holy Cross. However, there was no angel that magically appeared in my bedroom to deliver the news. No burning bush, no booming voice from the clouds. It was through a process that so many young people in our day and age tend to forego: discernment. The purpose of this piece isn’t to tell you how to live your life or make decisions, but rather to extend an invitation. An invitation to take a step back, slow down at certain points and truly discern how you are called to live as a son of Christ. Not just the big decisions, but the mundane, everyday choices that quietly shape who we become.

Discernment, for a SLUH student in 2026, is a refusal to drift. It is an active, courageous choice to live deliberately rather than reactively. Whether you are weighing a call to religious life, deciding which college roommate you are rooming with, or simply deciding how to spend your Friday night with friends, the invitation is the same. Don’t blindly choose. Lean on those who have walked the road before you. Lean on prayer, on honest conversation, on the interior compass that St. Ignatius spent his life teaching us to trust. And for so many of you reading this article, I believe it is a choice to trust. 

Discernment and decision making are commonly confused. To me, decision making is the end of the road, the finish line. Discernment is the winding journey through hills and valleys to get there. Think about the process that I and my fellow seniors have gone through in choosing where to spend the next four years of our lives. Atmosphere, academic programs, campus culture, distance from home, sports and a plethora of other variables were weighed in this process. After carefully working through all of those considerations, we arrived at a decision. That journey of careful, prayerful, honest weighing of options is discernment. 

In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola described discernment not merely as a tool for major life choices, but as a daily posture of the soul to best be able to “direct all my intentions, actions and operations … purely to the praise and service of the Divine Majesty” (Spiritual Exercise, 46). Ignatius urged his followers to pay attention to interior movements and ask: what brings genuine consolation and what brings desolation? These serve as a compass for navigating both the monumental and the mundane. 

I would like to offer you something that may shock you. I truly believe that every young Catholic man, especially one with the great privilege of a Jesuit education at St. Louis U. High, ought to genuinely ponder the priesthood at some point in his life. Even if the thought has never once crossed your mind, it deserves a moment of honest consideration. I have talked about this with Fr. Eric Ramirez, S.J, and he has reinforced this conviction time and time again. 

The sacrifices of priestly life are real and worth naming. No biological family of your own, a vow of obedience to a bishop or superior, chastity, lack of money, and yes, oftentimes, a true sense of loneliness. These are not small things. But an exercise in my Prayer and Spirituality class just the other day reframed the entire question for how I can explain discernment. 

Imagine someone in your life that you admire without any reservation or fear. A parent, a coach, a teacher, a mentor. If that person called you to follow them into battle for anything, would you hesitate? Would you drop everything and boldly say yes? Now imagine that same call coming from Jesus. Perched atop a hill, wearing nothing but ragged sandals and a worn tunic, looking directly into your eyes. 

This is the Ignatian Contemplation of the Call of the King from the Spiritual Exercises, and when I sat with it, the question that followed was unavoidable: If so many of us would follow an earthly leader without a second thought, why would I hesitate to follow a heavenly king?

Formation to the priesthood is not dropping everything overnight. It is a long, careful, prayerful journey — one taken with the guidance of a spiritual director, a community, and years of formation. Over my four years at SLUH, I have been molded the most by members of religious life. Whether it was the confessional as I poured my heart out during Kairos or a late-night conversation after a meeting when I didn’t know where else to turn, people like Fr. Matthew Stewart, S.J or Mr. Justin Kelley, S.J, have consistently shown up for me. However, I know for a fact that they have also shown up for the rest of their flock. For you. They bear their own scars, as all of us do, but they carry them in service of something greater than themselves. For the Greater Glory of God. 

But what is the practical step of discerning beyond prayer? I guarantee you that if you reach out to any priest that you know or trust, they will put you in contact with a vocations director who will orient you towards a “Come and See” visit at a seminary or retreat where you will be surrounded by young men who have the same drive as you. Exuberant young men like senior Joe Murphy, who is filling out an application for Kenrick Glennon Seminary. 

This isn’t to say that the only good call from God is a call to the priesthood or religious life. Some of the most impactful people in my life are mothers and fathers who have so beautifully followed a call to start a family or live out their job. Just think of all of the teachers at SLUH who care for a family of their own and also nurture an environment of grace in their classrooms. If some of these teachers had forced themselves into religious life, they would be doing a disservice to the rest of society and the communities which they impact. Choosing between religious life and another vocation isn’t choosing between a good and a bad. They are two goods which we must meticulously ponder for what comes next in our life. 

However, discernment extends far beyond the compounds of a vocation in life. It lives in the ordinary, the mundane, the daily that all build up to our vocation. For example, so many of us boldly proclaim our faith outwardly. We put bible verses and crosses in our Instagram bios. We point to the sky after a big play on the field, all good things. But would we be able to sacrifice something real for the man who gave his life for us? It’s a question worth sitting with, not out of guilt, but out of genuine curiosity about what we believe. In terms of how we engage with politics, with friendships, with the way we treat the person who serves us at a restaurant, discernment applies there too. It asks us to pause before reacting. To weigh not just what we want at the moment, but what kind of person we are trying to become. If a politician says something that irks you, how will you respond to that? 

These are not small questions, but they are certainly the exact type of questions that Ignatius wanted his followers to ask every single day. 

For the seniors who will walk out the doors of 4970 Oakland one last time this afternoon, how will your faith life continue to blossom in college and not just show our faith in a time when 70 to 80 percent of Catholic college students stop practicing their faith. Will you have the courage to go against the stream of the rest of college and show your faith by going to socials, masses and adoration at the Newman Center or parish near your college? 

For the members of the Class of 2026, think of your brightest moments from this year. Chances are, many of those snapshots come from times when you gave generously, when you pushed past comfort and acted with intention. That spirit of Acta Non Verba, deeds not words, is not easy. But it is a spirit that, if we discern, produces something real, something worth having. 

I won’t pretend to have it all figured out. I am not even 18 years old, packing my bags and driving toward a place and lifestyle that I don’t even know if I’m ready for. But I have discerned. And I can tell you from experience that the journey which is  honest, uncomfortable, and beautiful, is worth every step.