BISHOP DEELEY offered advice to St. John’s students in Brunswick about finding true happiness in life during a visit on May 3.
“Do you want to be the pope one day?”
“But then I wouldn’t be able to visit you!” Bishop Deeley responded to the third grader from St. John’s Catholic School in Brunswick. “I like being in Maine. I came and I like it. This is where I want to be.”
From being treated to an art show featuring the kindergarteners’ drawings of Mary to quizzing fifth graders on how a bill becomes a law, Bishop Deeley experienced the daily life of the students and staff at St. John’s Catholic School in Brunswick during a special visit on May 3.
The bishop visited all of the classrooms in the school, trading stories and laughs with students as both the children and the bishop learned more about one another.
Many students asked the bishop how old he was when he first thought about becoming a priest.
“When I was in fourth grade, I became an altar server and got to know the priests in my parish,” the bishop told the fourth graders. “I liked what they did and how they took care of us and helped us to know more about Jesus. I knew that we needed priests then like we do now, and so I started thinking about it when I was your age. It has been a happy life.”
The bishop told the older students that the way to start to think about their calling is not as difficult as it seems.
“Just pray. Think about it and pray about it. What does God want me to do? He has a plan for all of us. It might be becoming a priest, the religious life, married, the single life, or many other things. Ask Jesus to help you know what it is he wants you to do. That’s the way you are going to find happiness in life.”
Bishop Deeley conducted an “exit interview” with the eighth graders as they prepare to enter high schools, including Saint Dominic Academy and Cheverus High School, starting next year. No students, including some who had attended the school since they were toddlers, offered a single thing they would change about their St. John’s experience.
“This school forms you as people of spirit, mind, and body,” the bishop told them. “You learn about the wonder of the world that God has created for us.”
Before he departed, Bishop Deeley had lunch with members of the school’s student council.
The bishop will make another school visit on Friday when he spends the morning with the students and staff at All Saints Catholic School in Bangor.
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