The call to Holy Orders reaches out to people at different points in their lives; sometimes late, sometimes early. In rare instances — as in the case of Father Sahaya Paul Sebastian — the vocational calling occurs before the person is even born.

“I’m from a Catholic family” Father Paul explained. “I get my faith from my mom’s side, my home parish, where my dad is from, has about 1,100 Catholic families. My mom’s family is deep in the faith, in the same family, out of the five sisters my grandpa had, three are religious sisters.” Raised in the faith from the beginning, Father Paul felt the call to the priesthood early on, in part because of the prayers of his mother; “I am one of five sons. I am the second oldest — the first, my older brother, died stillborn. My mother prayed, promised to God, that the next child would become a priest if he lived.”

As Father Paul grew older, the call to the priesthood persisted; “I remember from the time I was five years old I would walk to Mass with my mother each morning, people would ask me while we walked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I always said ‘I want to be a priest.’” As soon as he was able, Father Paul enrolled in seminary; “Some priests have beautiful stories in which they say, ‘This is the turning point in my faith,’ for me, from the beginning of my life, even before, this was always my vocation. I can’t say I never had doubts or second thoughts, but I felt like it was God’s plan, and I’ve been a priest for 10 years now.”

Shortly after his ordination, Father Paul felt called to missionary work. “I remember during an Ignatian retreat meeting a priest who was a missionary in Madagascar, he was talking about how he had to drive 450 kilometers to celebrate Mass. He’d bring two spare tires because the roads were so rough, part of the way was by boat, and he had to bring meat to bait the crocodiles away. It sounded like such an adventure … I knew I needed to be a missionary.” Writing to his bishop just over a month after his ordination, Father Paul describes his initial enthusiasm being tempered by reality; “They told me to wait, first they were looking for a place for me in Germany, but we already had missionaries there. Then they looked in France, but my diocese already had, like, 11 priests there.”

Father Paul’s chance finally came in 2018, when he was granted a missionary assignment in Barton, Vermont, arriving in the United States on August 12 of that year. “I was at St. Paul in Barton for 10 months, through my first winter, then I was in Lowell for two years, and finally I came here (to Blessed Sacrament in Stowe) in 2021.” While Vermont is a far cry from Father Paul’s initial idea of missionary work, he says he wouldn’t want it any other way. “Everything is a surprise here” he said, “but the love the people have shown me will stay with me forever.”

“I was surprised by how empty Vermont is” Father Paul laughed. “In India, you go outside, there are people everywhere. Here there are just trees! And then, in October 2018, seeing snow for the first time was such a surprise, seeing how silent the world became in winter was remarkable. Back home, there’s always noise, always people talking, vehicles, stuff going on … but here, it’s people.” By the same token, Father Paul also notes, the silence extends into Vermont’s churches. “Back home, we count families, not individual people — even a small parish has a few hundred families. Here, if you have 60 or 70 people in the pews, that’s considered good.” Father Paul’s missionary experience reflects a new reality of missionary work in the Church; whereas in centuries past, missionaries traveled to places where the faith was new and growing, nowadays they more commonly travel from freshly-evangelized locales to places where the faith has begun to decline. India is one such place where the faith has experienced explosive growth; in the early 1900s, there were fewer than 200,000 Catholics in the entire subcontinent. Today, there are over 23 million Catholics in India, with that number projected to reach 30 million by the end of the next decade. Indian priests are an increasingly common sight in dioceses with flagging numbers, such as Europe and the United States.

“Everything was new, everything a surprise” Father Paul said. “But I have loved being here. Vermont is truly a special place … the tremendous love and faith of the people here has been the biggest surprise of all.” For the diocese’s upcoming Year of Vocations, Father Paul encourages young men to discern a call to the priesthood by first cultivating an interior life: “It starts with prayer. Set aside time each day to pray, and be open to what He has to say — regardless of what that may be.”