Taylor K. Mitchell gives a talk on Servant of God Joseph Dutton at Our Lady of Peace Shrine in Santa Clara, California, in 2023. He and now-Father Kurt Meyer had brought the relics of St. Damien and St. Marianne to the parish for veneration. (Courtesy Taylor K. Mitchell)
By Celia K. Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Becoming a priest is hard. Really hard.
Ask any seminarian, whether he is bound for priesthood within a diocese or as part of a religious community.
Though the studying and training are both huge mountains to climb, the trek is made easier with the support and prayers of family, friends and fellow faithful.
That’s what Taylor K. Mitchell has found in his journey to the priesthood, which takes another step forward this month with his ordination to the transitional diaconate.
Bishop Larry Silva will ordain Mitchell at 10 a.m. May 17 at St. John Apostle and Evangelist Church in Mililani — Mitchell’s home parish.
Mitchell will enter his final year of studies at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, after his ordination and a summer ministering at a parish in Hawaii. His time at St. Patrick’s follows his undergraduate work at Mount Angel Seminary in Saint Benedict, Oregon, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and literature.
“Seminary is both great and frustrating because it becomes a place where I have to … look at myself and, in great detail, pick apart and examine every aspect of my personality and character and evaluate it,” he said. “This is a great opportunity, but it is not an easy one.”
Mitchell said there were many times when he wanted to simply accept who he was before journeying toward priesthood, “but that’s not how this whole process works.”
“It takes both strength of character (and) also openness to the Holy Spirit to make these changes,” he said. “It has been a struggle.”
On a more material level, Mitchell also has had to cope with studying on the mainland amid the COVID-19 pandemic — “basically cloistered to the campus” — and with challenging formation work like hospital chaplaincy.
In addition to the support of the Lord, one source of consolation and strength has been his fellow seminarians: “Compassion means suffering with, and we certainly have a lot of compassion for each other here,” he said.
Another major wellspring of support has been people back home in Hawaii, Mitchell said.
“I know that I have been prayed for more than I can even begin to imagine, as well as supported in so many other ways,” he said.
Mitchell has been blessed with this support since he fully entered the Catholic Church in his first year of undergraduate study, receiving first holy Communion and confirmation. (He attended college on the mainland after graduating from Kamehameha Schools but returned home after three years; Mount Angel Seminary was where he finished his bachelor’s degree.)
The Mililani native was baptized as a child but wasn’t a regular churchgoer growing up. After he entered the church, though, he said everyone around him commented that he would “make a great priest someday.”
“I said, ‘Well, that will never happen,’” he recalled.
His resistance continued through his post-high school time on the mainland and back home, where he volunteered at St. John as well as with the former Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry within the diocese.
He “slowly and reluctantly came to realize that they (the people around him) might have a point.”
“In my own personal prayer life I desired to figure out how to grow closer to God and was trying to figure out the best way to do that,” Mitchell said.
A poem by the 19th-century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Heaven-Haven (a Nun Takes the Veil),” resonated deeply in Mitchell and helped him discern the Lord’s “unexpected” answer to his prayers — diocesan priesthood.
It was unexpected, Mitchell explained, because the “ongoing, everlasting chaos” of parish life is the opposite of the solitude and peace that Hopkins’ nun seeks.
“But the more time I spent in the hustle and bustle of parish life, the more I was sure that the Lord had decided that this was the place where I could best grow close to him,” he said. “The rhythm of the parish is the gateway to the peace that the Lord has in store for me.”
About six years after he returned home from his first few years of college, “it became abundantly clear that the Lord was calling me to the mission field of my own home” rather than a religious community.
As he prepares to enter the final stretch before, “God and Bishop willing,” ordination to the priesthood next year, Mitchell said he is “grateful to be the generous recipient of the love of the people of this diocese.”
“Even though I have been far away from home since entering seminary, I have felt the closeness of (all) who have prayed and supported me in so many ways.”
And despite the challenges he’s faced, he fully embraces the life that the Lord has granted him.
“All of this is a joy,” he said. “God has been better to me than I deserve, and this has been a never-ending adventure. Often exhausting, never boring, certainly stressful, but an adventure nonetheless.”
