The Lord Opened Deacon Matthew Hawkins's Heart to the Priesthood

Deacon Matthew Hawkins often felt unsure that he could make the sacrifices required by the priesthood, but the Lord repeatedly surprised him by opening his heart and showing him the way forward. He will be ordained to the priesthood on June 27, 2020.
 
Deacon Hawkins’s journey to the priesthood began when a priest at the Pittsburgh Oratory invited him to pray in Eucharistic adoration every Friday from 5:00 am – 6:00 am at Ryan Catholic Newman Center in Oakland. For seven years, this became an unexpected blessing in his life
 
Through that time of prayer, he slowly realized that Christ was calling him to a love that greater than himself, but he hesitated to accept a priestly vocation. He had carefully crafted his career, and as a man past his middle age, he would be much older than his seminary classmates.
 
“I knew that the priesthood would involve giving totally of myself and not having control over my own life. I did not think that I could do that,” he said.
 
Growing up, his father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and his mother was a devout Baptist. When he was in elementary school, Deacon Hawkins’s older brother’s Catholic school theology books captivated him, as did the reverent Masses he attended as a sixth-grade member of the Saint Paul Cathedral Boy’s Choir.
 
Through these encounters with Catholicism, he came to see faith not merely as a moral compass, but as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that expanded beyond church walls and flooded every aspect of his life. After drifting away from his faith during his teenage years, Deacon Hawkins realized that he would remain restless unless he returned to Christ. He converted to Catholicism at age 21.
 
Deacon Hawkins graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986 and received his Masters degree in Applied History from Carnegie Mellon in 1994. He spent twenty years teaching social work and history at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and Carlow University.
 
During that time, he was praying about his vocation in his early-morning Holy Hour, and an opportunity arose to teach middle schoolers at Imani Christian Academy in Pittsburgh’s East End, a school that his mother had been instrumental in planning. He accepted the challenge.
 
For a year, he juggled teaching middle schoolers by day and college students by night; fitting in parent-teacher conferences with struggling middle school students; developing lesson plans; and consulting with local foundations and neighborhood-based organizations on community economic development.
 
He found that his time was no longer his own, much like the life of a priest. The Lord used these experiences to open Deacon Hawkins’s heart and show him his vocation. He entered St. Paul Seminary in the fall of 2014.
 
Seminary experiences continued to draw him outside of his comfort zone. During Deacon Hawkins’s first year, he was assigned to assist at Vincentian DeMarrillac Nursing Home in Pittsburgh’s Morningside neighborhood. He had never worked with an older population but enjoyed both ministering to them and developing skills that he would need as a priest.
 
Later during his seminary years, he was assigned to work at Saint Joseph the Worker; Mary, Mother of Hope; Saint Vincent de Paul; and Saint Vitus parishes in New Castle. He was unfamiliar with Lawrence County, but the parishioners quickly made him feel at home.
 
“The people were so warm and so supportive. As I always tell them, the parishioners are the ones who make good priests. They should never underestimate their role in priestly formation,” he said.
 
Throughout the process of priestly formation, he has been inspired by the example and intercession of St. John Vinney, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Martin de Porres, St. Benedict the Moor, St. Peter Claver, and Father Augustus Tolton, the first African American priest.
 
“There are few African American Catholics,” Deacon Hawkins said. “In seminary and outside of it, it’s easy to feel isolated and misunderstood. These holy people have given me strength, courage, and wisdom during times of difficulty.”
 
As a priest, Deacon Hawkins looks forward to celebrating the sacraments because of their transformative power to draw people closer to Christ.
 
“I think that we as Catholics too often think of faith as ‘head knowledge’, but that head knowledge has to lead to a transformation of the heart or it will be lifeless and empty,” he said.
 
He recognizes that men discerning the priesthood may be tempted to believe this way of life requires too much sacrifice and returns little reward. He acknowledges that sacrifice is the very essence of priestly identity, but it is also the essence of love.
 
“The sacrificial love at the core of the priesthood requires opening one’s heart to receive the entire world,” he said.

Click here to live stream Deacon Matthew Hawkins's ordination to the priesthood at 10:00 am on June 27.

Click here to live stream Deacon Matthew's first Mass on June 28 at 4:00 pm at St. Paul Cathedral.

Click here to meet the other men to be ordained.