As Catholics, we often admire the clarity that priests display; their confidence in making pronouncements about perennial truth, Church teaching, and matters of faith and morals are a boon in a world that feels increasingly unstable and chaotic. What blessed certitude, it is easy to think, to know exactly what God calls one to do! But the priestly vocation’s visible triumphs stand, more often than not, at the summit of years of doubt, discernment, confusion, and fear. Rare indeed is the priest who encounters no obstacles on his vocational journey.

“My path was rather crooked” explained Father Brandon Schneider, currently serving Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Middlebury, St. Bernadette Church in Bridport, and St. Genevieve Church in Shoreham. “My initial call came in elementary school, so the roots were there, but I did not start taking it seriously until I was in graduate school and working. Things were going well and I was getting promoted, but there was also a sense that something was missing.” Initially studying with the Jesuits at Georgetown University, Father Schneider first joined the Dominican Order before leaving to pursue his calling as a diocesan priest.

Challenges appeared immediately. Father Schneider’s first assignment in the Diocese of Burlington, while still a seminarian, saw him placed at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph for a pastoral year. “I arrived on a Sunday evening and our very first meeting on Monday morning was regarding the sale of the old Cathedral (of the Immaculate Conception)” Father Schneider explained. While seminarians train diligently to provide the sacraments, the reality is that priests are called to fill a fair amount of mundane roles as well — equal parts property manager, business manager, community organizer, and staff manager. “While not an unexpected challenge, dealing with property and building issues takes up a very large portion of my time” explained Father Schneider. “However, I have been greatly blessed by some very competent and helpful parishioners and council members to assist me and the parishes to navigate these challenges.”

Father Schneider’s problems are not unique in the diocese. Of the Diocese of Burlington’s 68 parishes, almost half are over a century old. These venerable churches hold generations of memories for parishioners; generations of families have been baptized, communed, married, and laid to rest in the same church. Priests assigned to these parishes are not just the caretakers of buildings; they are stewards of memory, of history. At the same time, many of the diocese’s older churches — built rapidly between roughly 1880 and 1910, to accommodate the influx of French Canadian Catholics — operate with increasingly slim margins. “Father Harlow said to get used to this,” Father Schneider explained, “because you will be doing a lot of it in your future ministry here in Vermont.”

Amidst these challenges, however, Father Scheider’s focus on the perennial mission of the priesthood is unwavering. When asked about the challenge of encouraging more priestly vocations, his answer was simple: “First, pray. Vocations are a call from God. If we are not praying, we are not listening to God.” The other call that Father Schneider emphasizes is the Christian duty of leadership by example, something often forgotten in today’s rather individualistic age. “All of us, especially clerics, but all the lay faithful as well, should be living and teaching the fullness of the Gospel Truth in word and in deed. We have a great treasure here, something that is worth giving your life for. But if no one knows about it, how can they respond?”

Currently ministering to the Catholics of the Middlebury area, Father Schneider has found joy in serving a community with diverse needs. Middlebury is a paradoxical town, demographically; simultaneously a college town, brimming with students and young professionals, it is also, like many Vermont communities, an aging town, with more elderly residents than in previous generations. A priest serving such a town must be able to rise to both challenges: that of young men and women, who have perhaps lapsed from the faith or were never raised in it, and that of older Catholics, who so often feel forgotten or underserved by the Church. “Celebrating the sacraments is the heart of what I do — Mass, Confessions, Baptisms, Anointing of the Sick. I really enjoy the home visits with our homebound parishioners. Working with our college students here at Middlebury is always a great joy.”

A young priest himself, Father Schneider argues that the problem of encouraging more priestly vocations is a problem of encouraging participation. His advice to discerning young men is simple: “Pray daily, read Scripture daily, regularly frequent the sacraments, especially Mass and Penance, and live out the Gospel to the best of one’s ability.” Vocations are a serious calling, one that cannot be properly discerned without a solid grounding in the faith which the sacraments provide. In an era when a plurality of American Catholics do not avail themselves of the sacraments regularly, and many more only do so occasionally or piecemeal, the problem can easily be seen as not one of discernment, but of participation.

Father Schneider makes it clear, though, that the calling to the priesthood is an exceptional calling; not one of clarity, so much as one of surrender. “Each yes to God is an invitation to follow ever more closely. The yes is to follow God, not to a specific path. God has each step planned to help you get where you need to go.”