Ambria Hammel/CATHOLIC SUN

Fr. Paul Sullivan, left, helps men — such as Cody McDonald and Jimmy Wraith — through the seminary as the diocese’s vocations director.

FR. PAUL SULLIVAN

Vocations director helps
seminarians discern God’s plan

Working as a certified public accountant at Fourth Street and Van Buren in downtown Phoenix several years ago, Fr. Paul Sullivan watched as construction crews labored to build the Diocesan Pastoral Center across the street.

Little did he know he would one day work inside the local Church’s headquarters, helping men discern a call to the priesthood as director of the Office of Vocations.

Fr. Sullivan grew up in Monroe, a suburban town north of New York City, the seventh of eight children born to a devout Catholic couple.

“I wouldn’t be a priest without the prayer of my parents,” Fr. Sullivan said. “They were life-giving parents, self-giving parents who were open to God’s plans and had they not been, I would not have existed.”

He said that he thanked them for that openness to life on his ordination day. “They could have stopped at two and gotten a boat,” Fr. Sullivan said.

He was in fifth or sixth grade when he first started thinking that he might become a priest someday, but it would be another 15 years before that calling became clear.

After graduating from the University of Albany with a degree in accounting, Fr. Sullivan came to Arizona, joining three of his brothers who were working and studying in the area. He joined Resurrection Parish in Tempe and got to know the priests there.

After a period of discernment, he entered St. Meinrad Seminary and was ordained a priest in 2007. He served one year at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Glendale, a parish he came to love. 

“It was great. They have a big school and it was bustling and exciting and bilingual,” Fr. Sullivan said. The soft-spoken priest learned Spanish during a 10-week immersion program in Guatemala in 2004.

As director of the Office of Vocations, Fr. Sullivan said he walks and discerns with the young men preparing to become priests. He also guides those who are considering entering the seminary.

His other mission is to help the diocese and its pastors and parishes create what he calls a “culture of vocations.”

“That’s a culture where young people grow up knowing that God has a great plan for them,” Fr. Sullivan said, “where they grow up with a prayer life and a relationship with Christ.”

He wants parents to know that “from all eternity God has had His will for each one of our lives,” Fr. Sullivan said. “Instead of saying, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ it’s better to say, ‘What is God’s desire for your life?’

 “Nationwide, we’re realizing it’s a healthy Catholic culture that produces vocations, not merely a director of vocations. You’re going from little programs to culture,” Fr. Sullivan said. 

Stressing that his job is not to be a salesman, he said vocations to the priesthood will come, but not the way one might think.

“The spiritual health of a community grounded in the sacraments is what produces vocations. Period. It’s God’s work not ours,” Fr. Sullivan said. “If we trust in God and turn to the sacraments and the Eucharist, His grace will do it — not our efforts.”

His advice to families is straightforward: daily prayer and frequent recourse to the sacraments. “It’s one thing to get your children into the greatest college,” Fr. Sullivan said. “It’s another thing to get them into heaven.”

What are you passionate about as a priest?

I would say the strengthening of the domestic Church. When our couples live self-giving, life-giving love, vocations will come... all that brokenness of family life that we experience today will begin to be healed. To start anywhere else is really to just trim the branches and ignore the roots. It really has to do with the spiritual life of the family, the contact with Christ in the sacraments.

Did someone invite you to consider the priesthood?

My parents were very influential. I wouldn’t be a priest without the prayer of my parents. We prayed the rosary as a family — reluctantly quite often, not with the depth of meditation, but we got through it and it certainly taught us to pray.

What can families do to encourage more vocations to the priesthood?

To believe they are each called to be saints, that God already has His desires for their life and that will be where they are most joyful and fulfilled. Somehow just promoting an openness to His will. Families should gather for prayer in the home and learn an interiority and learn how to relate to Jesus together. There are vocations out there. There is no vocations crisis; Christ loves His Church. But do we hear Him and do we foster them?