Walking Confidently Toward Priesthood, Luke Suarez To Be Ordained Saturday At St Rose

By Shannon Hicks

When Luke Suarez is ordained as a priest at St Rose of Lima Church this weekend, from his role as transitional deacon, he will be surrounded by two families: his parents, siblings, cousins, et al, will be filling a number of the pews, as will his St Rose family, which has surrounded him with love and support since his first summer assignment to the Newtown parish four summers ago.

Bishop William Lori will do the ordination ceremony, which will also have a number of priests and deacons from across the diocese in attendance. Deacon Luke is the only priest being ordained on Saturday, May 14, at 10 am. He will then celebrate his first Mass of Thanksgiving at noon on Sunday, May 15.

“That will also be a significant event. I will be the principal celebrant of that Mass,” Deacon Luke said Monday morning, seated in the living room of the Church Hill Road parsonage.

“It’s very exciting. But I’m also a bit in denial,” he then admitted. “It’s been like planning for a wedding. You plan so much for the future, it’s hard to believe it’s really done.”

The journey into priesthood for Deacon Luke, who is 26, has been six and a half years officially. He thinks, though, that he has always been destined for this moment. His mother, he said Monday morning, recently found a photograph the family believes was taken when Luke was in third grade. The photo shows the boy holding a monstrance he had constructed of Legos, smiling broadly.

“Here I am, very happy, holding something I have constructed that would be used at Mass. It’s pretty evident I had a real inkling for religious things since I was very young,” he said. He first felt the call to the priesthood when he began, in second grade, serving with his older brothers at daily Mass.

Yet that child, who was primarily home schooled through much of his elementary and high school years, readily admits he was unsure for many years whether a life devoted to God was his calling.

Luke Patrick Suarez was part of the inaugural class at Ave Maria University, in Naples, Fla. The liberal arts school which includes in its mission “faithfulness to the teaching of the Church” opened its doors for its first academic year in August 2003. Luke spent his freshman year studying, even dating, but was not yet committed to the church.

During his sophomore year of college, however, a defining moment occurred. That was when, he said, he decided “to look into what I called ‘this priesthood thing.’”

“Retrospect is 20/20, of course, and I clearly remember a night when I was on the phone with my mother, sobbing, on the floor of my college dorm room,” he said. He was upset with the world, his friends, himself. He was very unhappy.

“My mother said to me, ‘Luke, perhaps the reason you are so unhappy is you are running away from a vocation with a priesthood you know you have.’ That cut me straight to the heart. I knew she was right.”

That was when he joined the university’s pre-theologate program, still unsure that it was right for him.

It was apparent almost immediately that his mother was right.

“It was amazing. Before that, people would walk up to me and say ‘Are you OK? Did someone die in your family?’ And then after that, they were like ‘Something’s different. What changed?’

“Not only was I feeling it, but it was becoming visually manifested too,” he said. “To many people I encountered it was obvious that something had changed for the good.

“When I finally gave God this much room,” he said, holding up his hand, his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, “a little bit of room, He completely transformed my life.”

Luke was accepted during his senior year by the Diocese of Bridgeport to study, which was when he was sent to Mount St Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. His first summer assignment was at St Rose, which provided his first connection with the diocese. Summer assignments continued at St Joseph’s in Danbury, St John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, and St Joseph’s in Shelton, but when he had breaks in school or any other opportunity, “I came back here,” he said. “I would come back to work in the school, or help with the youth group, assist Monsignor [Robert Weiss, the pastor of St Rose] in any way I could. So really, over the past four years I have come to know St Rose very well.”

He has also, for the past six years, spent much of his time discerning where he is being called. The life of a priest is not a life of thrills and honors but of service, he said, in the life of Christ. As he continues to “firmly walk toward the priesthood” on Saturday, Deacon Luke has continued to not only experience peace with his decision but also excitement.

“All of these talents and abilities were suddenly being engaged, and challenged, and stretched in ways beyond anything I ever dreamed,” he said, smiling, which he does a lot these days.

Monsignor Weiss is confident in Deacon Luke and his faith.

“I have had the privilege of watching him mature through his formation, and he is more than ready,” the pastor of St Rose said on May 10. “He is an extremely faithful young man, really devoted to the Church and what the Church stands for.

“He’s really an enthusiastic young man,” Monsignor Weiss continued. “His heart is really with Christ and that, I think, is what everybody really admires about him.”

Deacon Luke graduated from Mount St Mary’s on May 6.

“I’ve been in school 21 years, a long time,” he said. “I graduated last Friday, praise God,” he added with a laugh.

An Exciting Time

This period of his life, he said this week, continues to be a very exciting time.

He continues to celebrate the Easter season, and will take his next step on Friday, May 13, when he learns where Bishop Lori will place him for his priesthood assignment. He and his parents will go to the bishop’s residence that morning and before they gather for brunch, Deacon Luke and Bishop Lori will go into the bishop’s private chapel. That is when he will learn of his assignment in one of the 87 parishes in the diocese.

After that, Deacon Luke and Bishop Lori will join his new pastor, and Luke’s parents, for brunch. The assignment will be officially announced during the ordination on Saturday.

In a very unusual move, the bishop has decided to allow Deacon Luke to be ordained in Newtown.

“It’s very uncommon to be ordained within a parish, at least in the custom of our diocese. Typically, the ordinations occur at St Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport, which is the principal church for the entire diocese,” said the deacon.

“I wouldn’t pretend to know the mind of the bishop,” he said, “but it’s really wild for a parish. I was ordained a deacon here last year and I think he was impressed. St Rose is a beautiful parish, and he knows that too.”

“It’s really an incredible honor, for any parish,” agrees Monsignor Weiss.

“It’s really one way the bishop is honoring our parish and the good things we do here,” he continued. “The fact that he has asked to come here, to Luke’s home parish, is really a tribute to the parish, to the people of St Rose.”

Deacon Luke was the fifth of ten children born to Teresa and Mario Suarez, who live in Slingerlands, N.Y., just west of Albany. He has five brothers and four sisters, ranging from age 11 to 35, all of whom will be in Newtown for the ordination.

In addition, most of his mother’s 13 siblings and most of his father’s seven siblings plan to attend Saturday’s ordination, as well as the spouses of Luke’s five married siblings. Quite a few cousins, “and 19 nieces and nephews, plus one more on the way,” will also at be at St Rose for the event.

“God has blessed my family in so many ways, especially in children,” he said by way of understatement. “It will certainly be a family reunion.”

“It will be a family reunion of two sorts, both my birth family and the parish, which I also consider very much my family.

“It is really a time for rejoicing.”