In addition to the many men and women in the Archdiocese of Vancouver pursuing religious vocations in this diocese are a number who have gone on to other places in the world to live their vocation. We take a look at recent ordinations and religious vows among former parishioners.
Daniel Ramos ordained to the transitional diaconate
Detroit
The Companions of the Cross received a new transitional deacon last August as Daniel Ramos was ordained at a ceremony presided over by Bishop Scott McCaig, CC, at St. Patrick’s Church in Vancouver.
In his Aug. 13 testimony Deacon Ramos invited attendees to be open to serving the Lord. “Jesus is knocking on your heart because he wants to give you a life that you can’t even imagine… If something has stirred up in you today, I encourage you to tell Jesus: ‘I want this fulfilling life that you promise, and I give you permission to show it to me.’ You will not be disappointed if you give your life to Jesus.”
Deacon Ramos returned to Detroit to complete his studies at Sacred Heart Major Seminary for the last stage of his journey towards the priesthood.
Father Frank Sharma ordained for Carmelites
Calgary
By Nicholas Elbers
Despite the desires of his heart, there were moments in the last decade when recently ordained Father Frank Sharma, OCD, thought it might not happen.
Numerous disappointments marked his path to the priesthood. Looking at it now it’s fitting that he found the Carmelites, who include in their prestigious ranks St. John of the Cross. “The endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light,” wrote John of the Cross.
On Sept. 3, Father Sharma was finally ordained as a priest in the Carmelite order in Edmonton by Archbishop Richard Smith, something he joked about in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
“The journey has not always been transparent or easy. It seemed like when my friends and family came to the ordination it was to make sure it was happening,” he laughed.
Father Sharma is a native of Sri Lanka but spent much of his life living in Surrey and is a graduate of Christ the King Seminary, even though his time there didn’t lead to ordination as a diocesan priest.
After entering the seminary as an independent student of philosophy, “the vocations director encouraged me to join as a student with the Archdiocese of Vancouver, and I finished four years at Christ the King. I was able to complete the degree, but the monks believed that it wasn’t necessarily my calling [to be a diocesan priest].”
He was initially skeptical of life in a religious community. “I wanted to work in parishes with people,” he recalled. “I loved religious life, but I felt I was too independent of a person.”
He spent time working in local parishes while he waited for God to give him more answers, and it was while volunteering at Precious Blood Parish and St. Matthew’s that he felt a call to the Carmelite order because of their devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the spirituality of many of their great saints.
“After a long time of prayer and discerning I thought I should contact the Carmelites,” he said. “It didn’t feel comfortable, but it felt like something I needed to do.”
He did his novitiate in 2017 in California and eventually studied theology in Rome. Perhaps as a sign that he was on the right path his academic performance improved, despite the new language.
“I had to do a 45-minute presentation on Thomas Aquinas in my first semester in Italian,” Father Sharma laughed. “Studying in Italian was a struggle, but with God’s grace and the help of Our Lady I did quite well in school.”
His early reluctance to religious life eventually gave way to acceptance and peace during his time studying in Rome and serves as a reminder that sometimes all that is necessary is saying “yes” to God, who takes care of the rest.
“I wasn’t very excited to be in Rome,” he admitted, “but eventually I enjoyed being with brothers from all around the world.” There were representatives of 13 countries in his first year.
He took his solemn vows at the Vatican last year and admits to some apprehension. “I was looking forward to it, in the sense that I would be able to engage fully in ministry as a priest with people and with the Lord,” he said, “But I’m being honest, sometimes I felt like the Lord was looking forward to it more than I was.”
Today he describes being a priest in completely different terms: “It’s surreal,” he said. “Am I really celebrating Mass right now?”
One of the places he finds most meaning is in the confessional where being a confessor has given him perspective and humbled him.
“I am learning more about myself,” he said. “I am there in the confessional not because I am perfect, or because I am better than anyone. I am not there to judge anyone.
“More than seeing a person’s sinfulness, I see their struggle to live a better life. To live a life as close to Jesus as they can.”
In the confessional he comes across “very innocent souls,” and asks himself, “‘Who am I to give absolution?’ I am glad to be able to be part of their struggles.”
Penitents often come with a great deal of brokenness. “Sometimes you don’t know what to say, you just need to be with them,” he said.
One of the persistent ironies about God’s provenance is that it often leads to places through paths that we never expected to take. For Father Sharma, his vocation with the Carmelites has illustrated this by giving him the surprising and welcome chance to continue growing as an artist.
“Many of the things I was able to do that I love, I was only able to do under obedience,” he said.
“I thought I would be a bird in a cage in religious life, but I can do things that I wasn’t able to do when I was working – when I was ‘free.’”
Already an artist before entering the Carmelite order, his artistic aptitude fully emerged as a part of his priestly vocation when some of his artwork was featured in the Vatican newspaper while studying in Rome.
Most recently, he restored a statue of Our Lady of the Cape that was found on a reserve in Calgary. The statue became part of the Tour of Our Lady of the Cape that took place during the papal visit last summer.
For Father Sharma art is now an important part of his priestly ministry. “Pope Benedict XVI said that art is to participate in the creative aspect of God because you create beauty,” he said.
“The celebration of the liturgy is an art,” he said, “When you celebrate liturgy - your voice, your gestures – there is an art to it.”
Father Sharma contrasts the prayers and formal structure of the liturgy with how the priest enacts the Mass.
“The way you hold your hands, how you extend your hands, the vestments, all have value. You need to perform, but you need to perform prayerfully.”
To Father Sharma, the Mass needn’t be elaborate or fancy, but it needs intention and attention to detail.
“It doesn’t take a lot,” he said. “It just takes simplicity and coordination. It doesn’t take much to make it beautiful.”
Ordination to the priesthood of Father Joseph Selinger, O.P.
Portland, Ore.
Father Joseph Selinger, OP, formerly of Our Lady of Assumption Parish in Port Coquitlam, was ordained for the Dominican Western Province (Oakland, Calif.) by Bishop Robert Barron last June 24. During the ordination ceremony, his former pastor Father Ron Thompson vested Father Selinger with the stole and chasuble.
Father Selinger was assigned to the Dominicans’ Holy Rosary Parish in Portland, Ore. Here he shares his vocation story.
My time in Vancouver and Port Coquitlam laid the foundation for my faith and priesthood. I benefited from the deep faith life at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Port Coquitlam and throughout the Archdiocese of Vancouver. It was here in the Archdiocese that I first encountered Jesus Christ and began a friendship with him that led me to the priesthood.
My story is a story of pure grace. I was heading, like many people my age after confirmation, away from the Church. Out of the blue, God intervened with his grace and taught me that my happiness can only be found in God and what leads to him.
I know that was a divine light because it did not come from any inspiring person, youth event, or anything else. I do not know where this light came into me or how it entered me. One day it hit me without warning and my life was transformed.
Only God can act on the soul in this way. Normally, we are influenced by something we see and hear. We are moved through our relationship to the world and other people. I was not moved in this normal way. My inspiration clearly did not come from this world and was not occasioned by anything proportionate to the transformation that was brought about in me.
God is more intimately present to the soul than we are present to ourselves. It is a mark of the divine presence that he enters our lives in a way so intimate and deep, that we cannot fathom how it occurs.
The advent of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, in the soul occurs in a mysterious manner, just as his incarnation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary was mysterious. God enters the soul as he enters the world – in a way not comprehensible to our weak understanding. He departs the soul as he departed this earth, ascending into heaven, in a way we do not understand and to a place that we cannot comprehend this side of the mortal veil.
Just as his earthly ministry, beginning with his nativity and ending with his accension, left the world forever transformed, so too does his advent in the soul transform it before he leaves the soul in a mysterious manner. My life was transformed by the sudden advent of Christ, which left me completely changed before his departure.
Christ’s ministry to souls continues through his repeated visits to us. Christ does not just make one advent to us but continually comes and departs, each time leaving us transformed. This is especially true in our reception of Jesus – body, blood, soul, and divinity – in our reception of the Eucharist.
I also was fortunate to encounter priests who took their priestly identity seriously and provided a positive image of the priesthood as a joy-filled life of fatherly service to the People of God.
I feel indebted to the people of the Archdiocese of Vancouver for their kind support and witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rachel Wong, Postulant for Daughters of St. Paul
Boston
In the summer of 2018 I thought that I was living not only “my best life,” but also the life God had planned for me. Coming out of a great academic semester, I had landed a high-profile internship and soon started dating a fellow intern. It felt like God was finally answering all my prayers.
Life was going great. That is, until it wasn’t.
The internship and the relationship turned out to be a disaster, and by the time the fall semester rolled around I doubted pretty much everything: whether or not I should change programs (again, for the third time), whether I wanted to work in journalism anymore, and most painfully whether or not I would ever find someone who would love me for me.
As it happened, Catholic Christian Outreach was running a mission trip to World Youth Day 2019 in Panama. Despite still being a student I applied for the mission, and thanks be to God, I was accepted.
World Youth Days are traditionally held in the summer, but from the moment I was accepted I knew that something special was about to take place.
It was January and I was taking a “new year, new me” approach. I wanted to give God a blank cheque on my life, or as close to it as possible. I wanted to know his will for me, as long as I had some say in it. My prayer sounded a little like this: “God, please show me what my vocation is… as long as it’s marriage.”
In the end, I left Panama feeling deeply inspired after a vision of what seemed to be my own wedding. The vision was so profound that I took it as a sign that marriage was my calling. But to my disappointment, I wasn’t leaving with a special guy.
I had taken the semester off, so I returned to Vancouver with a lot of time to contemplate and reflect on the whole experience.
At this time in my life I only went to Mass on Sundays, but something compelled me to stop in for daily Mass at Holy Rosary Cathedral one day. Seated in front of me were two blue-veiled heads. This was my first encounter with the Daughters of St. Paul.
I had never heard of this community but at the end of Mass they announced they would be selling books. I took one home.
As I mentioned, I started 2019 with the desire of being more intentional with vocational discernment. My spiritual director informed me this would mean giving religious life a fair chance, especially since I wasn’t actively dating anyone at the time.
He gave me a copy of the book Discerning Religious Life by Mother Clare Mathiass, CFR. I’m ashamed to say I did not read it right away.
Thankfully, while the book was burning a hole on my bedside table God had another plan and on a May afternoon I received a call from Sister Helena Burns, who I had been following on Twitter for years. I remember choking on my water and attracting all the wrong attention while at Subway.
“THE Sister Helena Burns?” I exclaimed. “From TWITTER?!”
Sister laughed and said “Yes, from Twitter.”
As it happened, she was a Daughter of St. Paul – the same blue-veiled sisters I met a few months earlier at the cathedral.
We chatted for a bit and then came the big invitation. The Daughters of St. Paul were going to host a Come and See retreat. It was free to attend and I would just need to get to Toronto. Would I be interested?
In the moment, I wasn’t sure. Going to the retreat seemed like a hassle. Plus, it seemed like active recruitment for a vocation that would take me away from what I really wanted, which was marriage.
I ended up going, but to be completely honest I don’t remember much of what happened. I remember feeling at peace, enjoying the company of the other young women, and enjoying the company of the sisters even more.
I was excited to learn about the mission and apostolate of the Daughters of St. Paul, who worked with media to advance the Word of God.
I loved their “visits” with Jesus – hours of Eucharistic Adoration – that were central to their religious life. Adoration was central to my own story of reversion. If that weren’t enough, I found myself attracted to the joy that these women had and shared with each other, a joy that I’m not sure I’d ever felt or ever seen in anyone else.
At the close of the retreat I had a conversation with Sister Emily, the vocations director for the Daughters of St. Paul. After some initial conversation I asked how I could become a sister. I was ready to leave my honours program and enter.
In her wisdom, Sister Emily asked me to take some time to decompress from the experience and pray about it. I was disappointed, but we decided to connect after six months – in March 2020.
We all know what happened in March 2020.
I had spent the time deeply focused on school but kept thinking about my experience in Toronto with the sisters. I wasn’t sure if that was what God wanted for me, but there wasn’t anything else in my way. Still, as we settled into pandemic life I started to wonder: Was COVID’s interference a clear sign that this wasn’t the Lord’s plan for me?
Thankfully, every year on Holy Week the Daughters of St. Paul host a retreat at their motherhouse in Boston. Due to the pandemic the retreat was presented online, allowing women from all over to participate.
Throughout that first online retreat in Holy Week 2020, I felt another invitation to “come and see,” even if it would be months before I could do so in person.
Between April 2020 and October 2021, I participated in nearly every online offering the Daughters of St. Paul had, including a second Holy Week retreat in 2021. The pandemic was still very much alive, but it provided me with an incredibly “monastic” environment and forced me to take a hard look at my life, and what – or who – I was living for.
I couldn’t get out and date even if I wanted to! So in a unique way, through these retreats and monthly meetings with Sister Emily, I kept walking in the direction the Lord had invited me into.
It was slow. It was painful.
Until it wasn’t.
Almost two years after my first Come and See with the Daughters of St. Paul, I was finally able to make a trip to spend time with the Toronto community.
At first, I was very anxious about the trip. What if all of this was a huge mistake? What if the pandemic had changed me for the worst?
My fears were unfounded. The entire visit was a grace-filled time. I felt more at peace and more myself than I had in a while and I loved spending time with the sisters and learning more about the work they do.
Armed with the experiences of this visit, I deepened my resolve to work toward entering the community.
It wasn’t until writing this that I realized how everything came together in less than a year.
The year 2022 started like any other. I was still working at SFU and living life, but something felt different. Soon plans fell into place for another visit to Toronto which led to an intimate and individual visit to the Daughters of St. Paul Motherhouse in Boston. It would just be me and about 70 other sisters at Easter.
As we came into the Triduum, I found myself meditating more on the immense sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. With his arms outstretched on the cross I heard him say to me, “I wish to give you everything. You are my everything.” I looked down at my left forearm with my six-month old tattoo that read totus tuus, or “totally yours” in Latin.
At that moment, I knew I could never fully repay Jesus for his sacrifice on the cross, but maybe I could start giving myself totally to him through this vocation. Suddenly I saw that this wasn’t just something I felt like I had to do. It was something I wanted to do.
When I got home, I requested an application that kicked off four months of medical appointments, writing and reflecting, awkward conversations, and a lot of praying.
I was admitted to postulancy on Aug. 4.
I recently shared the following quote from the founder of the Daughters of St. Paul, Bl. James Alberione: “The Lord has moved heaven and earth for our vocation.”
As I reflect on what had to happen in order to arrive at this point – the starting line of a new chapter of my life – this only could have happened with divine intervention.
There have been incredible highs but also deeply painful lows, but at every turn, the Lord has been incredibly faithful.
I heard the Lord say to me, “Come and work with me.” It was a simple invitation to a radical life: To give up everything and follow him, withholding nothing and trusting in his providence.
Sister Laetitia Maria of the Holy Spirit
Queen of Peace Monastery, Squamish
Sister Laetitia Maria of the Holy Spirit made her first temporary profession of vows with the Dominican Nuns at Queen of Peace monastery on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.
The occasion was marked with a procession into Mass with freshly blessed candles, and some of Sister Laetitia’s immediate family joined in the celebration.
The official announcement published by Queen of Peace Monastery notes that the feast of the presentation is a fitting day for vows because it is sometimes called the “feast of encounter.” This reflects the way monastic life demonstrates a daily, life-long encounter with Christ.
Sister is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda (and more recently from Alberta).
Sister Imelda Marie of the Resurrection
Queen of Peace Monastery, Squamish
On the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Sister Imelda Marie of the Resurrection made her first temporary profession as a Nun of the Order of Preachers.
The Mass was celebrated by Father Guy Rivard, OP, the vicar of the monastery, with members of her immediate family in attendance.
After the Gospel, the prioress asked Sister Imelda, "What do you seek?" To which she responded “God’s mercy and yours.”
Travelling Chalice
Vancouver
By Nicholas Elbers
For the last five years, an old forgotten chalice from Our Lady of Hope Parish has been given new life travelling the Lower Mainland to promote vocations to religious life.
The devotion has been around in various places for a long time, but in Vancouver it started in 2014 when Serra Club member Leo Ilomin found the chalice while visiting the Hope parish.
He was attending the installation Mass of Father Gordon Cook and was shown around the church. There were some old chalices tucked away in the back of a cabinet, and Ilomin asked Father Cook if he could have one for the devotion.
Father Cook said yes. While there were no details on the chalice’s origins, it has since been used by Archbishop Miller during Mass at the 2017 Spirit Day youth conference, which Ilomin uses to mark the beginning of the chalice’s journeys around the archdiocese.
This used quality is one of the aspects of the devotion that is so special. Catholics spend most of their lives watching priests use various liturgical objects, but unless they are altar servers they rarely get the chance to examine them closely.
By having the chalice in their home, the reality of the Mass is made much more present, said Ilomin, helping to promote conversations about religious life.
“When people take the chalice into their home they are touched by the fact that it has been used in Mass,” Ilomin told The B.C. Catholic.
He stresses that the chalice is merely a devotional tool that helps individuals centre their prayers and direct them to Christ.
Host families have reported an increase in conversations about religious life and the priesthood, said Ilomin, whose desire to bring the devotion to Vancouver was inspired by his deep belief that God calls everyone to something particular. We only need to listen and pray to get the Grace to know what it is.
Four or five families a month have hosted the chalice in their home since 2017, signing a contract that they will pray the devotion for six days.
There is no requirement for where the chalice should be displayed, but Ilomin said every family does something special. Most display the chalice in a place of prominence, and some have made prayer tables and altars specifically for the devotion.
While Ilomin hasn’t heard of anyone citing the chalice as instrumental in a religious vocation yet, it is having a positive impact. One father said his whole family was invited “to come over for prayers and dinner.” He went on to say that his son, who had lapsed in his faith, decided to start taking his family to Mass as a result of the devotion.
In addition to the chalice, families receive a prayer booklet to help with the devotion, tailored to the age of children in the house.
Ilomin has made similar prayer books for schools that might want to participate, as well as single people and married couples without children.
If you’re interested in hosting the Travelling Chalice, contact Ilomin at [email protected] or 604-832-5802, or Ben Hume at [email protected] or 604-366-1728.
Westminster Abbey welcomes three new vocations
Brothers Isidore McDonald and John Climacus Bruneau both asked for permanent membership in the Benedictine community at Westminster Abbey and took their permanent vows last Sept. 4.
“With great joy, the monastic community prays that the Lord may grant Brothers Isidore and John many years of faithful and humble service in the Lord’s school of fraternity,” read the announcement in Pax Regis, the abbey’s bi-annual newsletter.
Additionally, on Sept. 8 Frater Novice Isaac Mack took temporary vows and received his monastic name, Charles after St. Charles de Foucauld.
Brother Isidore McDonald
Vancouver
Brother Isidore is the eldest of two children and was born in Vancouver Sept. 21, 1981, to Keith and Neda McDonald.
He grew up in a family that cultivated his love of different cultures and placed a high value on education. Along with earning degrees in English and psychology, he has sung in professional choirs and spent time travelling the world – seeing places as far-reaching as Iceland and Japan, and hearing the call to monastic life in Galway Cathedral.
His postulancy helped him gain confidence in his abilities regarding manual work and he contributed to community life in ways he didn’t expect.
As a novice he found balance and intellectual formation delving into the history and spirit of monastic life and its traditions. While he was a temporary professed monk, Brother Isidore held on to what he called the “string” of hope that he could belong to the monastery. This “string” helped him recognize his own shortcomings and embrace the strains of living in community with men, who have their own shortcomings.
“Through all of this Brother Isidore grew to speak boldly with his heart and grew in the freedom that following Christ brings,” Pax Regis said.
John Climacus Bruneau
Coquitlam
Brother John Climacus is the youngest of six children and was born in Coquitlam on July 5, 1999, to Denis and Liane Bruneau.
He grew up in a missionary family and spent several years of his childhood in Peru where he learned an appreciation for simplicity and grew an affection for the simplest things in life: the land and its people.
After attending the minor Seminary of Christ the King, he spent a year in the Northwest Territories serving people from the Dene First Nation.
His fondest memories from his postulancy are of the family atmosphere at Christmas and of singing Christmas carols with the Benedictine community. He is quick to highlight “hearing Brother David with his lively jubilations and Father Basil with his masterful improvisations.”
This family atmosphere helped him find a place where he could join in and belong.
During his three years of temporary profession, he struggled in his discernment. When he prayed a novena to St. Therese he asked for a white rose if God wanted marriage, or a red rose if God wanted him to be a monk.
When roses of every colour started popping up everywhere he was confused at first until “he got a bit wiser, and heard God telling him, “You choose.”
Brother John went to the statue of St. Benedict in the monastic cloister and chose a rose which still sits behind the crucifix in his monastic cell.
During the days of his “entombment” – the two days when a monk remains in his cell following solemn profession, sharing in the dying and rising with Christ – he found a pot of pink roses in his cell.
He believes the roses were God’s way of telling him that his choice, in some ways, involved both marriage in the form of a spousal relationship with Christ, and as well as monastic life.
Parents and sons (L to R): Denis Bruneau, Brother John Climacus, Liane Bruneau; Neda McDonald, Brother Isidore, Keith McDonald.
Frater Novice Isaac Mack
Everett, Wash.
Frater Novice Isaac Mack freely united himself with Christ through temporary vows, receiving his monastic name Charles after St. Charles de Foucauld. Born and raised in Everett, Wash., he is the sixth child of Kevin and Sherri Mack.
At the age of five, he made the decision to give his life to Christ and he ascribes an early interest in martyrdom as the inspiration for making the decision to enter the monastery.
It took some time to come to this realization, and through his time at the minor seminary, he found the idea of monastic life difficult.
Thankfully, this didn’t last and “eventually,” according to Pax Regis, he “attained the docility to recognize God’s will and follow it.”
Sister Avelina Joseph, SV, Sisters of Life
Toronto
Vocations are tricky things. Often we treat them like cut and dry answers to the question: “what should I do?” But in reality, they can only fulfill us when we accept that they orient us to Christ, the source of lasting peace and healing.
This is one of the insights Sister Avelina Joseph, SV, who grew up at St. Matthew’s Parish in Surrey, shares about her discernment journey which culminated in her final profession of vows with the Sisters of Life in Toronto on July 16 of last year.
The Sisters of Life are a relatively young order, having been founded in 1991, and their apostolate focuses on supporting pregnant women both before and after birth, as well as support for women who need healing after experiencing abortion.
It took some time for Sister Avelina to find the Sisters of Life. When she began to actively discern religious life she had just graduated from SFU with the intention of becoming a teacher. Her assumption was that any religious vocation would follow that theme, so her early discernment took place with a religious order that had an educational apostolate.
Although she was attracted to that order, she heard God tell her “no.” That wasn’t the end for her discernment however, and she said “I had a lot of peace, so I knew it wasn’t just the evil one giving me cold feet.”
She strongly believes that anyone discerning a vocation should find a spiritual director. “A third party gives an objective lens,” she said, “especially during periods of desolation when it can be difficult to hear God.”
Discernment also requires a strong spiritual foundation, lots of self knowledge, and most importantly, time. “It requires a prayer life that has been lived for enough years that you understand your own spiritual life,” she said.
“Only when you are in a place of spiritual stability will you understand when you are in a place of desolation and know you shouldn’t listen to your thoughts.”
While she was patiently waiting for God to tell her which community she should pursue, she said many of her friends from Catholic Christian Outreach were telling her to look into the Sisters of Life. She was concerned by what she said was a false presumption that they were just a single-issue religious community.
After attending a tear-filled talk by the sisters at a Rise Up conference, she quickly concluded that the Sisters were so much more than she had originally assumed.
“When I visited them for the first time, I was struck by the way their love for Jesus overflowed into their love for people,” she said, “even for women who have had several abortions.”
She realized she was not simply looking for a community that would facilitate a specific line of work. “I could do that in the world,” she said. “What I was looking for was a community that loved Jesus.
When she prayed for direction, she said the Lord told her, “If you enter this community, I will teach you how to love.”
“The peace has remained with me even up until this moment.”
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