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In a quiet conference room at the diocesan Pastoral Center in Albany, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger was at an advantage: After months of being interviewed as the new Bishop of the Albany Diocese, he was the interviewer.

"I've done that on panels, but it was the first time I ever did it on a radio station," he told The Evangelist afterward. "I thought it was a lot of fun; you can listen to other people instead of yourself."

The Bishop spent an hour interviewing Revs. James Davis and Brian Slezak, the Albany Diocese's two newest priests. The interview will air Aug. 18, 5 p.m., on the only Catholic radio station in the Albany Diocese, WOPG 1460 AM. (It may also air on WOPG's 89.9 FM station, but that is still in the works.)

The two priests, ordained in June at Albany's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, were the first to be ordained during Bishop Scharfenberger's tenure. Father Slezak is now associate pastor at Blessed Sacrament parish in Albany; Father Davis, at Holy Trinity in Johnstown and Holy Spirit in Gloversville.

The Bishop launched right in with questions about vocations and the priests' experiences since ordination.

"Whatever made you think about becoming a priest?" he asked Father Slezak, 30, who spoke of his father's dairy farm and his parents' quiet faith keeping thoughts of priesthood far away until high school, when a suggestion from a teacher prompted him to attend a discernment session with Rev. James Walsh of the diocesan Vocations Team. (Father Walsh is now pastor of St. Pius X parish in Loudonville.)

The future Father Slezak was shocked to realize he agreed with everything Father Walsh said about the priesthood. "Lord, I really hope you're not calling me to the priesthood...but I think you are," he prayed afterward - and went on to discern that he did indeed have a vocation. (Read his and Father Davis' full vocation stories at www.evangelist.org.)

Father Davis, 60, told Bishop Scharfenberger he'd run away from his vocation for 40 years. Father Davis was a teacher in Harlem until his retirement, when Rev. Thomas Morrette, pastor of All Saints on the Hudson parish in Mechanicville/Stillwater, told him, "You're not going to retire. God has plans for you."

Father Davis had studied for the priesthood for a time in his younger years and thought it was too late to become a priest now. He soon learned otherwise. "At my late age, it's a great gift to be able to do this," he said in his interview.

Bishop Scharfenberger talked about a 2012 survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University that found 12 percent of Catholic men and 10 percent of women had considered a vocation to religious life at least "a little seriously" - and that Catholics were twice as likely to consider a vocation if others encouraged them to do so.

The Bishop added that God draws out of the strengths and weaknesses of people in religious life the ability to accomplish what's needed, and asked the new priests whether they'd ever felt "something else operating inside your life that's not coming from you."

Both gave an emphatic "yes." Father Slezak said he and Father Davis had discussed their experience of priesthood so far and had come up with the same adjective: "weird," meaning "supernatural."

"I used to fear giving a homily," he explained, describing working on each homily for a week when he was still studying for the priesthood and being chided, "What are you going to do when you only have 15 minutes?"

"Since being a priest, the burden has been lifted, and I don't know why," Father Slezak concluded, adding that he's experienced the same feeling when hearing confessions: that the Holy Spirit is working through him.

"I agree with the word 'weird,'" Father Davis told Bishop Scharfenberger. As he has administered the sacrament of the sick to someone in the hospital, he said, a different prayer than he'd planned has sometimes come out of his mouth, and he's asked himself, "Where did that come from?"

Interviewing his two newest priests, "for me, was a moving experience, listening to their stories," Bishop Scharfenberger told The Evangelist. WOPG's Tom Threlkeld hopes to do more interviews by the Bishop, proposing a series called "Gifts of Faith with Bishop Ed."[[In-content Ad]]

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