When Deacon Nick Vance arrived for a semester in Rome seven years ago as an undergraduate at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, pursuing the priesthood was not in his plans.
“I could have gone a million different directions in my life,” he said. Various ideas were filling his mind at that point, and he saw his time in Rome as an opportunity to ponder many different paths, both for career and vocation.
That’s not to say priesthood was completely out of the picture. He just wasn’t ready to make a move toward a vocation he had dismissed from his mind a few years earlier.
“I had thought about it (priesthood) a lot growing up,” said Deacon Vance, 27, who attended St. Joseph in West St. Paul in his childhood. “But I kind of closed the door to it in high school. I was a young punk and didn’t really know what I wanted. … The faith just seemed like a bunch of rules to me that I wasn’t all that interested in following.”
The door to a priestly vocation started opening after he began his freshman year at St. Thomas. First, there was finding and hanging out with the “right crowd” and “praying every day.” Then came an effort to “grow as a disciple,” a process that took place over his freshman and sophomore years.
At the start of his junior year, he said he felt “this gentle knocking on the door of my heart.” From there, he entered a phase “of the Lord slowly working on my heart and then kind of walloping me there in Rome.”
What happened during that semester “really sealed the deal,” he said. “I applied for seminary when I got back and then I entered right after graduation.”
One of the key things during his semester in Rome, he said, was having three priests serving as chaplains for the students. All three were there for doctoral studies and volunteered to be chaplains.
“Honestly, they changed my life — just to see their witness of love for the Lord and love for serving him,” he said. “I’m still in relationship with all these priests today, including Father Evan Koop, who was over there and is now my formator at SPS (The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul).”
Deacon Vance got his undergraduate degrees in Catholic Studies and in communications and journalism. He said both degrees will be useful in his priestly ministry, especially in writing and delivering homilies.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this,” he said. “The background in journalism has helped me focus on: How do I give people a simple message that sticks?”
He already has some good material to include in future homilies. One thing is having a father who was just ordained a permanent deacon in December. Deacon Chris Vance was part of a class of 18 that tied for the greatest number of men ordained to the permanent diaconate. Not only was Deacon Nick there, but he took part in the vesting rite that takes place during the ordination Mass.
From now until May 25, the two are both serving as deacons, including together during Mass at Transfiguration in Oakdale, where Deacon Chris and his wife, Leila, are parishioners. Deacon Nick has found great inspiration in watching his father respond to the call to the diaconate and walk through several years of formation.
“My dad is a man of deep prayer and dedication,” Deacon Nick said. “I remember growing up, my dad worked construction for the longest time. He was a carpenter. He would have to get up really early so that he could drive across town to get to the job site and put in long hours there. But, he would get up even earlier so that he would have time to pray.”
That example is now helping form a priest who wants to bring to others what he has learned from his father “about faith, about what true strength, what true humility looks like.”
Deacon Nick does acknowledge that both he and his father being ordained deacons is “a little bit strange because I beat him to it. I’ve jokingly told him several times: ‘Now, just remember, for all eternity, I will have been a deacon 210 days longer than you.’”
He calls it “the Lord’s sense of humor.” At the same time, he said “we get to share in this amazing gift from the Lord.”
As he anticipates moving from the diaconate to the priesthood, he is looking forward to one aspect of ministry in particular — confession.
“The Lord has been so good to me through the sacrament of confession,” he said. “I hope and pray that the Lord makes me a good confessor. I’m so excited to share this gift that I drank so deeply from. I want to be able to bring that to other people.”
