Invitation to serve: Journey toward priesthood rooted in prayer, openness to God, community support

Two men who will receive the sacrament of Holy Orders later this month credit prayer, being open to God’s call and the support of the Catholic community in their journeys toward the priesthood.

Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski will ordain Deacon Robert Hennekes to the priesthood and Michael Laugeman to the transitional diaconate at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 24, at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. The Mass will be livestreamed at cathedralstl.org.

The two men have had very different paths toward the priesthood. Deacon Hennekes, 65, worked for the oil industry as an engineer and later as a teacher and football coach at St. Dominic High School. He has three adult children and was ordained as a permanent deacon in 2022 before deciding to pursue the priesthood.

Meanwhile, Laugeman, 26, began discerning his priestly vocation as a student at St. Dominic after deepening his relationship with the Lord, starting with an eighth-grade Luke 18 retreat. He was also influenced by the faith examples of his parents, particularly his dad, Matt.

This isn’t the first time that Deacon Hennekes and Laugeman have crossed paths, though. While at St. Dominic, Deacon Hennekes helped coach Laugeman on the football field. Neither of them thought that one day they’d be standing together at the cathedral basilica, answering their vocational calling to serve God’s people.

“The invitation (from God) was, I want you to share the fruits of this relationship with others, this joy, this peace that you’re experiencing with me,” Laugeman said. “The invitation was, I want you to spend the rest of your life sharing that with others, helping them to see in their own life what it’s like to live with Jesus.”

From the confessional to the altar

In the summer of 2021, Deacon Hennekes was preparing to go with a youth group from Assumption in O’Fallon to the Steubenville STL Mid-America youth conference in Springfield, Missouri. He was a year away from being ordained to the permanent diaconate. A group of teens wanted to go to confession, but they were nervous — they hadn’t been in years.

Hennekes coached them through the process and gave them a little pep talk. One of the teens asked if he was going to receive reconciliation, and he thought, why not?

When he got to the end of his confession, “I was expecting absolution, and so I’m sort of in the mode for that and sort of preparing myself for absolution, and all of a sudden the priest says, ‘I think you ought to be a priest.’” Deacon Hennekes thanked him and explained that he was studying to become a permanent deacon.

“He very kindly said, ‘I didn’t say you ought to be a deacon. I said you ought to be a priest.’” he recalled. “And my head blew off. I don’t know that I heard anything for a while, and I don’t even know I heard the absolution. I’m sure he gave it to me, but I totally was in a different place. My head was completely goofed up.”

Deacon Hennekes spent the next two hours walking around the campus of Missouri State University in prayer. He asked God: What the heck just happened? Wasn’t permanent diaconate the plan? Doubt also seeped in — what seminary was going to take a man in his early 60s? With an engineer’s mind, he also analyzed whether it would be a good return on investment — the time and cost for further studies.

It took several months for the idea to settle. “I said, Lord, if this is what you want — and it seems like it is, because this is where you’re leading me — I will go do this,” he said.

A native St. Louisan, Hennekes spent the better part of his career working as an engineer in the oil industry and traveled the world. In 2013, he returned to the St. Louis area to live with his elderly father and started teaching at St. Dominic and within a few years started diaconate formation.

Just a few months before his ordination to the permanent diaconate in June 2022, Deacon Hennekes got a call from Father Brian Fallon with the Vocations Office. He told him about Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts, which has a formation program for men who answer the call to priesthood later in life. If Deacon Hennekes felt priesthood was his true calling, the seminary was ready to take him.

Two months after becoming a permanent deacon, he packed his bags and headed to Weston. Each morning in adoration in the seminary chapel, “I began to just turn myself over to God and to say, ‘Listen, this is obviously your doing. I’m just going to follow you.’ And when I did that, I began to see all kinds of joy and love and see other people in a different way.”

‘What is happening to me?’

Laugeman believes that his Catholic grade school, Immaculate Conception in Dardenne Prairie, was the foundation that led him on the path to the priesthood. But he also credited his parents, Teresa and Matt, who led by their example.

“My dad played a very huge role in his own relationship with the Lord, and the way in which I felt like I was able to watch his own conversion,” Laugeman said. “He started to get involved with the men’s CRHP (Christ Renews His Parish) retreat, and that played a pivotal role for him in his own faith life. As a kid watching his dad, I was like, ‘Wait, something’s happening to dad here, he’s starting to grow in his faith.’” His parents also became involved in other faith-based organizations, including St. Joseph Radio and Life Runners.

In eighth grade, Laugeman and his classmates attended a Luke 18 retreat in preparation for their confirmation. Here, he learned more about what it meant to have a relationship with the Lord.

“I’ve been in Catholic grade school for the last nine years, but for the first time, I thought to myself God is real — and not just that He’s real, but that He loves me and wants to have a relationship with me,” he said.

He began attending adoration with his father and reading the Bible. He started thinking more about what he wanted to do and how he wanted to spend his time in high school. One night at adoration, he felt a stirring in his heart, and “the Lord just said, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a priest?’ I got into the car with my dad that night, and I just started crying. And I was like, ‘Dad, like, what is happening to me?’”

Toward the end of his freshman year, Laugeman had backed away from his faith and stopped going to adoration and youth group. He quickly realized that the peace and joy he once felt was missing and by sophomore year was back on track.

“What was so just like tangible to me was that peace and the fulfillment, the joy that I was experiencing with Jesus, and then the absence of it, being apart from Jesus,” he said. “And simultaneously as that started to happen, the desire for priesthood started to come up as well.”

There was a lot to consider. Ultimately, Laugeman knew God was calling him to be generous and to trust in Him.

“I had to just trust whatever this is, what He’s calling me to now,” he said. “It wasn’t until I was just like, all right, Lord, it’s just you and me. It wasn’t until I just realized that I’m just called to go to heaven. I just need to focus on the relationship with Jesus, and He’ll take care of the rest.”