ROCKFORD—Three seminarians will be ordained as diocesan priests by Bishop David Malloy on June 5 at the Cathedral of St. Peter here.

 

They talk about their lives and vocations here.

 

Rev. Mr. Aaron Downing

 

Rev. Mr. Downing’s hometown is Roscoe, and his home parishes are St. Peter in South Beloit and Church of Holy Apostles in McHenry. He attended public school and graduated in 2011 from Hononegah High School in Rockton. 

 

Baptized Catholic, he and his father “sporadically” attended Mass throughout his childhood. 

 

“It was a Holy Spirit moment being called back to the faith my sophomore year of high school,” he says, describing his feeling of “a void being filled” at an Easter Sunday Mass. He continued going to Mass and eventually began religious studies through the parish director of religious education, “and I fell in love with Christ and his Church,” he says.

 

Rev. Mr. Downing toughed through “boring” times of adoration until “after each session of studies on my way home from the parish, I would stop in to pray about what I had just learned,” he says. Today he says that the parish adoration chapel was “where my prayer life became alive.“

 

An inquiry from someone at his high school, asking if he was going to become a priest, led him to struggle with the idea versus his own plans to marry and raise a family. “The Lord had other plans,” he says, adding that during his visits to the adoration chapel, the thought of the priesthood “kept popping into my mind.”

 

Connected by a Beloit pastor to the Diocese of Madison vocations page, he learned more, eventually applying and beginning seminary studies for the Diocese of Madison. With his application, he says he thought, “Lord, it is in your hand, and I will come and see. If the priesthood is not for me, then at least I gave it a shot, and you can direct me to where you want me to go.”

 

“After two years of discernment,” he says, “I felt the Lord calling me to be a priest for my home diocese.” After the 2012-2013 school year, he began studies for the Diocese of Rockford at St. John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

 

Like most seminarians, Rev. Mr. Downing had his struggles. 

 

“The past 10 years have not always been easy, but the Lord kept calling me back for another year in formation,” he says. “The Lord in His goodness always gave a reassurance or a grace that kept me coming back. As I came to recognize the great love the Father has for me as His beloved son, and once I stopped pushing my agenda and excuses of not being good enough, I then saw (that) this call to the priesthood would truly satisfy me physically, mentally, and spiritually. As I came to this reality, my discernment shifted from ‘(Am I) being called to be a priest?’ to ‘How do I want to live out my priesthood?’”

 

After undergraduate studies, in 2016 Rev. Mr. Downing took a pastoral year, which he says was “a much-needed break.” Working in parishes also helped him with further discernment.

 

“The pastoral year really rejuvenated the call to the priesthood,” he says, adding that it gave him space from the academics and “really highlighted the pastoral element. It was during this time where I experienced the connection between what I had learned theoretically and how to apply it practically ...”

He began theological studies in fall, 2017, at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

 

As ordination day draws near, Rev. Mr. Downing says he feels “complete joy.”

 

“I will be able to celebrate Mass with and for the people of God. I will be able to bring the sacraments to the people. I will get to walk with people in the happiest and saddest moments of their lives ... .

 

“It is hard to explain, but after 10 years of being in formation, the joy is (to be) finally beginning the work in the vineyard.” 

 

Rev. Mr. James Linkenheld

 

Reflecting on his journey to the priesthood, transitional deacon James Linkenheld quotes what he calls “St. John Paul II’s beautifully true line: ‘Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure.’”

 

He grew up in Belvidere, graduating from Belvidere North High School in 2011. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for three years, enjoying “a fantastic experience working for the football team,” he says. “Towards the end of my sophomore year there, the Lord invaded my life in a disruptively peaceful way, and I had a re-conversion.”

 

Rev. Mr. Linkenheld spent the summer learning more about his Catholic faith and led a young adult Bible study at his home parish, St. James in Belvidere. 

 

“My pastor, Father Brian Geary, must have seen some of the joy and fulfillment I had in leading the group,” he says, adding that Father Geary “encouraged me to start praying about my vocation.”

 

During his junior year at U of I, he spent much of the fall semester working with college chaplain Msgr. Greg Ketcham, on discerning what God was calling him to do. 

 

“Through many conversations with him, and many more with Jesus and Mary, I heard the Lord calling me to the priesthood,” Rev. Mr. Linkenheld says. “Not wanting to waste any time, I left school at the end of junior year and began seminary formation.” 

 

He studied philosophy for three years at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward, Neb., then was assigned to study theology and continue formation at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He calls his time in seminary “a privileged time of getting to know Jesus more personally.”

 

His summer assignments (St. Bridget Parish, Loves Park; St. Thomas the Apostle, Crystal Lake; St. Patrick, Dixon), he says, “led me to so many wonderful people and deep, supportive friendships. Each of these places has been formative and our Father has used all these wonderful experiences the past seven years to form me more and more in the likeness of His Son before I truly served as administrator at St. Joseph Parish in Lena (2003-2005), then as administrator at St. Mary Parish in Morrison (2005-2008), then as pastor there (2008-2016). Father Antillon was also the administrator of Immaculate Conception Parish in Fulton and St. Patrick Parish in Albany (2014-2016).