My name is Br. John-Mary of Jesus Crucified, O.C.D., and I entered the order in 2015.

When I was in high school I never would have imagined that God might be calling me to religious life. I grew up in a decently Catholic family: we went to Mass each Sunday, we said grace before dinner, and I participated in the youth group at church, but when I was in high school I had never even considered what it was that God wanted me to do with my life. I planned to go to a prestigious college, to become a successful engineer, to have a big house, a nice car, and a perfect family.

After high school I went to Auburn University to study wireless engineering. At Auburn I felt like I had everything I had always wanted in life: I had a full scholarship, a great engineering internship, I was living in a brand new dorm, I was racing on the triathlon team, I was in the marching band, I was excelling in all of my classes, I had great friends and a beautiful girlfriend, and to top it all off, Auburn’s football team won the national championship that year. I was really living the dream, but deep down I felt like something was still missing.

My girlfriend at the time was a faithful protestant. She was struggling to find a church to go to at school, so she started going to Mass with me and my friends on Sundays. Before long she began asking me all of these questions about my Catholic faith: “Why do Catholics do that?” and “Why do you believe this?”. Honestly, I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, so I began doing some research on the internet and reading the catechism and scriptures. Over the course of several months my girlfriend and I talked through just about every major teaching of the Catholic Church, and the more I learned, the more I fell in love with my faith. I began going to Mass several times a week and I even joined a bible study.

That Lent, instead of giving up dessert like I had always done in the past, I decided that I was going to try to pray for 15 minutes every day. I set out praying consistently for the first time in my life, and I began asking God, “What do you want me to do with my life?” And you know what? Something amazing happened: God began to answer me! He wasn’t answering me with a loud booming voice or with incredible miracles or anything like that, but I began to feel this desire grow deep within me, and I began to think that maybe God was calling me to be a priest.

At the end of my freshman year I broke up with my girlfriend so that I could more seriously discern where God was calling me in life, and after my sophomore year I left Auburn to enter seminary to begin studies for the priesthood. The more that I learned about my faith and the more that I prayed, the more I fell in love with Jesus, and the more I fell in love with Jesus, the more I felt called to a deep life of prayer. It was during this time that I was first introduced to some of the great Carmelite saints: Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Therese of Lisieux. When I read their writings and heard about their lives I saw that they had a deep intimacy with God which I so much desired for my own life. Eventually God helped me to realize that it was by becoming a Carmelite myself that I would find this intimacy with Him. I’m so thankful for this gift of my Carmelite vocation: a life dedicated to prayer and service of the Church living in a community of brothers who teach and encourage one another on the path of holiness.

If you think that God might be calling you to religious life I encourage you to make an effort to pray everyday and in your prayer ask, “God, what do you want me to do with my life?” You’ll be amazed to find that He’ll answer you!