When a man in the Archdiocese of Louisville considers a possible call to the priesthood, where does he turn? Ultimately, it will be the Vocations Office of the Archdiocese and its director, Father Michael Wimsatt.

Wimsatt’s own vocation story started in rural Kentucky in 1980 in a town of about 200, most of whom were not Catholic. The nearest Catholic church was about half an hour away. This proved to be no deterrent to his family’s faith.

Wimsatt grew up working on a farm, playing basketball and reading books. He described starting altar serving at the age of five as “a decisive moment” in his faith journey.  “Other than that, I was a typical little kid,” he said.

Early influences concerning faith, Wimsatt said, included his grandparents. “They didn’t say a lot,” he said, “but they were upright people. They shaped me a lot.”

During Wimsatt’s time as an altar server, priests also influenced him, but he never thought of them as saints. Rather, Wimsatt said, they were upright men of faith and character — funny, caring and hardworking men — “so they were easy to admire.”

Wimsatt’s vocation story throughout his childhood connect strongly to his current feelings as a priest.

He said, “I knew there was something real at the heart of what we were doing at the Mass, and I couldn’t explain it. But I knew it was taking over my life somehow. I was in awe as a little kid, and sometimes the awe that I feel now at 34 is similar to the awe of when I was just a little kid.”

In high school, Wimsatt said, “very few of my classmates were Catholic, almost none. So I was kind of a novelty.” At this point he became a lector for his parish’s Masses. At the age of 16 Wimsatt went on a Teens and 20s Encountering Christ retreat, a weekend retreat on the Paschal Mystery. “It was powerful,” he said.

Coming out of that experience, he vowed to read the Bible cover to cover. “Funny thing is,” he said, “it took me seven years to do that, but eventually I did.”

Teens today can find it challenging to stay close to their Catholic faith and the Church during their high school years. When asked how he maintained a closeness during his own high school years, there was a long silence while Wimsatt looked out a nearby window before responding.

He said, “It makes me think of a quote from C.S. Lewis: ‘I believe in Christianity the way I believe in the sun, not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’ And that speaks a whole lot to how I would have felt as a young person because I had a unique sense of wanting to know the truth and understand the beauty and goodness. I was finding that the Church, because of the depth of her teaching, had a way of explaining the deep mysteries, not only of faith but of the world, too.”

Going into college Wimsatt double-majored in English and theology at Bellarmine University. Because most of his family had been teachers, he thought for a while about becoming an English professor. In the back of his mind, however, he wondered what God was calling him to do at this point in his life?

He said, “I knew priesthood was something I needed to decide about at some point in my life. But I didn’t feel any urgency while I was in high school. I only thought about taking the next step and going to college.” He had not really begun to ask that question until college.

He decided to join the Peace Corps to teach in Malawi, Africa, after he graduated from Bellarmine. “I had thought that I would decide while I was there for two years whether or not God was calling me to be a priest,” he said.

Then things took an unexpected turn. A week before he was went to Africa, Wimsatt broke his leg. “They were going to delay departure by six months so my leg could heal. In that time I decided I was going to act on my thoughts about being a priest.”

Wimsatt entered Baltimore’s St. Mary’s Seminary in August 2003. St. Mary’s Seminary, founded in 1791 as the first Catholic seminary in the United States, provided tremendous growth for Wimsatt. 

“There’s a deep sense of interior wrestling with the reality of what you are entering into. The life itself is challenging,” he said. “But knowing you are getting ready to give your life over to God and the Church requires a deepening of faith and trust in God.

“It’s a six-year process. I met some of my closest friends in seminary, and I grew and evolved as a person more in those six years than I ever would have expected. I didn’t really know a lot about what I was getting into when I went. But it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

Wimsatt cited the important sense of camaraderie he experienced at St. Mary’s: “I really love the life of study and to be investing so much energy alongside other men who were making the same offering with their lives. I never felt like I was alone in what I was doing.”

The life of becoming a priest is built on four pillars of formation that define all aspects of seminary life — human, pastoral, spiritual and academic — Wimsatt said, “so you are always trying to attend to those principles in everything you do.”

After completing his work at the seminary, Wimsatt was ordained on May 29, 2010, at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville. He said, “It doesn’t seem that long ago.”

Following ordination, he spent his first two years of priesthood at St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown, Ky., as an associate pastor and a high school chaplain for Bethlehem High School. Then he spent two years studying for a doctorate in systematic theology at the Catholic University of America.

He chose to pursue a doctorate because the time was right.  He said, “There happened to be a window of opportunity for a priest to go, so I happened to be the one.”

In the Church there are degrees in education but they are not quite like lay degrees. There are four levels of degrees in the Church, the fourth being the doctorate. Wimsatt already had the third-level degree, a licentiate in theology. This allowed him to obtain the doctorate with four additional classes and his dissertation. He hopes to graduate this spring.

He said, “It takes a while to get your defense ready, and I’m hoping it happens this spring. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. It’s been good process and a great honor, a great opportunity.

Wimsatt’s work with the Vocation Office began last Sept. 1. “I’m still in the early months,” he said. “I work primarily with men who are in seminary and with men who are thinking about seminary or might one day think about going to seminary. I also speak regularly at schools and churches promoting the work of vocations.”

Of course, with any job comes challenges, but Wimsatt is motivated by his faith. “I have lot of energy,” he said. “I really believe in the priesthood and the Church, and I am really happy to do what I do. But sometimes we can be too casual about the importance of vocations and the faith as well.

“Some vocations can be confused or lost if the atmosphere around them is too casual. And already in my short time as vocation director, a number of people well into their careers and lives have told me that as a younger person they had a vocation to the priesthood or religious life that they ignored.”

To spur interest in the priesthood, Wimsatt started the St. Andrew Dinners. “Last fall we had three St. Andrew Dinners in which priests, and in some cases youth ministers, invited young men who are possible candidates for seminary and priesthood to gather with other priests and the Archbishop to learn more about the priesthood itself and to meet other like-minded young men.”

The dinners received positive reviews, and Wimsatt plans on having more this fall.  He said, “It’s important to think of a vocation in our own interior lives, but the St. Andrew Dinners have a good way of taking that conversation into a small-group environment.”

Wimsatt provided advice on how teens today can maintain a closeness to the faith and Church — and begin to figure out their own vocation.

He said, “A way to start is to think of where joy is in your life because the world has many ways to please us, but only God can truly make us joyful. A vocation lived out should really be a joyful experience because we don’t really mind serving if we love what we are doing. Just as Jesus came to serve, not to be served, he has a way of inviting us to live accordingly.”