The following story has been personally written by Fr Francis Nguyen, Rector of St Charles Seminary
In my case, it’s all true that I owe a great deal of gratitude to my grandmother, my mother and of course my dad, parish priests, religious sisters and brothers, lay catechists and active parishioners for sowing the seeds of faith and vocation in me from the early days of my childhood to young adulthood and even today for sustaining my vocation.
My earliest response to God’s call happened at a very unsuitable time in an unlikely circumstance. It was a few months after I arrived in Australia at the age of twenty years old. I was learning English in an intensive language class. We were given some time to think about what we would like to be in the future and share it with the whole class. When it came to my turn, I wanted to say I would like to become a priest; but I did not know how to say the word priest, so I said a prai-est, a prest, a pri-est. It took a while for my teacher to understand what I meant.
By this time, being young and shy, I did not want to draw any attention to myself, plus the idea of wanting to a priest was not a cool thing, I really felt the heat, blushed and sweating. I thought everyone might be wondering, ‘What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t he have something else to do?’
After that public declaration of my intention, I strangely felt a bit of a relief. Now it’s been put out there. I began to feel more at home about the idea of becoming a priest. I started to find out a bit more of what it would be involved with training and where to go for more information and support.
A lot of questions, feelings of fear and inadequacy were still going through my mind, ‘Is my English good enough? How am I going to deal with studies? Is my shyness going to be a problem? Am I able to relate to people or do public speaking? How about celibacy? Am I going to be OK with it for life? Am I going to be accepted as a candidate? At the same time, I wanted to have a go and put myself forward because there was an acute shortage of priests in Australia, and a scarcity of priestly vocations.
I wanted to help people; I wanted to help the Church. If told myself ‘If I don’t put myself forward and find out, there may be possibly one less candidate for priesthood. I will never know what God might have in store for me; but if I don’t try, I’d never know.’ I also find a way to trust that if God really calls me, he will give me all the help and support I need.
So, I decided to do a year of discernment at St Charles Seminary while I did a university course. I also joined a vocations group and got some more support during that year. I joined St Charles at the end of that year and the rest came into place. And so far, God has kept his promise by helping me through the initial and ongoing formation, keeping me and preserving my vocation for nearly 24 years as a priest.
Find out more about St Charles Seminary
St Charles’ Seminary is a place of formation for Catholic priests in Western Australia. Located east of the city in Guildford, the seminary is part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth and is presently under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB. The Seminary provides a comprehensive SEVEN-year course in human, spiritual, pastoral and academic formation. The University of Notre Dame assists the Seminary in the academic formation program.
