A NEW BALLGAME!

It was a series of events that led Deacon Stephen Yusko to the priesthood.

And it all started with an injury.

Deacon Yusko was recruited to play baseball at SUNY Oneonta, and after spending one year at the University of Alabama, he transferred to Oneonta where he made the team.

“Right before we started the season, we were supposed to go to Florida that February and I dislocated my shoulder early in the morning and I had to get labrum surgery on it and I was out for the entire season,” said Deacon Yusko, who will be one of five deacons ordained to the priesthood on June 19 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. “For me, it was a reorientation of what is important. Prior to that, everything in my life was more or less orientated toward my friends and sports.”

While recovering from his injury, Deacon Yusko, 30, started to delve into the faith, buying a catechism study bible, reading biographies of saints, including St. Ignatius of Loyola — a personal favorite — and that is when the first inkling of the priesthood surfaced.

“My sophomore year is when it first came up,” he said. “I remember I was reading a part of St. Ignatius’ biography and it popped up in my head and I laughed at it and shuffled it out.”

When he was cut from the baseball team the next fall, he started to dive even deeper into the faith but the priesthood was still not in the forefront of his mind.

“I was still not the most outstanding Catholic that is for sure. I was hanging out, going to certain parties in college,” he said. “That is the beauty of a conversion; God converts people in a manner that is conducive to them. He is not going to force this massive conversion on somebody whose heart can’t take it yet. I was like that; it was very gradual.”

Gradually he started praying the rosary every day in his junior year in college, read his first book by a saint — “St. Augustine’s Confessions” — and was going to Mass whenever he could his senior year.

During his senior year of college, he had another “big moment.”

“At the beginning of my senior year I was praying one night, I was actually watching EWTN late at night, and a prayer came on for vocations and I pretty much nonchalantly, like a normal conversation, asked Mary, ‘If God wants me to be a priest, let me know.’” Yusko said. “So then I went to daily Mass the next day and after Mass as I was walking out, a guy approached me and he asked if I had ever thought about being a priest. And I hadn’t seen him before.”

The man was Michael Naples, whose son was a priest, and he gave Deacon Yusko books on being a priest and the vocation directors’ numbers for the Dioceses of Albany, Ogdensburg and Syracuse and a DVD on St. Mary’s Seminary and University.

“I pretty much took this as an answered prayer,” Yusko said. “I was very happy about it for a week, but since I was dating a girl at the time, and after thinking about it more, I said, ‘No way.’ I was thinking about marriage. I ran away from it for a bit and I kept running away from it.”

The vocation of marriage was something that was infused in Deacon Yusko — who has an older brother, Robert, 34, and sister, Danielle, 32 — by the unbreakable bond between his parents, Bob and Gisele, while growing up in Hudson.

“My parents instilled the necessity of the faith and of prayer in us, if not through words, definitely through their relationship,” he said. “That was actually one of the biggest impacts I had in my life; my parents, their marriage in general, how strong it was and how much they supported my brother, my sister and I.”

But the priesthood was something that he could not run away from for much longer. After graduating with a degree in business economics, Deacon Yusko worked for the New York State Assembly in Albany for three years. While looking for a new roommate, his cousin mentioned a friend of his named Michael Stitt who needed a place to live. Turns out Stitt’s brother is Father Bryan Stitt, who is currently a pastor in the Diocese of Ogdensburg, but was at the time, the vocations director for Ogdensburg.

“I walk into my apartment after work one day, as Michael is moving in, but rather than seeing Mike, I see a priest and a Carmelite nun. And I am like what the heck is going on,” Deacon Yusko said. “I actually have a big devotion to the Carmelites so I was surprised by that. It was the one weekend in four years that (Stitt’s cousin) could come and visit.”

Deacon Yusko became good friends with Father Stitt who put him in touch with Father Anthony Ligato, vicar for Vocations for the Diocese of Albany.

“Father Stitt gave me the push that I needed to start the discernment process, and to start it in a way that was formal,” Yusko said. “He texted me … and he was like I talked to Father Ligato and he is expecting a phone call from you. It was one of those things where a guy needs a push and God gives him one.”

Deacon Yusko began his formation in Albany then continued at Cathedral Seminary House of Formation in Douglaston with Deacon Matthew Duclos before going to Pontifical North American College in Rome. He is currently working on his license in moral theology.

With his studies completed for now, Deacon Yusko is focused on his ordination.

“As compared to my Diaconate Ordination, I’m a lot calmer now. My Diaconate Ordination I was terrified because that is when you first take the promise of celibacy,” he said. “That, for me, was the biggest promise because I have always had that great desire for marriage and it was an oblation on my part, it was a giving over to God on my part. It was difficult but I haven’t regretted it at all. It is one of those things where you give and God gives more.”

And he is ready to put into action what he has learned in seminary.

“When you are in seminary for so long, (Deacons Yusko and Duclos have spent five years in formation) it can get tiring because you are working hard and studying hard but in terms of the interaction that you have and the fruitfulness of your ministry, it is not really there,” he said. “There are not really too many chances to minister to actual people and because you are moving around, you don’t have the stability of a parish community. There is something to say for day-in, day-out interactions with your parish and the parishioners that has more of a feel of a family instead of the perpetual studying. To be there for the people and providing the sacraments for the people and trying to help the people encounter Christ is something I am very much looking forward to.”