i am i'm a country boy through and through a farm boy a redneck none of those are derogatory terms for me those are those are badges of honor i was i was born in northeast arkansas in the delta on a family farm so german catholic farming family it was very small tiny little farm we had a lot of responsibilities it was just work day in and day out if there's sunlight you're working mom was a very shy lady very introverted she's always worked in the office kind of behind the scenes jobs honestly i don't have a lot of memories back that far of dad with us but may 5th 1994 changed changed my life my older sister my younger sister and i were with my father we stayed the night at his parents house the next town over about 25 minutes away every time we'd go and stay the night with them my mom would always prepare supper for us some sort of you know dish it didn't matter we would always eat supper and and then we would go out and always wash and wash dad's truck like he always kept it pristine outside was always clean inside too armor all on the dashboard and everything the next morning we're making this 25 minute drive back to the house and we're a mile and a half from our house there's a small little turn curve in the road and we have to exit that curve and go down this other side road to get to our house the casserole dish was on the dashboard of the truck when we hit that curve that it started sliding across the dash and dad didn't want it to go and bang out the the passenger side window he leaned over to grab it whenever he did you know yanked the steering wheel you know inadvertently and and whenever he did went off the road and we caught a culvert and just basically just started cartwheeling it was it happened so quick like it was it was a fast moment i remember like you know like the flashes and the noise but i don't remember any pain or anything it was just a really bizarre moment it was just like any any sort of high stress moment like that you don't feel anything you're you're uber and overly aware of everything except for like physical pain just because the adrenaline dump and then you know kind of like i come to and it's like a movie like i look back the truck is upside down steam is coming off of it my little sister who was sitting on my dad's lap is crying she's laying in the ditch right there i can't find my older sister my dad is there he's you know this is all within probably 75 yards or 100 yards we're just scattered out so i see dad there and he was just like breathing or you know moaning or groaning or whatever and i remember like i think sitting on his chest or his stomach and him groaning more about it and like you know it'd be like saying you know pay attention pay attention you know get up like what's going on i realized like dad he wasn't doing good and then like my guardian angel or the lord or whatever it was somebody just took me back to the moment hey you know flagged somebody down so so hobble up to the side of the road i just had a broken ankle and some scratches and stuff and that was it you know for an eight-year-old it was seemed like a big deal but if anyone's driving along of course they're gonna stop but i didn't know that i just knew i needed to get some help next thing i know ambulances and cop cars and fire trucks start coming and um my uh my uh so whoever it is calls gosh they call my mom and uh they say you know there's a wreck and she knows immediately it's not good so she calls my my grandpa who just lives around the corner all on the same farm and says you know we gotta go and she she turns the corner and her little car and grandpa's already out on the road and like waiting on her she jumps in and and then she she comes and she crosses the tracks and the cop doesn't let her come up so anyhow we're in putting ambulances and take to the hospital they put a cast on me and then i go by ambulance to memphis to the children's hospital and my little sister they airlift her because she was super bad a little three-year-old girl she she got crushed between my dad and the steering wheel courtney my older sister she died immediately and uh that's uh life is crazy man when you don't even realize like how delicate it is and this stuff just happened so fast they were like yeah your your dad and sister died and they they told me that and i said i didn't know i didn't know what that means like what does it mean to an eight-year-old kid just a few weeks before they they found out that they were pregnant they were expecting a kid mom went in for a checkup just a few weeks after after the accident you know just she's been through a lot of stress and of course the doctor wants to make sure that she's okay and the kid's okay the doctor says i've got some news there's another one in there you're gonna have twins just her life just that roller coaster i don't know how she did it but she did so i found out my my dad is dead my older sister 11 year old she's she's gone my little sister who's three she's in a body cast my mom is alone to raise us and she's pregnant and i'm an eight-year-old boy who has just become the man of the house you know something that that got me through all these these these years of my childhood it was was my faith i grew up catholic i've always been catholic our whole family is catholic it's a non-negotiable there are just some things in life that you have to do because love requires it in the moment i wouldn't have used those terms as a 35 year old priest looking back that's what it was love required that i surrendered my childhood to take care of my child's siblings right surrender my childhood to be the man of the house because my mother lost her husband that's something that as an eight-year-old kid i didn't understand but that the faith taught me [Music] [Music] why did all this stuff happen i i don't know and i surely didn't know as an eight-year-old kid but i do know without a doubt that it it prepared me for battles then let's prepare for battles now and for battles to come damn i wasn't expecting that [Music] all through school my dreams were to be a plumber and a carpenter a mechanic and an electrician and just open up my own handyman business drive a big truck with a big trailer and work all day but my mom and my grandma i said you can't do that they wanted me to go to school so so i kind of met them in the middle and didn't go to a big university i went to a small two-year college went for one year and absolutely hated it the classes were good but my heart was not there and so about halfway through the year i started thinking about going to the military which was nothing i ever thought about before in the moment it was mysterious for me joining the military because i didn't want to leave home i loved home it wasn't to see the world because honestly i don't like traveling it wasn't for an education because i hated school but something inside me was just pulling so joining the military in 2005 was a it was a war time so most of us enlisted knowing what job we would do i began an indoctrination course into this little special ops kind of job and very hardcore outdoor survival kind of things and i was so excited about it it was a two week course before you began the year and a half programming to really weed out the weak guys right to thin out the guys who couldn't stick with it and i thought i was doing all right now i get to the second to last day of this and i get cut and i was absolutely heartbroken because here i was i thought i was going to go in and do this super awesome amazing job survival evasion resistance and escape be in the woods all day and and train people how to survive so finally about four weeks i get the notification from the commander saying that i got a job i was excited what's it going to be and i got logistics now that's basically a mailman in the military now mailmen are great but that was not my plan in the military right i didn't go in to to deliver people or things right to to be in charge of shipments to be in charge of logistics my first assignment was to germany and here i was this this young guy right out of training and i end up in germany doing a quality control job it was an amazing job i got a government vehicle and got to make my own hours and i was driving all over the european countryside day in and day out that was something that the rules and discipline and structure of the military how it gave me freedom and gave me new life it allowed me to do things that i would not have been able to do if i didn't have that structure and discipline in my life the summer of 2007 i was deployed to central iraq now i was there at a very tense and very dangerous time i'm not near the hero that so many other of my brothers and sisters were the ones who literally were out every day in convoys going to these different buildings going into houses saving people and getting rid of threats to to humanity luckily enough i was i was on the base all the time so i didn't have to go kicking in doors didn't have to carry around a gun to directly defend myself or other people that being said it was the largest base in iraq which made us a very big target and every day rockets and mortars came in to where we were at i was very much a sitting duck along with everyone else on the base with me that stayed on the base and anything coming into the airspace that was not identified immediately set off alarms and you had about three seconds to decide what you were going to do to stay alive for the most part that just means dropping to the ground and saying prayer and i got pretty good at that let me tell you in central iraq in the summertime that night shift is very nice we were just right next to the runway and you would hear the the fighters crank up and then they would turn on their jets and their afterburners and they would take off you couldn't see them at all but you could hear them you could feel the rumble in your chest and as the sound got close to you because we were at the end of the runway you would look up and just see this small blue cone go off and then eight seconds behind it another one because they always flew in pairs and that was a really neat thing about the fighters the ones who go into danger never went alone right not just the fighters and the planes but also the guys on on foot right in the military that was something that that i saw in particular in this this this war situation never go into battle alone right whenever i'm with people in their daily battles their struggles something that they're wrestling with it's a sin they've got advice something that they're ashamed of what do they try to do battle alone you never go into battle alone right you always have a wing man you know in in scriptures we hear that you know where two or more gathered in the name of the lord he is there right that means life right where two more gathered the lord is there the same is true in battle whenever you're gathered there is an aspect of life and and assurance of life that's that's present my time in the military was really the first time in my life when i was out on my own i just loved doing what i was doing and it was really neat to see that in correlation with that joy two things happened i thrived spiritually and grew closer to the lord but i also succeeded i was having such a good time i excelled i got multiple awards whenever i was deployed i got a number of wards and a couple of medals shortly after coming back from deployment i got below the zone which was a an early promotion given to usually just one or two people out of the whole unit it was very competitive and it was very very limited the people that were even considered for it much less that got it and and i was fortunate enough to get it it was the fruits of so much hard work but through that fun god was calling me closer to himself the joy that i had the success that i had the military even though i had that there was something about this little inkling of priesthood that was just starting to bubble up that that made me want to check it out so i went into the military to to pursue my dreams to do this amazing survival job but before long i realized that's not what god had planned for me and i surrendered to that it hurt but through that surrender this joy just started coming out of nowhere not just internally in my soul and my spirit but also i could see all these these successes these awards these medals this early promotion a rare thing getting all those things everything was going right whenever it wasn't my plan but there was an aspect of surrender to god's plan that opened my eyes to a much greater life and i hear the voice of the lord inside saying hey you've surrendered you've made it to this calm spot i've got another mission for you to go on [Music] so when i was in the military naturally it's my first time on my own right so first time to live by myself make my own decisions wash my own clothes make my own bed cook my own food be self-sustaining essentially right to take care of myself and luckily a part of that was continuing to live my faith when i got to my first base i got a government vehicle so i would every day try to finish up the stuff on base right before mass then i would go to mass and afterwards i would go grab something to eat usually with multiple families that go to daily mass and they started showing me another another facet of the catholic faith right this beautiful jewel that we've got there's so many cuts on it so many angles and they were slowly letting me see more and more angles of this great jewel that's been been handed on a couple of the priests would be there the military chaplains and i would just see them you know interacting with the families and i would think oh that looks kind of cool but it never dawned on me as an actual calling to the priesthood but these random random ideas these little instances this this fuller image of the priesthood being a father at all hours of the day right not just at mass not just during reconciliation not just during pastoral visits but also that these priests are human beings and whenever i saw that they've got lives to live and that they're enjoying their lives that that broke down bears for me little by little one of them in particular started spending a lot more time in logistics we started our day early and finished pretty early father he would start a little bit later and go later into the evening and i usually had anywhere from one to two hours to kill until he you know finished everything up at the church there i pretty much always spent that time in the chapel i'd go to the adoration chapel and just sit sitting there i wish i could say i was piously praying but four out of five days a week i was asleep the whole time i was in there so it was this daily nap time with the lord i would just go and and conk out and get some z's with jesus you know and the lord was doing something there right by me going and wasting time by resting in the lord he started just slowly like making it more and more clear if these things although they're small or manifesting themselves in this great excitement joy that i'm having there must be something to it little by little i i began to say it was priesthood one of the priests and on the base there put me in contact with the vocation director for the diocese of little rock so i visit the vocation director in little rock and then i go to visit the seminary for a day and that trip solidified everything i was at the height of my military career even within a few short years i still had another year of my enlistment to fulfill but i knew without a doubt that god was calling me i said all right lord kind of the last test i'm good at what i do we're in a time of war they need military troops i still got time left in my enlistment i want to go now if you want me to go now you got to make it happen and he made it happen i submitted an application for for uh early separation and it got approved which was not common at that time and in june of 2008 i got out of the military and then went into seminary the second week of august in seminary formation there are these four areas that we focus on your your human your intellectual your spiritual and your pastoral and it's it's this constant battle of keeping their balance naturally naturally you're going to put more emphasis on one area but it's it's a matter of constantly seeking equilibrium a big one that really shocked me was the intellectual formation i wasn't expecting to go into seminary loving to study as much as i did for my first four years of seminary when i was down in louisiana i majored in philosophy and and ended up graduating with honors which was unheard of because in grade school i didn't quite have that discipline i fell in love with learning more and this just exploded in minor seminary and it continued through my theological studies i was devouring it another area that i really enjoyed growing individually as a human but also helping my brothers grow as humans too i saw so many different levels of my own humanity that that i didn't know existed that i was never aware of but by interacting with other people in their strengths and in their weaknesses helped me to better identify my strengths and weaknesses at the human level you know spiritual formation was a daily thing our bishop instituted what he called the non-negotiables if we're going to be a seminarian it's got to be 40 hours of study a week it's got to be a daily holy hour and healthy human boundaries right so if i'm not studying 40 hours i'm not carrying up my end of the deal of formation if i'm not making my daily holy hour i'm not doing what i can to grow closer to christ holding up my end of the deal of formation and if i don't have healthy boundaries with other people and even with myself i'm not doing what i can to hold up my end of formation you know spiritually the the daily holy hour was one of the greatest things that i've done [Music] that last pillar of formation pastoral ministry it's where as a seminarian i was constantly reminded why i study every day why i'm continually working on my human weaknesses why i'm continually praying it's so i can go out and preach the gospel share the good news having that pastoral pillar that always keeps us grounded that was something that was always a sort of a spot that kept me in check throughout minor seminary one of the ministries i did was hospice there was one gentleman i'd go visit it was at the end of the year that spring i didn't get over for the last couple of months the very last day of school i pack all my stuff up in my truck and i'm ready to make the eight hour drive back home to arkansas and i leave the seminary and i just it's it was an almost audible voice of the lord saying go visit this gentleman and in my mind i was thinking i've got an eight-hour drive i can't go i've got an eight-hour drive i need to get back home i'm just tired it's the end of the year i'm ready to go i'll see him in the fall i get gas and i'm about to go on the road and it was a bizarre moment because in my mind i was thinking turn left but i went right out of the gas station and the house was a block and a half behind the gas station to the right and and i surrender i throw my hands all right god i'll go visit this guy and i get a block and a half down and i'm turning down their drive and i see the lady the man's wife out in the front yard and as soon as i pull in she looks up and smiles ear to ear and runs up to the truck to see me i didn't even get out of the truck she said stephen it's good to see you i said yeah you know i'm sorry i haven't been around she said oh that's fine don't worry about it i tried going to seminary to find you but you were in classes i just wanted to let you know that that that tim died and um just thank you for all that you did at the end and it was just a bizarre moment of the lord really showing me that the reason i do this is for his people not for my own conveniences of course she missed her husband she was sad that it was gone but she was excited to to thank me for the love that i gave him i'll be in a very broken way and i think that's a key thing for pastoral ministry remember we're broken but god always calls us to do to do things that seem like they're they're totally out of the blue um and we just got to trust that process it's a life-changing process when we when we believe in it now there's no explosive moment in my vocation it was just a very gradual process and and to use two two key players in the scriptures peter and paul when we think of vocations very often we think of these these pauline conversions right paul on his road to damascus and bam his life changes in an instant and so often in conversions we we think i have to have a pauline conversion i i don't think that's the case do people have those yeah absolutely mine was not like that though and i think the majority of people do not have conversion stories like that the great majority of us have these petron conversions right following this conversion of of saint peter which was slow and gradual he followed the lord from the very beginning and he was all in he gave it everything he got and when he did good he did good but when he messed up he messed up right but it was just this daily chipping away this daily marching along one step at a time to grow closer to the kingdom right to follow jesus more closely this petrine form of conversion is really kind of what i went through i've always been catholic i've never denied christianity i've never walked away from the lord i've never had this this crazy time when i was when i was wild and rambunctious it's just a slow persistent journey of two steps forward one step back but maintaining that forward progress as a farm boy sometimes formalities can be hard for me to follow and i'm guilty of one moment actually probably one of the most formal moments of my whole catholic life it was before a mass it's saint peter's i had the opportunity to serve mass with pope francis before the mass is the tradition when time allows for the holy father to go around and greet all the the altar servers and the deacons who are going to be serving the mass with him so there we were circled around in the uh the chapel and i strategically put my place at the end of the line knowing it was going to be a gamble either he wouldn't get to me and i wouldn't get to greet him at all or i would have a few more seconds to interact with him since i was the last one that's a little bit of military strategy that i took with me into formation so luckily god's providence and time allowed for him to come around he finally gets to me and we have this small interaction we talk a little bit i share the brief story of a priest hero of mine father stanley rother and then afterwards i'm i'm almost at the point of being filled with tears because as i was interacting with him talking to pope francis about this this very holy priest this this priest who loved with the father's heart this shepherd who did not run when his life was on the line this priest who did what love required i i felt the father's love from pope francis the whole world like is is on his heart he's on his shoulders but in that moment he was looking into my soul and and i knew that he was loving me with the father's love the only response i had was to ask him for a hug and so there and this is the conversation was going on in spanish and instead of being very formal it was very informal i said you know i just asked him basically in the spanish of saying hey dude can i have a hug and and his eyes lit up and he said sure and so then we hugged and the guys with me got a big grin and other guys their jaws dropped because they'd never seen someone ask for a hug and the swiss guards were there they didn't know what to do but they started giggling themselves but so that was the time i broke all formal protocol and asked the holy father for a hug i was ordained a priest on may 28 2016 and i just recently celebrated my five-year anniversary my five-year anniversary was 2601 masses so it's really you know they add up pretty quickly i have a little book that i keep track of all the masses i celebrate who i offer the mass for where i celebrated the mass and also what number it is so that's that's kind of how i keep track of of where i've been and where i'm at i've got a lot of open pages in the book so i hope to fill them all up so the way it works is my first year of priesthood i'm i'm an associate pastor and typically you're an associate for a number of years so i was kind of second in command under the an older priest who ran this very large parish and i i assisted him in ministry of the parish after just my first year priesthood though the bishop sends me to two other parishes in the diocese where i was now named the pastor i wasn't an associate i was the one who who assumed ultimate fatherhood um initially it was kind of in some ways odd people calling me father especially whenever they were 60 70 or 80 year old men and women and i was just in my early 30s but it's definitely a process of growing into that identity just like any first-time parent with their first child they don't know what the heck they're doing and they're learning what it means to be father what it means to be mother same thing for the priest we we gradually learn what it means to be father we grow in to that identity there was this lady who was having a an emergency birth her child was not expected to live this child had a particular chromosome disorder and was expected to to be born alive but but die within minutes afterwards a beautiful thing happened i get to the hospital and the doctor saw me come in as a priest and he said i want you to put on this gown you're going to be in the room through it all as soon as the kid is born we're done you do whatever you have to do you know it was an amazing moment when the doctor when he recognized that his work can only go to a certain point and there's also things that the priest does that he can't do and so it was very much a team effort he delivered the baby and immediately he looked at me and said go i was there in the room and i heard her cry as soon as she was born an opportunity that priests by and large don't experience the first cry of a child i'm just i'm full of emotion it was something you see in movies or you only hear about something the priest doesn't live but i lived it that day and the world stops before the birth i asked the parents what they were going to name her and she said diana and i said well what's the middle name going to be and i said well we're not going to give her a middle name it's it's just diana and in that moment the lord gave me a just this inspiration because it was also september 8th there of 2016 that's the feast of the nativity of mary it's mary's birthday and so in a in a way the lord challenged me to be a bold father and to take this spiritual authority as the spiritual father who was going to baptize this little girl and give her eternal life through baptism not many families had the opportunity to give birth to their to their kid on the birthday of mary and their eyes just lit up they said diana marie and and i said i think that's a great idea so the morning of september 8th i baptized diana marie right there in that operating room and it was such a powerful moment the doctors didn't think she'd live more than a few hours she ended up living about seven weeks she lived longer than than any science said that she could and i really believe that that was our blessed mother with with diana and that family just giving her the gift to enjoy life on that day that was a concrete example of the lord inviting me to be a bold father so a question i get often as a priest is hey man you know you gave your life to the lord that's that's good uh but also you really gave up a big human desire do you ever wish you were married you ever you know regret you know not having a wife and in some ways is that longing there oh absolutely right that's something that god wrote on our heart to be fruitful and multiplied to be with somebody till death do you part that is that's a natural desire and it's going to be there until 10 minutes after you die right it doesn't just go away but you know what the commitment of love always has that necessary element of death that lingers with you even after you make the promise that's what allows you to live out the commitment of love right any vocation of love any vocation of service matrimony or priesthood it's a sacrament of love it's a sacrament of service it's a sacrament of the death to sell for the sake of giving life to another you know so this longing is is often manifested as a desire for intimacy and people often you know challenge me or question me about well don't you wish you could just be intimate with somebody and my life does not lack intimacy i can surely tell you that in a safe and holy way right so intimacy is not limited to the to a mere carnal connection which is what the world has has boiled it down to but the lord has built it up to something so much greater than mere carnal intimacy right it's this this intimate union with with a great mystery as a priest i get the opportunity to stand face to face with the source of all mystery with god every day so whether i'm in in my own private chapel in the rectory standing face to face with love itself right that's pretty intimate the author of every soul desires to spend time with me and in my soul which then gives me the grace to go out and engage so many other human souls that's pretty intimate i'm taken to places in ministry where where in a split second somebody opens up their heart multiple times people have come up to me and said hey father do you have a second yeah sure what's what's going on and in an instant they go into a life crisis and and wanting some help needing a father you don't open your soul up to people like that that you don't know that you don't trust in there's something about this intimacy that that god has given me and that he allows me to enter into every single day intimacy do i desire it yeah but i get plenty of it so as a little kid i lost my father and and i grew up in a very very real way fatherless throughout the majority of my life growing up without this single father has given the lord the opportunity to give me many fathers each one of these father figures whether it was my grandfather my uncle or various mentors of mine they all came and went at different phases and stages of my life and they they engaged me at different circumstances of life i've taken that with me into to the parish priesthood a lot of times it can be easy and i was guilty of this before thinking that the parish priest just celebrates mass maybe he does some confessions but outside that it seemed like a very boring life when i went to the military that changed because i began seeing how the priest has a greater life of his own but also how he's how he plugs into so many areas of his people's life as a priest i've experienced that now firsthand and through my life the lord was preparing me to now be a father to many even though i didn't even have a father growing up and there was something about that mysterious dynamic of not having a father but having many fathers that has loud now allowed me to be a father to many many of whom do not have fathers and so what i've taken from that is engaging them and being with him in various moments of their life right so whether it was somebody literally on their deathbed i've been there i was literally in an operating room with this family about to give birth to a little girl that was not expected to live more than a few hours because they wanted her baptized i've given first communion to hundreds of kids done countless weddings i've been with people from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and not just over the span of five years i have been with people at birth and death in the same day that's a roller coaster of emotion and that is exciting there's so much more than just celebrating sunday mass and and it's truly a vocation that allows me to venture into the mystery of the human heart and and to see how wild and adventurous that is anybody with a dream of doing anything great always looks up to a hero to to to give them an example of what they do as if you for example if you like basketball maybe it's michael jordan or if it's football maybe john elloway for me as a priest it's blessed stanley rother father stan was a priest for the archdiocese of oklahoma city he was he grew up on on a farm he was a german catholic farm boy something that really resonates in my soul just a simple guy who worked hard who loved the land and who loved the lord and after uh graduating high school he he goes to seminary and he's ordained a priest shortly after his ordination he's he's sent to mission territory the vatican has called dioceses to send out priests to these places that don't have fathers to these flocks that don't have shepherds and and father stan volunteered he raised his hand and told the bishop sin me that's what love requires these people need a father these people need a shepherd so in the 70s and into the early 80s he is sent to guatemala as a as a priest to serve the people of santiago atitlan he ends up learning their dialect becoming a part of their culture he brings farming techniques that he learned as a kid he actually built a radio station there to to spread the good news using this what was you know modern means of communication at the time so despite these good things that he did bringing the gospel bringing the love of jesus christ it was also a very hard time it was a trying time in guatemala political and social upheaval a lot of imbalances to the point of persecuting and killing christians left and right his parishioners were were being killed slaughtered for for not submitting to the government for for living out their faith as a father this infuriated father stan a couple of times he was actually run out of the country he was put on hit lists but every time that would happen he would always go back to the archbishop and say the shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger he didn't just say that he lived it he went back to guatemala what at a time when he knew it was would be his last return he knew that he was not liked because he was greatly loved because of that it cost him his life the night of july 28 1981 he was he was killed they knocked on the door and he said here i am and they slaughtered him right there his uh his heart is actually interred it's buried there in the church in santiago atlan because that's where his heart was that's where he lived his life that's where he loved to the fullest that's where he did what love required his body is buried in oklahoma city which is where he was raised which is where his roots you know dug deep where he received you know his life so this beautiful connection of of life and love and in in multiple places and and for father stan just to give me that example of fatherhood of shepherding of of being the shepherd who didn't run that's resonated in my heart from the first time i heard about him in seminary even to this day i always look up to him so that i can be a shepherd who does not run and that i can do what love requires father stan was the first u.s born priest to to be declared a martyr after his beatification now he's on on his way for canonization an interesting encounter with one of my superiors he pulled me aside one day and said you go work out in the mornings don't you and i said yeah and he could see that i was getting tired like i would be tired by the end of the day because i was i was waking up just around five o'clock or so a little bit before to go to work out before i celebrated the morning mass at eight o'clock and began you know things in the office he pulled me aside and said you know you really need to start scheduling that in the middle of your day make an hour and a half in the middle of your schedule to go to the gym now as a new priest i was thinking well that's not a holy thing that's that's taking away from precious time in ministry where where i'm not going to be saving souls i'm just taking care of myself but i did it because you honor your your superiors right you take the advice that they give you because maybe just maybe they know something that you don't during lunchtime was actually a pretty open time so instead of taking a formal lunch break i would just go to the gym and something neat started happening so when i first went it was my escape like i would just go and just quietly work out if people asked me who i was i would just introduce myself as stephen for a number of weeks getting to know the new people at the gym they knew i was a priest and they knew that that was kind of my private time it was really cool seeing the way that they responded to that though because in very short time these same individuals who i'm lifting weights with bench pressing and squatting with and running around the block with are literally coming to me immediately after a workout seeking marriage advice they're asking me questions between reps about how they can connect to and talk to their kid who is 16 and very rebellious and just started smoking cigarettes or about the the kid in grade school that's not paying attention if i could just pray for their grandparent who was just diagnosed with a terminal illness this happened at the gym but not at the church and that that was very eye-opening for me evangelization is not a cute little cookie-cutter formal task in the church it's a lifelong commitment and it's i would dare say that evangelization is not something that you do but it's the way you live evangelization in its fullest sense is dying to yourself living as christ and bringing the joy of the gospel into the world meeting people where they're at with the love of christ sometimes that love of christ is merciful and patient and very gentle sometimes that love of christ is hard because you have to speak the truth you have to be a prophet and so it's finding that balance meeting people where they're at and recognizing that preaching the gospel is not limited to the pulpit it's not limited to the pews it's not only confined in the walls of a chapel towards the end of my first year of priesthood in prayer i was thinking about crossfading and then the lord put it on my heart well hey why don't you contact the director of of crossfit and and see if you can be a chaplain for them why don't you take the love of the gospel to those those professional athletes there i type a letter and i mail it to him he said yeah come on so for the last number of years i've been going out every fall to be the chaplain at the crossfit games and that's been an another area of new evangelization of preaching the gospel that began with just the hobby the lord doesn't want to compartmentalize anything in life right he wants us to be the whole package the whole deal the greatness of god is manifested in his simplicity his oneness not a division within him but that god has won this dynamic unity of love father son and holy spirit same thing for us we're one person do we have many areas of our life absolutely absolutely but how can the how can the grace of jesus christ unite those things in a mysterious way in our life fitness has been one area of that and i was having a conversation with sean bryan who is known as the papal ninja an american ninja warrior and also with another priest and they were kind of working together to encourage me to apply for american ninja warrior it's hard but i did have physical training and i was young and i also had an interesting story i applied for the show with the blessing of the bishop and got accepted not just once but but twice and it was really neat the things that happened subsequently i didn't do too well on it got about halfway through the course and then fell in the water but the fact that i was willing to to do it broke down many barriers for people i've gotten a lot of emails and letters from people that have seen the show and the reruns who have said i was in life crisis and giving up on god and was just wanting to watch tv and forget about everything and i see a catholic priest and that gave me hope one of the reasons i'm a priest is because i saw the many levels of the life of a priest not just what he does at church but his own personal life his social life his hobbies and things like that and on social media i try to share those things of course i share some things that are explicitly associated with priestly ministry but i also make it a point to share things that people typically do not see and so i share me playing with my two dogs murph and shorty i share videos of me working out or running around i share videos and posts of me playing my guitar and harmonica i share stories and images of me on on hunting trips me doing hobbies doing things that i love why because i believe that the priesthood is not just something i do in the middle of the week or only on sundays priesthood is the way that i live although i can connect with people in many different ways something that almost immediately creates a connection between me and other people are my dogs we kind of share a story they were adopted both of them were rescues and just like me i was in a way rescued but by having the dogs there the lord reminds me even in the most private moments of my life i'm still responsible for loving i'm still called to love and take care of something and a dog looking up at you reminds you immediately that well you're loved and you're still called to love so when i see murph and shorty there looking up at me and wanting to play i remember that you know my life's not about me there's also a romantic side of me that's found in music this began when i was in minor seminary my mom gave me a harmonica for christmas you see every year for christmas she gives us a new toy or a book or something something that challenges us to learn something new one year for example she gave me knitting needles they didn't last long another year she gave me a book uh full of magic tricks i didn't learn any of them something about that harmonica stuck she gave it to me and initially i was thinking this this is a joke what am i going to do with the harmonica but 73 harmonicas later it's a hobby of mine but it's not just a quirky little thing that i do it's it's led me to encounter people in their daily lives for example one area of ministry when i was in in seminary when i was in rome a couple of my buddies and i would go out on the weekends friday and saturday nights to the local blues bars and jazz clubs and they were always amazing places of encounter first of all because the shows always began at 11 pm which is pretty late for a seminarian on friday and saturday night we almost always would go out in our clerics which that in itself was surprising to see so many clerics walking around at midnight much less in a blues bar or a jazz club and it led to some really amazing conversations because people would often come up and initially be surprised and and almost get onto us for being out so late and we'll say well why are you at the music club tonight why do you have this drink how come you're not at home and our answer was often the same the same thing that they asked us but in reverse well why are you here so we like the music we enjoy the the community we like to get out and and be be part of the town we would say us too and then you could see the people just almost short-circuiting because they're making connections that maybe the things i enjoy doing can be pathways to holiness [Music] if you think of a song a good song is is orchestrated between many instruments and each instrument plays their own part if you have a band that is nothing but drums it's going to be kind of hard to make music whenever you get these different members of a band get together and play their instrumental parts at the right time you make great music we're all members of this great this great orchestra of god right we're called to to to deliver one message of salvation one message of jesus christ but we're called to do it in a unique and personal way what part of the song is god calling you to play and are you okay with letting the other members of the band play their parts because whenever you can embrace your part and play your beats in the music your parts of the song and let the other members of the band do theirs that's that's when the music is is really amazing right but whenever you start trying to play the parts of the others it just becomes ruckus the fun image with the harmonica is that it's it's a little instrument i can always have with me literally it fits in my pocket and it's small but if i'm going to make music i got to use it and i'm guilty as well of the faith being like that for me it always being with me but me forgetting to play it i can carry it with me as a badge of honor but if i don't play the instrument it's not making any music same thing with the faith you can you can call yourself a christian you can call yourself a faithful catholic but if you're not living it then it's just lip service right so we have to make the music with our lives and and god's calling you god is calling you to to to play a song in harmony with the church in harmony with tradition in line with what he's calling you to do to to preach the good news so what's what's the song that you're playing [Music] i'm father stephen joseph gadberry a farm boy from the arkansas delta i love hard work and i thrive under pressure i'm an iraq war vet i'm passionate about hard work and i love fitness i've got two fun dogs and i'm the pastor of two great parishes i'm a shepherd of souls and i love my flock i'm insanely in love with our lord jesus christ and i want to share him with everybody i am a catholic priest of the diocese of little rock arkansas and i am an evangelist that's who i am and that's what god has called me to do so here i am a 35 year old catholic priest young in years but pretty rich in life experiences it began on that little family farm in the northeast arkansas delta where i learned about hard work i learned about dedication i learned what it means to be a member of a family that works together for their livelihood my father and older sister died in a tragic vehicle accident that that i survived along with my little sister and from that moment on i in an instant had to become the the man of the house with with my mom to raise my sister and my two little brothers and my mother taught me about how to love with a gentle heart after graduating high school and spending a year in a small community college i went to the military i went in to do this this survival and rescue job and and eventually ended up washing out of that and doing this logistics job i grew in this identity as a human being as a beloved son of god and i grew closer to the lord growing closer to the lord he put on my heart and whispered into my soul drop your nets follow me transitioning from the military into the seminary was smooth with so many battle parallels ultimately surrendering yourself for the sake of giving life to others which it perfectly led through the seminary formation and into the priesthood when that ordination i laid down and died to myself and rose in christ not only rising in christ but receiving the gifts of the spirit that i need to carry out sacramental ministry to bring his miraculous presence to the world today that is so so much in need of it by bringing god's grace to people of all walks of life not only in the parish which i do on a daily basis but also to bring the gospel to people who typically would not get them whether it be fitness or hunting or through music god has given me the tools necessary and his grace to bring his presence to those people who long for him through this journey i've wrestled with with so many things but through that battle through that struggle i've gained so much clarity i've opened my heart up to you i've shared my mind i've shared my life i've made myself terribly vulnerable before you because i believe in the power of love i believe that a story can change people's lives by wrestling with my own history and my own questions of who i am and what god is calling me to do it helps me to grow closer to the lord but there's a power in telling the story you see as christians we our faith is built on stories that are passed on this great story of the incarnation of god god becoming man and living among us so that the story of god's love is no longer separated from us but it's integral to to who we are to our humanity and considering the story of salvation and god's great love for you the fact that he's loving you into existence in a life worth living leads you to the second important story of your life that's the story that you live the story that god is still writing with you and your life how does that story play out and then thirdly the stories of other people how do you enter into the stories of those people you see the stories are powerful you've got the story of salvation with god who makes it all possible you've got your story everyone else has their story and you know what these go together to make this amazing library of love and that's the great plan of god in creation and you're a part of that and so i would invite you to wrestle with your own life think about your own story how how would you tell your story what are the high points of your story that you want the world to know what are the low points that you're terribly embarrassed about that you wouldn't share with anybody what are all the dots in the middle how are the things that you went through in your life indicative of god's great plan for you and the only way to to truly live out those plans of god are for you to wrestle with the plans that you think you're living now how do they line up with with truth how do they line up with the good things of life how do they show beauty how do they lead people to god i believe in the power of the story if there was a wish of mine it would be that that i can go into the to the parish and see every one of my faithful parishioners excited about their story who recognized their own life as a beautiful thing their own life as fulton sheen put it has a life worth living because it's so full of mystery of chaos of confusion and that is adventure but beyond that i want to see them going out to all ends of the earth to preach the gospel to share the good news so that they too are evangelists not that they only are fed too but they go out and feed others who are hungry as well it's this give and take dynamic that christianity calls forth yes we must receive it from christ but we receive it so that we can then go out to share it and ultimately that's that's what this whole story to me is about the daily grind of love now that's a beautiful thing right because that's what gives us life and it's that daily wrestle that draws us deeper into the mystery of god and we only do that by wrestling with our own lives with our own humanity by freely wrestling with who we are we can more freely enter into the wrestle that that other people have in their lives and help them to find god in that battle who are you and what is god calling you to do now maybe you don't know who you are i would invite you to just recognize the restlessness within your own heart that's a great place for learning who you are saint augustine of hippo has this famous and great line our heart is restless until it rests in you o lord if you don't know who you are stop and reflect on what creates restlessness within your heart now that can be your desires for good and great things it can also be things that weigh you down but what takes your internal energy what what consumes your soul and spirit that will help you to understand better who you are now maybe you know who you are and so for you it's a question of mission what are you being called to do then you have to start considering philosophical and theological principles maybe you're an atheist or an agnostic who doesn't believe in god or doesn't even care about god for you i would invite you to continue seeking truth what does that look like do not be afraid of truth i would challenge you to learn more and the more you learn the more you will know what is true truth ultimately reveals itself now maybe you are a believer in god a believer in moral objective principles a believer in god's great plan in life but you've kind of fallen away from it or you don't see the need for it i would invite you to concretely make time to pray read your scriptures five minutes every day one chapter of the gospel go to church on sunday when was the last time you attended mass on sunday this would be a great concrete way of getting back into the routine now maybe you go to mass every sunday and that's good enough for you i would challenge you to to go to mass during the week i would challenge you to go to monthly confession and receive that that that great mercy of our lord now maybe you've been away from the church for a while how do you begin maybe you're full of shame or embarrassment i would say start with the obvious thing the fact that you're hurt and that you're broken go to the sacrament of reconciliation and get that that healing balm of god's mercy now maybe you're a faithful catholic and you go to church on a regular basis and and you live out your faith maybe you even go to daily mass and a weekly holy hour you pray the rosary as often as you can with your family fantastic but you know what you still have not arrived god doesn't just call us to a personal relationship with him for the sake of that relationship he calls us to himself so that we can then be sent out to be an evangelist to share the good news to all ends of the earth and help your pastors to find the lost sheep and when you find them don't criticize them don't ridicule them but pick them up carry them back with you take them to church and you help them in their process of healing you see all of us struggle day in and day out with who we are and what we're called to do and for us it's it's always a big question but a next step is always possible so find your next step and take it [Music] you