Wes Wheatley speaks with Sr. Nancy Liddy, OSU, while they attend a portion of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage passing through Franklin, Ky., in July 2024. Wheatley attended Brescia University in Owensboro, which is run by the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, and is an Ursuline Associate. RILEY GREIF | WKC
What led me to seminary?
BY WES WHEATLEY, SPECIAL TO THE WESTERN KENTUCKY CATHOLIC
God and His people. The specifics change with each retelling of the story. I try to tell the story through the lens of the present, but I only see what I see now standing upon the shoulders of the past. There’s too much to mention. I didn’t know what to do, but even before He formed me in the secret of my mother’s womb, God knew His plans for me. St. John Henry Newman famously prayed, “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another… He has not created me for naught.”
Certainly a seed was planted in me at some point – and which survived – to consider the priesthood, and within the life of this seed, I wound up a lay student in the graduate theology program at Saint Meinrad. I often walked by a longer version displayed of that prayer from Cardinal Newman, and prayed it every time I passed by. Discernment is a walk, a journey, a process like that of a plant’s growth. It’s action. It’s prayer and listening, but it’s doing and being, too. Shifts and movements, often because of God’s goodness or inspired by His people, led me to seminary.
His grace led me to go to Brescia University. His grace led me to work for the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. From there, I was inspired to go to Saint Meinrad as a lay student, and see the goodness there. The people I met at each of these places led me along the path to seminary in some way or another. Many times they were the word that was a lamp to my feet, that is to say, they were the presence of Christ in my life.
Wes Wheatley is in his propaedeutic year at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. His home parish is St. Rose of Lima in Cloverport, Ky.
Originally printed in the October 2024 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
