Australian Rosary group helps a young man discover his vocation

Dylan Asmus always keeps a rosary in his pocket. “You never know when you’re going to need it,” he said. Dylan, 24, has joined the residents at Canali House in Herston, Australia where he is discerning a call to the priesthood. He credits his vocational call to a Rosary prayed at his home church, Our Lady of the Way, Landsborough, in Caloundra parish. He had been a lapsed Catholic and “perpetual university student” when he started practicing his faith in August 2019.

He said like most relapsed Catholics he was hit by a wave of “super holiness” upon returning to Mass. The local sacristan had gone on holiday and Dylan was nominated by women at the church to take over, thinking that might “scratch the holiness itch” and it would be done with. After Mass he always stayed for adoration but never went to the prayer group, except on the day he started his sacristan work because he was learning the ropes and didn’t want to seem rude. “I sat at the back of the prayer group in a little corner at the table and was dragged to the head of the table,” he said with a laugh. “It turned out that day they were praying for vocations.”

He remembered the group put the Holy Spirit Seminary calendar with a grid of portraits of the current seminarians in front of the group to focus their prayer intentions. “If you look there’s a space that’s blank; they couldn’t fill the whole grid out,” Dylan said. “We prayed the Rosary and at the end of it that’s when I said in my head, ‘Okay, I can do this, I can be a priest, I want to be a priest.’”

He said he opened his eyes again and he was looking exactly at that blank spot on the grid – his spot, perhaps. When he first said “yes,” he said he felt supreme peace. His mum, who died in 2012, had been the “big Catholic” in his family. “She got us baptized when we were babies, and First Communion and Confirmation,” he said.

In her stead, Dylan’s dad and his two younger brothers were all supportive of his decision to discern priesthood. The support the Landsborough church community gave was “huge.” Dylan said there was no pressure but as soon as he explained his decision, he said everyone supported him emotionally and spiritually.

Adapted from an article by Joe Higgins in the Catholic Leader