The road to a vocation isn’t always smooth, or straight — and there’s a Capuchin friar telling his story in his own blog, The Long Road to the Priesthood. Now that story is attracting the attention of the local press up in Michigan:

It was 1:30 a.m. on an October night, and Vito Martinez could not get to sleep. His mind raced with all the things he needed to do that day. He sat down at his computer to collect his thoughts.

“Many people would be overwhelmed by the life I now live,” Martinez wrote of his routine as a Capuchin friar. “I’ve learned already that religious life is not easy.”

Barely a month into his residence at a Capuchin community in Milwaukee, the young Grand Rapids man was coming to grips with what God had called him to do. It was a lot.

He recounted a typical day, starting at 6 a.m. with morning Mass and a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

He takes classes until noon on subjects such as St. Francis, liturgical prayer, maintaining personal boundaries and appropriate behavior around kids.

Most afternoons he spends working with the poor at an inner-city parish, serving meals, talking to them about their needs, giving them clothing and the occasional bus ticket.

One day a week he’s at a jail helping to lead a Bible study.

After laundry, e-mail, evening prayer and a community meal with his fellow friars, he usually hits the hay around 11 p.m.

Even for a guy who not long before had sold cars and worked poker tables to rake in big bucks, doing God’s will was hard work. The difference was having a higher purpose.

“My motivation is no longer money or social acceptance,” he wrote of his work for St. Conrad’s Friary and its social outreach to the inner city. “With each thing I do, I want not just to improve someone’s life, but to inspire them to do the same.”

That conviction has only grown stronger in the months since then. After years of chasing the almighty dollar, and more than a few women, Martinez believes God has firmly yanked him onto another path — the one leading to the priesthood.

It’s a journey he chronicles in a surprisingly frank blog, “The Long Road to Priesthood.” In a recent visit home for Christmas break, he expressed no doubt about his chosen route.

“I’m doing what I’m being told, in a spiritual sense,” said Martinez, 33, sitting in his home parish of St. Mary Catholic Church. “This is the direction I’m supposed to go.

“I’ve gone with the grain (of society), and what have I gotten? It’s not actually having happiness. Now, I have moments of happiness and I say, ‘Life is good, God is good.’ “

That wasn’t always the case with Martinez, the only child of a single mom who sometimes struggled to make ends meet. He grew up knowing what it was like to eat at the Salvation Army and shop at a thrift store.

As a young adult, he knew what it was like to get buzzed on booze, blow $1,000 at a craps table and get into unhealthy relationships with women. His faith lay more in accumulating gold jewelry and video-game gear than in his Catholic upbringing.

By candidly blogging about his struggles, Martinez could be doing religious vocations a service, says his supervisor at St. Conrad’s Friary.

“One of the problems for the Catholic Church today is so few young people can imagine themselves in a religious vocation,” said the Rev. William Hugo, director of postulants for the Capuchin friars. “They look at Vito’s blog and say, ‘This is a real person struggling with the same kinds of issues I struggle with, but he’s making this very unusual choice. If he can do it, can I do it?'”

Check out the link to read the rest.

Photo: by Emily Zoladz