Here’s a remarkable vocation story: a Franciscan who is also a musician — and who is about to enter a cloister in Italy. It comes from The Catholic Moment newspaper in Indiana:

Music often tells a story, and a concert at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church let Father Maximilian Mary Dean, FI, share his story of conversion and peace before entering a cloistered monastery in Italy.

“It was a beautiful concert,” Tom Cittadine, a parishioner and close friend, said of the Oct. 14 event. “Father is very talented, and it was a pleasure to be able to hear him play.”

It was Father Dean’s last concert before he enters the contemplative branch of his order, the Franciscans of the Immaculate, in Italy this month. It is a move that Cittadine, who has been a friend for more than 15 years, described as “a special call.”

“It has been a blessing for me to have the privilege of knowing him,” Cittadine said. “He is full of wisdom, is very spiritual and compassionate, and at the same time is a very well-rounded person. I know that his prayers while in the cloister will be a blessing for all of us, and also a blessing for the Church.”

Father Dean recalled having a desire to become a priest when he was 9 or 10 years old. Born in Indianapolis on Nov. 14, 1968, and baptized at Christ the King Catholic Church a month later, Father Dean grew up in Zionsville where his family attended St. Alphonsus Church.

“I made my first confession and first holy Communion there,” he said. “I remember having a desire to be a priest, like Father David Douglas, the pastor at that time. However, my parents stopped attending Mass at about this time. I remember wanting to go to Mass and CCD on Sunday so bad that on Sunday mornings I would get up, put on my Sunday clothes, and go into my parents’ bedroom to beg Mom to take me to Mass to no avail. Clearly the grace of God was calling me and working in me at that time.”

Music was an inspiration.

He began piano lessons at age 9, but the guitar was his first love. By age 12, he was in a rock band, “and before I could even drive I found myself on the road on weekends playing gigs all over the state of Indiana and even Michigan and Ohio,” he said.

“I hit my difficult teen years without prayer or the commandments to guide me through,” Father Dean said.

His parents divorced. Life was so empty that he considered suicide.

“Thanks be to God, I had friends who helped me through,” he said. “I tried, as most teens do, to fill that emptiness — first with a life of sin, then with a life of success. But sin and success left me emptier.”

Father Dean described himself as “the Catholic student at the Jesuit-run Brebeuf Preparatory School in Indianapolis with long hair who did not go to Ash Wednesday services.”

But during a meeting with the school’s principal, a Jesuit priest, he was asked if he felt called to a priestly vocation.

“The answer was ‘Yes, when I was a little boy,’” Father Dean said. “But I asked him, ‘What made you ask me that question?’ He told me that he just perceived that I might have a priestly vocation.”

At age 16, Father Dean said, he had reached a barrier in playing guitar.

“I couldn’t get any better; I was in a rut,” he said. “So I started taking classical guitar lessons from a renowned professor. I never knew the guitar could sound so beautiful!”

Father Dean majored in classical guitar at DePaul University, and then transferred to the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. There he sang in the choir and met musical influence John Michael Talbot, whose “inspiring melodies accompanied me through my entire conversion and vocational discernment,” Father Dean said.

His conversion was encouraged by the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

“My heart was forever captivated by the charism of these two saints and this is what eventually led me to the Franciscans of the Immaculate, who, inspired by these great saints, live the Franciscan life of prayer and poverty in the light of total consecration to the Immaculate Virgin Mary.”

Paul Geerinck, a parishioner at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, met Father Dean during that time.

“He had a great devotion to prayer and to the Blessed Mother,” Geerinck said. “I noticed that during Mass, he would never use the kneelers — he would kneel on the floor of the church — and that really made an impression on me.”

After being ordained, Father Dean said, the Holy Spirit inspired him to write and record music. He has recorded six albums, and a Christmas album of chant and carols.

The example of Jesus and Mary living in silence and solitude in the holy house at Nazareth, and St. Paul’s words, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” inspired many songs and guided him through discerning his call to the cloister.

The Franciscan order has always been primarily a contemplative order, “contemplatives with an apostolate,” Father Dean said. “But in its beginning there also were priests and brothers who lived a strict life as contemplative hermits in isolated places, and in silence and solitude gave themselves completely to the life of prayer, penance and manual labor.”

As he prepares to enter the cloister of his order, Father Dean said, “In today’s world, the contemplative vocation is not well understood or appreciated. If you remember the battle of the Israelites with the Amalekites, Moses went up a mountain above the battle and prayed with arms extended. As long as his arms were uplifted, Joshua and the Israelites were winning the battle; but if he let his arms down, they began to lose. Today more than ever, the world needs souls who will climb up on the mountain and offer prayers and sacrifices for the people of God.

“The modern mind would probably have said, ‘Why doesn’t Moses take up a sword and fight?’ Israel won precisely because Moses did not fight in that way, but entered the combat of spiritual warfare: prayer, silence and sacrifice! By the grace of God through the Immaculate, I hope to be like Moses for those engaged in the battle.”