Friar and podcast host says St. Thérèse gave him confidence to become a priest

CNA Staff, Oct 1, 2024 / 04:00 am

Beginning Oct. 1, the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a 28-day podcast will guide listeners through “Story of a Soul,” the autobiography of St. Thérèse. Season 3 of Ascension’s “Catholic Classics” podcast on the popular saint will be hosted by Dominican Father Jacob Bertrand Janczyk and Father Michael-Joseph Paris, OCD. 

Paris is a Carmelite friar, a member of the same religious order to which St. Thérèse of Lisieux belonged in the late 1800s. He recently spoke to CNA about his own vocation story, the role St. Thérèse played in it, and why this beloved saint’s story is so important for Catholics today. 

Paris said he had a big conversion at the age of 18. “I really had made my life a mess and I was going in a bad direction,” he told CNA. He separated himself from the friends he was hanging out with and began to pray. 

“I just started asking God for help and he just had a certain way of showing me that he was answering my prayers, even though I was such a mess, and he loved me even though I was in a bad spot,” he said. “I started reading the Bible a little bit, the Gospels; the word of Christ just hit me to the heart that my biggest problem was that I didn’t love, that I was so selfish and so caught in myself, and his words just opened that up to me that love is the only path and following Jesus is the only way to really be able to live that love.”

After going back to Mass and confession, within two years Paris was seriously considering the priesthood. He thought that if Jesus had filled him with so much love and happiness, “Why not make my whole life about this?”

A book that helped him in his discerning process was “Story of a Soul.” He shared that reading St. Thérèse’s story gave him the confidence “that if God was calling me to be a priest, I could do it.”

“Before that I was like, ‘There’s no way I could be a priest’ … and reading St. Thérèse was like, ‘Wow, here’s this girl who is just so confident in God’s power in her life and what he could do for her, through her, and why can’t I have that confidence?’” he recalled. “So that really opened me up to the possibility of the priesthood. So I attribute a lot of my vocation to St. Thérèse.”

Paris decided to enter the seminary and after eight years was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Three years into his assignment, he attended a retreat at a Carmelite convent and took with him a book on Carmelite spirituality. It was here that “everything changed in me. I was like, ‘My whole life should be about this.’”

Within two years of that experience, Paris became a Carmelite novice and took his final vows in 2022 as a Discalced Carmelite friar of the Province of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He shared that St. Thérèse also played a role in his discernment of becoming a Carmelite. 

“Every time I would visit a place or have a big moment of vocational discernment, there would be an image of Thérèse there. Thérèse just made herself very clear, very present that this was a good path,” he said. 

Paris reflected on St. Thérèse’s feelings of inadequacy that she experienced in her life as a young person as a reason so many can relate to this beloved saint.

“That sense of inadequacy, that sense of need … I think that experience [is one] that we can truly connect to St. Thérèse with and she really can teach us how to get out of ourselves and just live a life of love, regardless of what we feel like we’re not great at or whatever is in us that kind of holds us back,” he explained.

He advised that when moments of self-doubt enter our minds, do not to “give in to self-pity” and instead “turn that right to confidence in God.”

As for the podcast, Paris said he hopes listeners will “take away that they are profoundly loved with all their limitations, that they are infinitely and totally loved, and that they can have total confidence that God will make them into great saints, however that will look.”

The new season of Ascension’s “Catholic Classics” podcast follows Season 2, which focused on another great book, “The Confessions of St. Augustine.” The daily podcast also offers Catholic commentary and reflection.