The day was festive in early November 1955.  At the tender age of two weeks, I was taken by John and Rita Neely to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Moscow, Idaho, and baptized by Fr. Urban Schmidt.  Fr. Schmidt certainly would have told my parents that I was the cutest little bugger he had ever conferred with the sacrament.  (Intermission, while you gasp and carry on.  [The old line about “a face only a mother could love” won’t carry the day]).  

My first vocational awareness, or rather, “unawareness” descended upon me while in the first grade class of St. Mary’s School.  One day Fr. Schmidt moved through the building, from classroom to classroom, speaking of the possibility of giving one’s life to priesthood or dedicated religious life.  In parting, Father said, “Maybe someday God will call YOU!”  

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I could feel my little body freezing right in my little desk chair, and vividly remember the silent knee-jerk reaction in my 7 year old pea-brain, “Oh God!  PLEASE don’t call me!”  

As fast as this suggestion entered my left ear, it rapidly exited the right, and I returned to the reality of sitting in the back row (because of my height), straining to see the blackboard--my eye sight never being particularly keen.  

 

This event marked the beginning and the end of vocational awareness for, oh say, 30 years.

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Some 30 years later, I soon discovered that the seeds planted during my 1st grade encounter with religious vocations started sprouting, albeit slowly, with three triggering events. 

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In September 1993, my sister was seriously injured when the top half of a dead pine tree fell on her while riding a horse in Valley County, Idaho.  Because of the remote location of her mishap, it took a considerable amount of time to be transported to St. Luke’s Hospital in McCall, where she was stabilized and then airlifted to St. Al’s Hospital in Boise. The following day, I drove my parents from Moscow to Boise, and directly to an ICU unit, where my sister was attached to a myriad of life support systems. Fortunately, she survived the accident, and began a multi-month recovery process. 

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In the course of this period, I came to an awareness of flipping literally on a dime, with the realization of the importance of life itself immediately in tow.

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In November of 1993, my 97 year old maternal grandfather died.  He had had a series of serious strokes and had been unable to communicative for a number of days.  Paying him a visit on the day he subsequently died, his eyes were closed yet he was not only audibly praying without ceasing, but the prayers were perfectly coherent.  He spent the end of his life with Christ in prayer.  

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Within a few months of the beginning of this seedling sprout-fest, another experience triggered a clear turn in the road.  As a co-owner of Neely’s Travel in Moscow, I had long been specializing in handling international travel, and ultimately, it was what I did full time. One such arrangement involved a number of people from different parts of the world traveling to attend a meeting in Manila, the Philippines, on behalf of a department at the University of Idaho.  At this point in time, I cannot remember details, but on the Friday before the start of that meeting, one of the travelers experienced great difficulties with his arrangements.  Things like this happened on rare occasion, but I could normally dig in and right the ship in some fashion.  However, in this instance, after spending all of Friday on the phone, calling in every possible direction, I could not resolve the issues.

 

Steeped in perfectionism during this period of my life, I moved into the weekend with plenty of experience in emotionally beating myself up from one end to the other.  This persisted through Sunday.  On Sunday evening, I spontaneously knelt down to pray before getting into bed, which was a very unusual event.  I have no memory of the prayer, but after crawling under the covers, my expectation was a continuance of my prolonged “stew” for at least a couple of hours.  Instead, I experienced a “divine peace” sweeping through my body, as if to say, “everything is going to be fine.”  I fell asleep immediately--another unusual occurrance.

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Upon waking the next day, and for days thereafter, I was not aware of anything different in my life.  But after a series of weeks, I instinctively knew things had changed from that time of divine peace, and in particular, that I was particularly receptive to God.

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In time, I was moved to engage in church life. My participation since high school would have been measured on a scale between frozen-ville and quasi-lackluster.   In fact, involvement in parish life started clicking along at brisk pace: serving the altar, attending RCIA for adults, and helping at social functions, etc.  Soon I was serving as an extra-ordinary minister of communion.   

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After some time, three different people approached me within the same month, with inquiries about considering priesthood.  The first of these encounters was extended by Sister David Hartze, an Ursuline Sister serving in ministry in both Moscow Catholic Churches: St. Mary’s and St. Augustine’s at the University of Idaho.  Immediately after Sister asked me if I had ever thought about being a priest, I replied quickly, “Yes, I had.”   This caught even my own attention, because I had certainly never thought about it consciously.  Nonetheless, my answer, “yes,” was the correct one.  

It is almost as if Jesus had spoken for me.
(Was this the correct answer in the 1st grade after all?)

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Following shortly after Sr. David’s query, the pastor of St. Augustine’s offered the same, and following that, a Protestant friend of mine brought up the subject.  I must have found a new dime to spin on, because I set about to pray on the matter.  It had never occurred to me to leave Moscow, and I would not have considered myself eligible because of my age (39).  From what I had always understood, vocations were pursued right out of high school.    

The time in prayerful discernment over the next few months was quite poignant and peaceful.  All of the necessary major life changes seemed like a possibility, now that they appeared on my radar screen.  

 

This is why it is important 
to verbalize the possibility of a vocation to someone.
(There is someone out there [who hates us] who doesn’t want us thinking about it).

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During this time of discerning prayer, the Lord gifted me with a number of extra-ordinary spiritual experiences that I have never talked about.  Looking back upon them later, I understood that Christ actually gave me what I needed.  The possibility of making inquiries about priesthood moved steadily forward.  Even though I would be leaving a town after 39-40 years, a business after 22 years, and a house that I enjoyed owning, the prayerful feedback I received pointed in the direction that it would all be do-able.    

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Fr. Jerry Funke was the Vocations Director for the Diocese of Boise at this time, and was stationed as pastor at Idaho Falls et al.  I flew to Idaho Falls to spend a weekend with him.  His tenure as Vocations was just coming to a close, and I was his “last case.”  

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My departure from Moscow, especially from the travel service, would bring about a lot of change.  I had become quite accomplished in international travel. As an aside, at one point, after attending numerous international airfare tariff construction training, I pulled a coup’d’gras at a Pan American course in London.  The head of air tariffs for Pan Am, Gerald Rake, taught the class, and one day gave us a very complicated, multi-stop, international route commencing in a country other than the United States, but “purchased” in the U.S.  International airfares, at least at that time, were calculated using fictitious fare construction units, which were adjusted to the country of departure.  Once the fare construction adjustments were established, and all the tariff rules considered, the fare was converted to the local currency.  If purchased in the United States, an exchange rate was used to determine the amount in U.S. dollars.  

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Mr. Rake sort of goaded the class, saying that he had never gotten a correct answer on this particular fare construction example.  That is to say, at least correct down to the “1/10th” unit.  Oh, I should have marked the calendar, because on that very day, I reversed all that.  He checked and rechecked my work, and finally concluded I had come up with the right answer.  My prize was a bottle of champagne.  That day after class, I swung by Harrod’s Department Store Food Court, and bought a meat-pie with the Harrod’s “H” branded on the crust.  Not to worry, I didn’t down the bottle of champagne myself, but celebrated with the Harrod’s “H” only.  

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After the weekend interview with Fr. Funke, I took an extensive  psychological test, part of which was answering about 1500 questions and responding to ink blots.  (After a few years of ordained priesthood, I realized that I had never seen the results of that test, and not even to this day)  Nevertheless, I was accepted for the 1996 fall term at Mt. Angel Seminary, south of Portland, OR.  

 

Even starting early, sewing up loose ends in Moscow was monumental.  At the conclusion of my last day of work in August of 1996, it was rather odd to walk out the door after 22 years.  This oddness was compounded by walking out of my packed-up and empty house for the final time.  

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I traveled initially to the Nazareth Retreat Center in Boise for a week-long Idaho Seminarian retreat, after which it was on to Oregon.  Upon arriving at the Seminary, another week of new student acclamation began.  

 

Finally the day came to begin classes---and the rush was on:  syllabus after syllabus came rolling off the printing presses, entailing more assigned reading than I could possible manage, and more research and writing than I could have ever imagined.  My starting point at the Seminary was study toward a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy.  Being thrust heavily into that philosophical arena was like moving toward a brick wall at high speed.  

 

All seminarians are overwhelmed, especially at first, with more things assigned to do and be responsible for than there are hours in each day.  However, a rhythm is cultivated over time to manage it, and it eventually is manageable.  My manageable time was 7 years—-with completion in 2003.

 

It is a good thing that Christ has a way of moving things along in the right direction.  Even with the changes experienced in my departure, everything turned out fine.  By the time my brother retired in 2017, selling the agency to Global Travel of Boise and Pullman, the Neely family had been successful business purveyors in Moscow for 117 years---a good run in any estimation.