For a long time, I thought I knew what kind of priest I was supposed to be.
Or maybe it is more honest to say: I thought I knew what a priest was supposed to look like.
In my mind, priesthood was shaped by Roman Catholic images, movies, television, old stories, dramatic vestments, exorcisms, hospitals, confessionals, incense, sacraments, the homeless, the dying, demons, candles, and a priest who somehow knew exactly what he was doing in every situation.
You know the type.
The movie priest.
The priest who walks into darkness with holy water in one hand and absolute certainty in the other.
The priest who saves the village, battles evil, feeds the poor, counsels the broken, celebrates Mass, understands death, knows every prayer in Latin, and still has time to look spiritually mysterious in bad lighting.
LMAO.
That was not reality.
At least not my reality.
When someone first begins to feel called, there is often this enormous burst of holy imagination. “I am going to be an exorcist.” “I am going to work with the homeless.” “I am going to build a church.” “I am going to save souls.” “I am going to fight evil.” “I am going to change the world.”
And sometimes those desires are real. Sometimes they are beautiful. Sometimes they are God beginning something.
But sometimes they are also mixed with fantasy, ego, trauma, media, denomination, fear, longing, and a very human need to be useful.
I was no different.
I thought I was supposed to be the kind of priest I had seen represented most often. And because Roman Catholicism dominates so much of the visual imagination around priesthood, I unconsciously assumed that was the mold. That was the image. That was the standard.
I did not stop to realize fully that there are other sacramental traditions.
Other ways of being priest.
Other shapes of ministry.
Other altars.
Other roads.
Other forms of formation, service, prayer, and vocation.
Many people do not realize that. They see priesthood through the strongest cultural image available, and for most people, that image is Roman Catholic. That is not necessarily an insult. It is simply the truth of how media and culture work.
But it can create a false picture.
And false pictures are dangerous when you are trying to discern a real calling.
We are indoctrinated into so many things without even realizing it. Society tells us what success looks like. Families tell us what respectability looks like. Churches tell us what holiness is supposed to look like. Denominations tell us what ministry should look like. Media tells us what priesthood looks like.
And somewhere in all of that noise, the actual voice of God can become difficult to hear.
That is one of the dangers of vocation.
You can spend years chasing the image of the thing instead of the thing itself.
You can chase the priest you think you are supposed to be while the priest Christ is actually forming in you is standing quietly in the corner, waiting to be noticed.
When people begin contemplating a Christian vocation, they often find themselves shaped by what I call the “media church.”
The surface church.
The recognizable church.
The church of images, titles, buildings, robes, microphones, dramatic conversions, and public ministry.
But that surface does not always tell the truth.
The truth is that most clergy are not saving the world in a cinematic montage.
Many are overworked.
Underpaid.
Controlled by systems.
Moved where they are needed.
Exhausted by administration.
Buried under expectations.
Caught between the needs of the people and the machinery of the institution.
In many mainstream denominations, clergy may not have much freedom at all. They are sent where they are sent. They are told what to do. Their housing, pay, schedule, and future can be tied to systems larger than their own discernment.
There can be benefits to that. Structure can help. Support can help. Housing can help. A paycheck can help. Having a defined place can help.
But vocation should never be reduced to paycheck, housing, church size, title, or institutional placement.
A calling is deeper than that.
A priesthood is deeper than that.
And not everyone fits the mold.
I did not fit the mold.
Every door I tried seemed to close in my face.
Sexuality.
Denomination.
Education.
Money.
Access.
Place.
Opportunity.
Each time I thought I had found a road, I found a locked door instead.
And I will say this plainly: I do not believe formal education is the only way God forms a priest. I believe education matters. Formation matters. Study matters. Discipline matters. But I also believe there is something ancient and holy about “reading for orders,” about being formed through prayer, study, mentorship, discernment, and actual spiritual life, without necessarily needing to pay a fortune to learn how to serve God.
Honestly, the idea of going into massive debt to learn about poverty, sacrifice, and Christ still makes my brain itch.
There I go on a tangent.
Apologies.
But every roadblock, every locked door, every failed attempt eventually led me toward the Independent Sacramental Movement.
I will not try to explain that entire world here. Trust me, it is something you have to learn, see, and experience for yourself. It is beautiful. It is strange. It is messy. It is holy. It is complicated. It is a whole universe of sacramental life that many people do not even know exists.
And it became part of my road.
After what felt like forever in seminary and formation, after reading for orders, after discernment, conversation, prayer, trial, error, and more error, I found myself with my current Order and Bishop. I think it has been ten years or more now.
In that time, my Bishop talked with me.
Guided me.
Warned me.
Discerned with me.
Tried to help me see what I could not yet see.
And like a good parent, he eventually had to throw me out of the nest, so to speak, and let me find out for myself what would fly and what would hit the ground with a loud, ridiculous thud.
Spoiler alert: there were thuds.
Many thuds.
Bless his heart.
He told me certain things would not work.
And like a pain-in-the-ass baby priest, I did them anyway.
I tried going at it on my own as a religious.
Nope.
Did not work.
Failed.
I had no real grasp yet of what I was doing.
During formation, I tried starting several ministries.
Nope.
Failed.
Tried again.
Failed again.
Tried to force another thing.
Failed again.
Every time, my Bishop somehow caught me and gave me a soft landing. But after ordination, he stood back more quietly. He watched. He waited. He let me wrestle. He let me complain. He let me burn energy on roads he probably already knew were not mine.
That is hard love.
That is real formation.
Because some lessons cannot be explained into you.
They have to happen.
I thought I was going to fight evil.
I thought I was going to fight darkness.
I thought I was going to go marching into spiritual battle like some exorcist-priest-warrior with a stole, a prayer book, and good intentions.
I had no idea that I was already in darkness.
Not the dark night yet.
Not really.
That came later.
This was something else.
This was Fr. Drew being stubborn.
This was me ignoring the cues.
Ignoring what I had learned.
Ignoring the Bishop’s guidance.
Ignoring God’s roadblocks.
Ignoring the Holy Mother’s quiet redirection.
Ignoring my own inner being.
Ignoring who I actually was because I was still trying to become the priest I thought I had to be.
That is a hard thing to admit.
But it is true.
I was blind to God’s movement because I was staring too hard at my own expectations.
I was blind to my real vocation because I was trying to force a false version of ministry into existence.
I was blind to my own soul because the imagined priest in my head was louder than the priest Christ was actually forming.
Before any ministry, before any success, before any movement in clerical life, there has to be surrender.
Real surrender.
Not the religious bumper-sticker kind.
Not the “I surrender all” hymn while secretly keeping a locked storage unit full of ego, fear, resentment, fantasy, and control.
I mean the kind of surrender where the old self has to be released, blessed, and shut down.
Like one of those annoying browser trojans that keeps throwing ads, pop-ups, warnings, fake buttons, flashing nonsense, and boxes all over the screen until you cannot see what you were actually trying to do.
Sometimes the old self is exactly like that.
Pop-up after pop-up.
Fear.
What if you fail?
Pop-up.
You should be doing something bigger.
Pop-up.
You are not enough.
Pop-up.
This ministry is not impressive.
Pop-up.
Nobody will care.
Pop-up.
You are supposed to be someone else.
At some point, you have to shut the noise down.
Reset.
Reopen.
Start again.
That is a simplification, of course, but it makes the point.
Releasing the old self is hard.
And sometimes we think we have released something when we have really only locked it in a basement. That is not surrender. That is storage.
And what is stored away without healing has a way of coming back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The old self keeps interfering with the new self in Christ.
It puts on sheep’s clothing.
It learns religious language.
It disguises fear as discernment.
It disguises control as responsibility.
It disguises self-hatred as humility.
It disguises ambition as vocation.
It disguises exhaustion as faithfulness.
Let that sink in.
Sometimes the person blocking your ministry is not the devil, society, the Church, the economy, the denomination, the town, or the people who will not answer your flyers.
Sometimes the person blocking your ministry is the old self wearing vestments.
As I continue to grow in Christ, I have lived firsthand the hard wall you hit when you realize you are not who you thought you were.
That is terrifying.
And freeing.
And annoying as hell.
Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
You realize the ministry you have been pulling your hair out over may not be your path at all.
You realize you may not have failed at your vocation.
You may have failed at forcing a vocation that was never yours.
There is grief in that.
There is anger.
There is embarrassment.
There is relief.
There is betrayal, almost.
You throw your hands up and say, “Lord, why did You let me waste all that time?”
And maybe the answer is: because it was not wasted if it brought you to truth.
Maybe all those failed doors were not punishments.
Maybe they were mercy.
Maybe the locked doors were protecting the real one.
The priest I thought I was supposed to be is not the priest I have become.
And thank God for that, even if I am still learning how to say it without flinching.
I am not the movie priest.
I am not the perfect parish priest.
I am not the conquering-the-world priest.
I am not the priest with a packed calendar, a giant congregation, and a perfectly fertile visible ministry.
I am not the priest I imagined when I was a baby priest full of fire and fantasy.
I am becoming something else.
Something quieter.
Stranger.
Deeper.
More sorrowful.
More honest.
I am being led toward the dead, death, and dying.
Toward the hardest part of life.
Toward the thing most people avoid, sanitize, fear, deny, or push away until it breaks the door down.
I am being led toward the souls preparing to depart.
Toward those who have already departed.
Toward the wounded.
The grieving.
The forgotten.
The bodies that need reverence.
The cemeteries that need care.
The hospital rooms where prayers rise before words do.
The accident victims I pray for automatically.
The lonely ones at the veil.
The dead who still deserve to be named before God.
That is not the priesthood I imagined.
But it feels like the priesthood I was made for.
The dark night did not give me a new fantasy.
It stripped away the old one.
It took the costume off the calling.
It showed me that I was trying to build a ministry out of what I thought priesthood should be, while Christ and the Holy Mother were quietly pointing toward the ministry already written into my bones.
Death has always been there.
Not as morbidity.
As tenderness.
As reverence.
As threshold.
As holy seriousness.
Even as a child, I was drawn to that world. I wanted at one point to be a mortician. I loved graveyards. I cared about bodies. I wondered about souls. I felt concern for the dead and the dying before I had theology for it.
That was not random.
That was not weirdness.
That was a seed.
And now, after years of locked doors, failed attempts, spiritual panic, and the dark night scouring me like a holy Brillo pad, I am finally beginning to see it.
The calling was not absent.
I was looking at it through the wrong window.
I thought ministry had to look public, active, visible, successful, and easily explained.
But maybe my ministry begins at the threshold.
At the bedside.
At the grave.
At the altar.
At the veil.
With prayer.
With presence.
With reverence.
With the Sorrowful Mother standing near.
With Christ, who entered death Himself and made even the tomb a doorway.
So no, I am not the priest I thought I had to be.
That priest had to die.
Not because he was evil.
He was hopeful.
He was eager.
He wanted to serve.
He wanted to save the world.
But he did not yet know himself.
He did not yet know the shape of his own soul.
He did not yet know that God does not always call us toward the ministry we admire.
Sometimes God calls us toward the ministry we recognize in our bones.
That is where I am now.
Not finished.
Not fully prepared.
Not entirely sure what this will look like in practice.
But clearer.
More grounded.
Less frantic.
I am beginning to understand that my priesthood is not less real because it does not look like the image I inherited.
It may be more real because it does not.
The priest I thought I had to be was built out of expectation, imagination, culture, media, and fear.
The priest I am becoming is being formed through sorrow, contemplation, failure, surrender, the dead, the dying, the wounded, the Holy Mother, and Christ Himself.
That is harder.
But it is truer.
And maybe that is the mercy hidden inside every locked door:
eventually, if we stop trying to force the wrong one open, we may finally hear the one God has been unlocking all along.