Following the Signs (to a priestly vocation)

Morning Sentinel ^ | July 3, 2006 | LARRY GRARD

[NYer]

MADISON -- If all goes as planned a year from now, Bruce M. Siket will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. It will be a gift from Anastasia Siket, whose spirit will be present at the ceremony.
Siket, a 1972 graduate of Madison Area Memorial High School, was ordained as a deacon by Bishop Richard Malone earlier this month in Portland. He is on summer assignment at St. Louis Parish in Fort Kent, and has one more year at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass.
All of this happened, Siket said, because of a conversation he had with his dying wife.

He and Anastasia were living in Millinocket, both involved with St. Peter's Church in East Millinocket and both employed at Great Northern Paper Co.
Just prior to a second, unsuccessful surgery on her brain tumor, the couple talked frankly about what he would do when she was gone.
"Her comment was that she thought I would become a priest," Siket said recently from the Madison home of his mother, Irene Siket. "She had a vision that I would become a priest, after she passed. After that, I couldn't help but think about it."
Anastasia Siket died in October 2001.

At her funeral, which also marked the couple's 20th wedding anniversary, Father Robert Vaillancourt, who had not even talked to Siket's wife about her vision, provided Siket with another profound moment.
"He pointed to his Roman Catholic collar, and he looked at me and he said, 'when are you going to get one of these?' I'm not making this up."
Driven, Siket approached the Catholic Diocese of Portland about a priestly vocation. He was advised to allow a year for the grieving process.

Times were tough all-around. Siket had a good job as an engineer at Great Northern, but the paper mill was going through bankruptcy and about to close.
"I tried to stay busy," Siket said. "I was out of work and on unemployment. The down time was tough."
Siket decided, as he put it, that it was "time to go for it."
He was accepted for a master's program designed for second-career vocations at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass. He already had a degree in physics from the University of Maine.

The first year back in academics was "a little scary," Siket admitted. He wondered if he could take the rigorous course, live with 60 other men in a big dormitory and face a life of celibacy.
"After you come to grips with that, you move closer to God, hopefully," he said.
Siket did hospital ministries, and will serve as a deacon at local parishes until he becomes a priest.
"My mission in life is to try to get closer to God every day, and to get other people closer to God," he said.

Last Sunday, at the same church in which he and older brother Arthur served as altar boys, Siket presided over his first Mass as a deacon. His mother, Irene, sat in the back of Saint Sebastian, beaming.
"I was glowing all over, people said," said Irene Siket, now a widow. "I had never seen him as a deacon on the altar until Sunday. I was very, very proud. He's the one who did the work."
Mrs. Siket said she had no reason to think her son would be a priest one day, when he was young. But he and his wife were heavily involved in the church in East Millinocket.
"He and Stacia had done so much for the church, it just doesn't surprise me," she said.

Julie Fiske knew Bruce and Anastasia Siket well.
Fiske, religious education coordinator at both St. Peter's and at St. Martin's in Millinocket, said Siket's experience as a family man will make him a better priest.
"They lived the way families live, and he knows those dynamics," she said. "He knows how to get along with people. He's a processor and an observer."
Fiske praised the Sikets for their dedication to the church and their anonymous method of giving to the poor.
"That is the sign of a true steward anyway," she said. "They bought Christmas gifts and had other people deliver them."

Throughout the past five years, Siket has felt Anastasia's presence. But a life dedicated to God is just that.
"You don't do this for anybody else," Siket said. "She led me in that direction, but eventually you reach a point where it's you and God."

[Suzy Quzy]

sniff......tears in eyes. This story just PROVES that good comes from something bad happening if you trust in God.

[Salvation]

Tears in my eys bump.

[pgkdan]

Last Sunday, at the same church in which he and older brother Arthur served as altar boys, Siket presided over his first Mass as a deacon. His mother, Irene, sat in the back of Saint Sebastian, beaming.

Huh? Since when do Deacons preside at Mass?