I think that you will meet a beautiful woman and want to marry her. This is not being worldly. This is what you were made for. If God chooses you specifically to be a priest, you will know it. And if he made you to be a husband and father and to be fruitful and multiply, you will know that too. Either way, it's God's decision for you, and you must not try to right with your left hand if God made you to be right handed. So, talk to God, a lot.
What is it about being a priest that so appeals to you?
From what you have written, I think what appeals is two things. One thing you said: to be able to be inspirational.
The other thing you did not say: to be closer to God all the time.
And the third thing you said but didn't know you said it: to have status and security in the world. The quest for security leads to the question about stipends and side jobs. The quest for status is wrapped up in the Knights Hospitallers. You cannot join them. They have to invite you. And if you are not of a noble family, or a member of the modern nobility of wealth, they will not even know you exist to ask you. The only possibility, then, would be to volunteer to work for them, so that they would come to know of you. You could pour your heart and your time into that service, and then there is a slim chance that you would be invited to join. But probably not unless you have wealth. The Knights support themselves and perform their functions using their own wealth. It is a high status organization.
So, what are you to do?
As to the desire to status, you are to banish that. It is going to be a perpetual stumbling block to you. Rather than think about joining the knights, go an volunteer to clean bedpans and change linens at the nearest nursing home for aged religious. And say prayers with the oldest who cannot speak, and always wash their feet. Do it every day for a year, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when you could be out dating. This will prepare you to do that on Friday and Saturday nights for the rest of your life. After you have utterly humbled yourself for a year, washing the feet of the lifelong faithful who have otherwise been all but forgotten, and contemplated well that their fate is very probably to be yours: to serve others for a whole life, and then to die alone in prayer in a rest home, if you endure it, you will have the proper state of mind to put on the tunic of a Knight Hospitaller (assuming they ever invite you to join, which they will not). And it will embarrass you to wear it.
As to the desire for security and stipend, remember the birds of the air. They reap not, neither do they sow, yet their Father in heaven provides for them all the same. A priest is a charity case. You will live on the charity of others. God is your safety net. You will be poor, and you won't care. Or you will care, in which case God is telling you that your hands were made for different work.
As to being closer to God all the time, you can do this without ordination. The ordained are no closer to God than the unordained. We are all God's children. The ordained have a peculiar function to perform, as the vessel by which sacred elements are lifted up to God. You do indeed have to be ordained as a priest to be that sort of functionary. But that does not make you closer to God. Talk to God now. Do it all the time. Labora pro ora. Then you will be close to God, and you will be able to hear what He has to say to you more clearly.
Assume that there is no security in the priesthood. Assume that there is no honor or distinction in it.
Assume that it will consist of changing bedpans and washing the feet of the forgotten religious, and do you actually go and DO that, not as a penance at all, but as job and spiritual training.
Talk to God continually.
And then do what He tells you to do.
He might tell you that you were not made to be a priest, but a father and a husband.
And he might tell you further, that once you have done your part as the embodiment of Saint Joseph, raising his little lambs up to strength, that you are indeed to stand before the people and inspire them as an ordained minister: a Deacon of the Church.
Or he might show you that the Church is indeed your bride, and you will know this because you will have no regrets.
But you have to talk to him.
Now go wash some feet.
You are right with the security issue though. I like to be sure of things, and to organize and plan. I think it makes me much more efficient in everything I do. I don't know if security is necessarily a bad thing, but relying on it too much is bad. As a priest, I know that nothing would be certain, and that things would be different everyday.
The Knights of Malta. It is a status appeal, but also an ideal to me. I am caught up in their history, and what they stood for in the past. My uncle was a Knight of Malta, but he was a big shot lawyer. I know a couple of members, and my family is of old Irish nobility, with lineage records, and a coat of arms with a family motto written in Latin. "Lucent en Tenebris". I know that I am still very proud, and that I absolutely need to be much more humble. I do not know if I can be humble to the point as you described.
I love charity. I don't make much as a student, but I love buying food for the church food closet, and making children happy on Christmas with toys. I understand your "Lillies of the field, and birds of the sky" example. At the moment, I feel very much like Lazarus. I am about to leave work, so I will think of this on the way home. Thank you.