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At a time when most people are thinking about retirement or relaxing at a lake house, Deacon James O’Rourke is about to embark on a second career.

But it is one that he has been discerning and called to for well over a decade. 

“I am eligible for priesthood retirement and I haven’t even started yet,” O’Rourke quipped in an interview with The Evangelist. “I will be celebrating my first Mass on my 70th birthday, June 19, at Blessed Sacrament.” 

O’Rourke, along with Deacon Russell Bergman, will be ordained on Saturday, June 18, at 11 a.m., at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany by Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger.

O’Rourke grew up in Albany — he was born at Brady Hospital, which is the current home of the Pastoral Center — and attended St. Teresa of Avila School on New Scotland Avenue as part of a typical Catholic family.

“I went to St. Teresa’s School and we had to be at the 9 o’clock Mass on Sunday,” he said. “They took attendance and we processed from the school into the church. I remember going to Auriesville Shrine on parish-centered days back when they did that and Auriesville Shrine would be packed. … My mother, every night, said the rosary with Fulton J. Sheen on the radio.”

The call to the priesthood was not something that came to him at a young age, but O’Rourke knew that he wanted to do something to help people. He has been mainly a respiratory therapist for over 45 years and worked at Albany Medical Center, St. Peter’s Hospital and Samaritan Hospital to name a few. O’Rourke married his first wife, Joan, in 1975 and had two children, Patrick and Mairin. He was widowed in 1981, remarried a few years later and adopted his second wife’s daughter, Carrie. His second marriage lasted nearly 20 years. It was after his first wife died, though, that O’Rourke started to turn more deeply to God. 

“I had been a Eucharistic minister at St. Teresa’s but by the ’90s I started doing more things like helping out preparing for the Triduum at Christ the King,” said O’Rourke, who moved to Guilderland with his second wife. “I got involved with lectoring. I got more involved with church-related functions and ministry at the time that I was going through the divorce. I was considering the diaconate, of course, but I couldn’t do that unless I was divorced and annulled so I had to go through that process.”

And that is when the call to the priesthood continued to grow louder. Around 2006, he was considering a priestly or a diaconate vocation.

“I no sooner started diaconate formation and I said, ‘This is good but this isn’t what I am fully called to,’ ” he said. “I finished the call through the diaconate but I still could not turn off the call to the priesthood even though by this time I had been suggested to stay where you are two or three times.”

But the call never abated and O’Rourke’s persistence paid off. During the “Called by Name” initiative in the Diocese, several priests and parishioners had mentioned that he would make a good priest. If he had a “light-bulb” moment, it was when O’Rourke went to an eight-day retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House prior to joining the diaconate. 

“My application for the diaconate was sitting on (the diocesan director of Pastoral Planning) Frank Berning’s desk, and I had a very strong confirmation of the priesthood call at that eight-day retreat,” O’Rourke said. “And it wasn’t just me coming to this realization, it was the priest, Father Leo Manglaviti, SJ. (I said) ‘I am hoping to be accepted to the diaconate, I am waiting to hear.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you need to be a priest.’ And he kept saying that and there were other people that said that. That was a real clinching moment.”

Later while working as a chaplain at St. Peter’s Hospital, O’Rourke saw the news that someone near his age was going through formation.

“I see Mike Melanson is in formation for the priesthood,” O’Rourke said about Father Melanson who was ordained in 2019. “His wife died a couple of years before and I said I’ll be darned Mike is going to be 74. I called Father (Anthony) Ligato (diocesan director of vocations) and he said let’s get you in to talk to the Bishop. I had interviews, went down for the psych eval and here I am.”

Although O’Rourke, who went to seminary at Pope St. John XXIII, is nearing retirement age before even being ordained, he brings a wealth of life experiences to the vocation.

“There isn’t a lot I haven’t dealt with. Yes, I have been widowed. Yes, I was a single parent. I have been married, yes. I have gone through divorce. I have gone through career changes. Lost jobs, fired from jobs,” he said. “I can identify with a lot of problems that burden our parishioners and people find themselves in the middle of. And my answer to them is open your Bible and turn to God because that is what I did when I lost my first wife and it helped me immensely to get through. I am a believer in the old line, ‘God doesn’t give you anything more than you are capable of handling.’ 

“I firmly believe that but you don’t always get an instruction booklet. Ok, you went through a mess, here’s how you handle it. That is not how it works. It works by prayer, the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. My big thing is Scripture, Lectio Divina, meditation on different things. … I just open the Scriptures and let God speak to me.”

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