{"id":2109,"date":"2007-11-27T15:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-27T15:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/encountering-divine-mercy-and-a-young-man-with-a-mission.html"},"modified":"2007-11-27T15:29:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-27T15:29:00","slug":"encountering-divine-mercy-and-a-young-man-with-a-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/encountering-divine-mercy-and-a-young-man-with-a-mission.html","title":{"rendered":"Encountering Divine Mercy — and a young man with a mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> The roving religion writer for the Washington Post, Christy McKerney, popped by Our Lady of Divine Mercy in Massachusetts the other day, and had a memorable encounter<\/a> with a young seminarian: <\/p>\n

Only Brother Andrew Davy, a 26-year-old American University graduate in philosophy, lingers to talk with me about faith.<\/p>\n

Brother Davy, who lives in Washington, D.C., is young and in love with his calling. He is in love with the Trinitarian God; in love with the rituals that have tied him to Catholicism his whole life; in love with his faith. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s trust in God,\u201d says Brother Davy, trying to explain his charismatic Catholic\u2019s view of faith, \u201cthe Trinitarian God: The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davy\u2019s friend and superior Father Anthony Gramlich, the 35-year-old rector at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy, would explain faith this way: \u201cFaith is believing in something, maybe that we cannot always rationalize. That doesn\u2019t mean that faith is not rational. \u2026 You can\u2019t point to God, but he\u2019s there. You can\u2019t point to love. It\u2019s a metaphysical reality, but we know that love exists. We do take a lot of things on faith actually, more than we think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brother Davy has been taking things on faith his whole life. <\/p>\n

He was raised Catholic and has about him the innocence of a man who has never felt scorned or abandoned by his divinity. \u201cI grew up at an early age\u2026of really experiencing faith as something alive and dynamic,\u201d he tells me. \u201cIt was like the very air that you breathe — everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

With one more year of seminary left, Davy has taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is ready to dedicate his life to the Lord.<\/p>\n

No great tragedy has pushed him toward this decision to enter the priesthood. <\/p>\n

His real relationship with God — the point that he said he really knew within his heart that God loved him — began in ninth grade when he had trouble making friends and adjusting to a new school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had gone through kind of a difficult first year, or first semester, and really kind of got to a point of just kind of crying out to the Lord, saying, \u2018Lord, I feel like I\u2019m kinda at the bottom\u2019,\u201d Brother Davy remembers. \u201cI found there was a point for myself that I was recalling just that child\u2019s song, \u2018Jesus loves me, this I know,\u2019 just very, very basic. \u2026 It was almost like the Lord just kinda just touched me and that song became very real in my heart, that I was loved by God and it wasn\u2019t just an intellectual ascent.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more at the link<\/a>, and it’s well worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The roving religion writer for the Washington Post, Christy McKerney, popped by Our Lady of Divine Mercy in Massachusetts the other day, and had a memorable encounter with a young seminarian: Only Brother Andrew Davy, a 26-year-old American University graduate in philosophy, lingers to talk with me about faith. Brother Davy, who lives in Washington,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\nEncountering Divine Mercy - and a young man with a mission - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/encountering-divine-mercy-and-a-young-man-with-a-mission.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Encountering Divine Mercy - and a young man with a mission - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The roving religion writer for the Washington Post, Christy McKerney, popped by Our Lady of Divine Mercy in Massachusetts the other day, and had a memorable encounter with a young seminarian: Only Brother Andrew Davy, a 26-year-old American University graduate in philosophy, lingers to talk with me about faith. 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