Jeremy Chisholm

Growing up in a small town in rural Ontario, I enjoyed going to mass every Sunday with my mom. My mom’s faith was strong and this was instilled in me from a young age. As I got older in elementary school, I started to be more interested in altar serving. I decided to try it out and after a while became a regular altar boy helping out every Sunday mass and Wednesday evening holy hour. The more I served at the altar, my relationship with God became stronger. I would even show up to my sports events late so I could altar serve at mass.

One day after returning home from a Divine Mercy weekend retreat, I had an anointing experience from the Holy Spirit during holy hour. As I was kneeling at the altar, praying the rosary in front of the blessed sacrament, I felt a warm and peaceful feeling of “home comfort.” I knew at this moment that God was real. I remember saying to myself: “If this is a bit of what Heaven is like, I would like to go there.”

As I went into high school, I was occasionally asked by my classmates whether I was looking to become a priest but I would always deny it due to feelings of embarrassment.

I was unsure where those feelings originated from, but I didn’t want to be viewed as a future priest, I wanted to be like a typical high school student. However, I would ponder this question continually throughout my life. My faith started to fall apart in high school, becoming more interested in how I looked and by fitting in with the crowd. My prayer began to decrease and I would altar serve less frequently.

Soon enough I was done high school and off to university in the big city of Toronto. I became more interested in girls, partying and again fitting in with the culture. I continued going to Sunday mass but only out of obligation, knowing that it would be a sin if I missed it. During my 4 years of university my relationship with God became stagnant and unfruitful.

Right before my graduation, my mom became very sick and suffered a near death experience. I was in shock as I had never experienced someone so close to me becoming ill. My initial reaction was to turn to the Lord and pray.

I started to think about how life can be taken away so quickly and if I was living a life for God or not. A question which would repeatedly circle my mind was whether I should be discerning a call to priesthood. However, I was in a relationship at that time and would ignore it.

I pursued another university degree a couple of months later, where I decided to join the student catholic club called Ryerson Catholics. This was where the Lord slowly brought me back to building a relationship with Him. I began to take Christian Catholic Outreach (CCO) faith studies, learning how my relationship with God was personal. A year later I was leading faith studies to students and friends.

In 2020, Christ became the center of my life. I had a profound experience at Rise Up where I had others pray over me and was told that Jesus (in the image of the sacred heart) was asking, “when I am coming?” Months later at a CCO summit event, I was praying in front of the blessed sacrament and heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Come Follow Me.”

A few weeks following the CCO summit event, I participated in an online CCO mission, leading faith studies to my friends. I thought the Lord would be changing the lives of my friends but He decided to do that for me as well. I began praying more about a vocation to priesthood. In prayer, I would picture the Lord in front of me at the end of my life saying “I created you to become a priest” which brought forward feelings of sadness and disappointment, due to the fear of missing out on the opportunity.

It was then that the signs from God became more evident. I was selling an extra pair of tennis shoes online and received one offer. I met up with the buyer and we ended up chatting, where he mentioned he was a seminarian tennis player. I knew this was God talking to me and revealing that I don’t have to give up playing tennis if I were to become a priest.

Throughout this time, I was in a relationship and was torn between the vocation of marriage or priesthood. I became frustrated and yelled out to the Lord to be clear with me. Two days later, a sign from the Lord came through a call from my ex-girlfriend asking to break-up. The breakup was a difficult experience to endure, but I knew I could rely on the Lord to get me through it. One morning, I was struggling with the break-up and decided to call my parish priest. He told me that right before I called him, he had been praying for increased vocations to the priesthood.

Fast forward to now, I am discerning a call to the diocesan priesthood, which fills me up with peace and joy. I look forward to continuing this journey with the Lord and building an everlasting relationship. Jesus will guide us to the path of eternity, as we take a step forward and reach out to Him.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”