July 17, 2024 at 9:38 a.m.
VOCATION VOICES
Father Stephen A. Yusko, STL, is parochial vicar at Blessed Sacrament, Our Lady of the Americas Church, Mater Christi Church and All Saints Church, all in Albany, as well as assistant vocations director — along with Father Daniel Quinn — for the Diocese of Albany. Father Yusko talked with The Evangelist about his priestly calling, how he, Father Quinn and Father Brian Kelly, vocations director for the Diocese, plan to grow vocations and much more in this latest edition of Vocation Voices.
TE: Talk about your background. Were you raised Catholic?
FY: I grew up in Hudson, N.Y. I have an older brother and an older sister, so I am the youngest of three. We were your average family, we went to Sunday Mass and certainly believed, but like many Catholics today, we didn’t really know our faith. So, other than Mass on Sundays, the priority in our family was more often than not the sports that we played. Once again, the faith was there, but it wasn’t seen as the big priority. It was present, but in the background.
TE: When did you start having thoughts of the priesthood?
FY: It is kind of funny because when I talk to people who have known me for the majority of my life, especially my friends, they look back and say, “How the heck are you even a priest?” I had, what we would say, is a normal upbringing. I played baseball and was captain of the team in high school, I went to parties and I dated. After high school, I went to college expecting to continue living my life as I had been, primarily focusing on family, friends and baseball. However, when I got injured (Father Yusko tore his labrum) in college at a morning practice a week before the season was going to start, I began to re-evaluate my priorities in life. The injury caused me to ask questions about my fundamental values, my tradition, my faith and to confront those hard and difficult questions: Have I been living my life as I ought? Have I been wasting my life? Is there more to life? The injury also forced me to probe my faith and to ask the question: Is Catholicism true and is it worth my time?
I found that the more I researched my faith and the more I read about the lives of the saints, the more I started to fall in love with it. In fact, it was after reading about St. Ignatius of Loyola, who almost had his leg blown off by a cannonball — an injury that caused him to re-evaluate his life — that the thought of the priesthood came into my mind. So, the thought of the priesthood first appeared in my sophomore year in college, and it would continue to resurface time and time again — often in undeniable ways — as I continued my reversion throughout college and my time as a young professional until I finally made the decision to enter seminary at the age of 26.
TE: Was there anyone locally who influenced your call or noticed this call in you?
FY: What is fascinating about a vocation, a call from God, is that it is personal. God calls YOU. And because he is calling you, he does it in a way that you will notice and hopefully respond. That being said, God knows that I can be a lone wolf, particularly when the subject is unknown to me. I will do all the research I can on my own before I reach out to someone else. Therefore, early on in my reversion, and subsequent discernment, my primary influence was the gentle movement of the Spirit. Movements that animated the desires that he had planted in my heart long before I consciously considered the priesthood. For example, I always had an attraction to the military, and the stories of those who selflessly sacrificed their lives for others. I also have always had an attraction to the martyrs; an attraction that was planted in me after hearing about the martyrdom of my patron, St. Stephen. So, early in my life — around the age of 6 or 7 — I desired to lead God’s army in battle against the devil — admittedly, it’s a bit of a strange thought for a little kid. But, as a result of this desire, when people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, after responding with “a professional baseball player,” I would say, a soldier. I translated my spiritual desire to fight for God into the physical image of a soldier.
In the beginning, then, the Holy Spirit utilized those desires of my heart to open me up to the invitation of Christ. After the Holy Spirit softened my heart a bit, and I began to frequent the sacraments more often, God did send others into my life who influenced me and noticed the call to the priesthood within me. The first to do so was a layman, Mike Naples. As I was beginning my senior year at Oneonta, a prayer for an increase in vocations to the priesthood appeared on EWTN one night. When I saw it, I asked Mary in very simple words, “If God wants me to be a priest let me know.” The next day I went to Mass. As I was walking out of the Church, a man introduced himself to me as Mr. Naples, and asked if I ever thought about the priesthood. If this wasn’t enough to satisfy my prayer from the previous evening, he also had the number to three different vocations directors, and information on discerning the priesthood. Despite our Lady answering my prayer through Mr. Naples, I “counted the cost” of accepting it at that time, and it proved to be too much for me. I wanted to get married. So, I ran from the call for a bit.
After I graduated from college, I decided to forgo the military because the question of the priesthood was still lingering and I wasn’t sure if I could pursue one if I did the other, and so I started to work for the State Assembly. During this time others began to notice the call in me. Father William Pape submitted my name to the “called by name initiative” that was occurring at that time — though I ran from that invitation too — and a number of lay people would often ask me if I ever thought about the priesthood as well, but I continued to run from it. A watershed moment occurred, however, when a great priest entered into my life by divine providence. I just got a new roommate, and when I came home from work as he was moving in, I opened the door to my apartment to not only my roommate Mike, but also, his cousin a Carmelite nun, and his brother Father Bryan Stitt, the vocations director for the Diocese of Ogdensburg. After my “what the heck is going on here” moment, I struck up a good friendship with Father Stitt, who would eventually give me a much-needed push to apply to the Diocese as a seminarian.
By that time, I was going to daily Mass, I was praying every day, and I was receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly. There was a time after college where I fell away for a bit, running away from that call, but God graciously left the door open and kept pursuing me, so he called me back to himself and gave me the grace to pursue the call that he placed within me. After becoming a seminarian I was introduced to a number of great priests who have since inspired and influenced me, including Father Winston Bath, Father John Provost, Father Joseph Carola, SJ, Monsignor James McNamara, Father Anthony Barratt, Father Anthony Ligato, Father Brian Slezak and Father James Ebert to name a few. Not to mention the countless lay faithful who have inspired and encouraged me along the way. While discerning the priesthood one thing becomes clear, a man may begin as a lone wolf, but if he wants to faithfully and fruitfully discern, he will not end that way, he’ll naturally join the pack.
TE: Did you ever doubt your calling while in formation?
FY: If you talked to Father (Anthony) Ligato, our previous vocations director, he would likely say Stephen drove me nuts. I have a personality that analyzes everything. So, for me, doubts were always there. In fact, I was constantly plagued by doubts because I always had a deep desire for marriage. Always. As a result, it seemed as though I, like Jacob, was wrestling with God. Yet, where Jacob wrestled with God for one night, I was wrestling with Him from the time I became a seminarian until my diaconate ordination. My dad still jokes around with me about this. Which reminds me, once again, of an important point, no one can discern alone. If I went at it alone, I would have left pretty early.
I remember the days leading up to my diaconate ordination. I talked to a number of people about my doubts. I talked to my best friends, I talked to close priests, I talked to Father Ligato about it. I talked to Father Barratt about it. I talked to Father Slezak about it. I talked to the Bishop about it. Each encouraged me. Finally, I talked to my dad. I said to him, “I don’t know if I can do this. I just feel a lot of doubts in my heart.” I didn’t feel at peace. My dad, in his nonchalant way, said to me, “When I was going to ask your mom to marry me, I was nervous about it and didn’t feel at peace, and that was after dating her for seven years. Sometimes you just need to take the leap and trust God that what you have been doing, what you have been pursuing for the past five years, with all the affirmations that you have received, let alone persevering all that time, is enough to let you know that it is right and it will be OK. But if you really don’t feel as though it is right, I will be ready to go golfing with you tomorrow.” It was a real spiritual battle before my diaconate ordination, one that could only be won by leaning on God and those who he put into my life to help me. In the end, I took the leap and handed my decision over to Mary to give to Christ, but it was certainly an agony in the garden moment. “Let this chalice pass from me, yet, not my will, but thine be done.” I felt peace afterwards but certainly not leading up to it.
TE: How can we balance the call to be selfless to God in a selfish society?
FY: It is a paradox, isn’t it? Society tells you that you can do anything you want to do, be anything that you want to be and then you look at the statistics for how unhappy people are. People are more unhappy today than they have ever been since we have been recording statistics on happiness. It seems as though in a society that presents itself as the most free, a society in which anybody can do whatever they want, and the most liberal in terms of how they act, people are unhappy. In my opinion, this unhappiness stems from self-seeking rather than self-giving. I would argue that every single human being has a desire to be selfless. Because that is what love truly is: willing the good of the other … desiring not to take but to give, and the highest form of giving is giving your life for others. In my life, I always saw this highest form of love in militaristic terms or in terms of marriage; giving my life to my spouse and to my kids. It was only when the Holy Spirit planted the thought and desire of priesthood in my life that I saw that the priesthood was the ultimate way that I could fulfill this great desire within me, giving my life for the glory of God and the salvation of His people. In fact, as a priest, you are being invited to participate in the greatest and most selfless act of love, the self-gift of Christ on the cross that ultimately leads to reconciliation and resurrection.
I think in our society today, we have to come to terms with the fact that we don’t always know what is right or good for us, but the person who does ultimately know what is best for us is Christ. He invites us to trust him in that question and in that call. He says, “Listen you may not have thought about this before, but I put it on your heart and you can trust. Give yourself to me, so that you may find yourself in me.” Our genuine, or “authentic” self — not the genuine self that society tells us about when we give into our basic impulses, passions and whims — is unearthed, revealed, and made like God only when we have wholeheartedly decided to give ourselves entirely to God. You find yourself only when you give yourself away to God.
If I am to be completely honest, that is the hardest struggle. The hardest struggle is to sacrifice the vision of yourself to the higher vision of what God has in store for your own life. Mary had to do with her fiat; St. John the Baptist had to do it; every saint had to do it. Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, in his humanity had to do it — “Not my will, but thine be done.” We are called to do the same thing. To conform our wills to God’s. This means we must take that leap. It means we must die to ourselves and live with, in and for God. “He must increase, I must decrease.”
TE: How have the last three years been in your priestly life?
FY: Part of my difficulty when I was in seminary was the fact that, even with my summer assignments, it was difficult for me to see myself in the parish as a priest. It was difficult for me to do that because as a seminarian you can’t do many of the things that priests do. You are also not a priest yet, you don’t have that profound and unique relationship with Christ that only a priest has by virtue of his ordination. It was hard for me to picture myself being happy in it, but I would say in my three years since being ordained, I have been incredibly happy. Have I been tired? Oh, absolutely with three parishes, four churches plus other responsibilities that I have within the Diocese in general, you are going to be exhausted, but it is a good exhaustion.
It’s like I said, it’s one where you are emptying yourself for others and you are doing it for God. I have certainly not regretted my yes to God at all, it’s actually been affirmed time and time again in my ministry. That and the fact that, as a priest, you are invited into the most intimate moments of people’s lives, when they are born, when they are dying, when they are sick. When they are celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary. You are invited to share in the most profound events in people’s lives, and what is more, you are able to give them to God and God to them in each of those moments; how much they need God in each of those moments. It’s been incredibly rewarding and I haven’t regretted a single day.
TE: Were you surprised you were asked to be part of the new vocations team?
FY: It did come as a surprise because I have only been ordained for three years, June 19 was my third anniversary. As I mentioned before I was one of those guys who didn’t reach out to a person until I was literally pushed into it by the vocations director in Ogdensburg when he handed me off to Father Ligato. God loves irony. This is evident by the fact that I was asked to help the Bishop and Father Kelly with vocations.
TE: What do you think you can bring to the new job?
FY: Just the fact that I am an ordinary guy with a normal upbringing. I dealt with the questions that kids deal with these days. I dealt with the temptations that society tempts people with these days. I think what I bring to it in general is just the simple fact that I am an ordinary guy that Christ decided to call to the priesthood for one reason or another. I can help young men navigate this because of my own struggles with discernment and my own questions with the faith that I wrestled with when I was having my reversion in college. I can help guys in that avenue and also help them to see the beauty of the faith, the beauty of the calling, to move past themselves and open themselves up to God. That was my big problem, I sought to hold on to what I hoped my life would be and what I would have, rather than resigning myself to God’s will; what He willed me to be and have. Who He wanted me to become.
TE: How do we grow vocations to the priesthood and religious life?
FY: The responsibility of fostering vocations cannot simply be left up to priests. The first person who asked me explicitly about being a priest was a layman after daily Mass. The responsibility falls on all Catholics especially the laity because it is the laity who see the guys both inside and outside the church. It is one of those things where the laity do need to accept the responsibility and for the most part they do. What Father Kelly is trying to do, and what we are trying to do with him, is to make sure that we implant in every single parish a culture of vocations. A culture of vocations in which the priest as well as the parishioners, and especially families, know what to look for in a guy and are not afraid to walk up to him and say “Hey, have you ever thought about the priesthood?” when they see those qualities in him. And to be able to support that guy as a parish in his discernment and the call in general.
Just because the parishioner feels the man has the qualities to be a priest doesn’t mean he has the call to be a priest. Yet, the first step is having people equipped with the ability to discern the qualities that make a good priest, and who have the courage to ask when they see a man who appears to have them. Let’s invite him to see. Maybe he is called, maybe he isn’t. Either way he can’t go wrong because he will become a better man by discerning the call in general. The seeds have to be planted everywhere, and by all — in our families, in our schools, in the workplace. In a world where the supernatural is being eclipsed by the natural it should not be surprising that supernatural vocations are being forgotten and lost. Therefore, “vocation” needs to become a term that is recognized and taken seriously once again in the Church and throughout the secular world, especially vocations in which the person is consecrated totally to God, vocations like the priesthood and religious life.
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