Vocations Feature - Saying 'Yes' to the Call

How Father Dan Hyman finally followed the stirrings of his soul to the priesthood

“I just never thought someone like me could be a priest.”For Father Dan Hyman, this was the number one reason he ignored the call he felt to the priesthood for so long.“I had lived a typical young adult lifestyle,” he recalls. “No one told me you didn’t have to already be a saint to become a priest.”

“One day I asked him, ‘Hey dad, why don’t you ever go to Communion?’ He told me it was because he wasn’t actually Catholic. I asked him why he didn’t just become Catholic.”

His dad’s response?

“Well, no one has ever asked me to.”

One quick phone call from Fr. Dan’s mom followed by an anonymous invitation from the Parish RCIA director, his dad joined the RCIA program and became Catholic that year. Around this time, his dad began experiencing severe headaches and other symptoms of being unwell. After tests, it was determined he had a brain tumor and needed to have brain surgery.

“I remember being in the chapel during his brain surgery, and we were praying the rosary,” Fr. Dan recalls. “My mom would lean over and tell me the mys-teries. It was the start of my devotion to praying the rosary.”

After pathologists examined his dad’s brain tumor, it was determined he had one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, and his doctors told him he had about one year to live.

“At that moment, my focus shifted to being with my family,” says Fr. Dan.

He had just begun his education in the tool and die trade and was able to get apprenticed early due to his family’s circumstances.

“Working in the trade, a light week was about 55 hours,” said Fr. Dan. “Plus, I was going to school at night, and then I’d spend whatever time I had left with my family,” he recalls. “That was a gift in its own way. I had been stuck in a partying phase, and when everyone around you just parties all the time, you don’t know what else to do, how else to live. So being busy with school and work and family, it pulled me out of that unhealthy environment.

“I think that was a grace of God. I began really pouring myself into my prayers, and that’s when things really started to change for me.”Growing up in the St. Joseph area, Fr. Dan’s mother was a devout Catholic, and while his dad wasn’t Catholic, he would attend Mass with the family every weekend and on holy days. He even attended Bible study and would some-times go to Mass without the family.

While the idea of becoming a priest was first planted by his confirmation sponsor, it wasn’t until his early 20s, with his partying days behind him and his prayer life growing, that those thoughts of becoming a priest began coming back.

“But I always had a reason I couldn’t become a priest — because of my own sinfulness, because of the life I had lived. I didn’t understand seminary or that formation process at all, so I kept these stirrings to myself.”

Shortly after his dad died, Fr. Dan heard a homily from a newly ordained priest who referenced how he and his friends had gotten into trouble vandalizing property when they were kids. It was the first time he realized priests could have pasts, too.

Around this time, a LifeTeen program was founded at St. Joseph Parish, in St. Joseph, where Fr. Dan and his family were members. He was invited to join as a core member. It was the first time Fr. Dan experienced teaching his faith, and the first time he found himself engaged in a Catholic community.

“It was the first time I really felt like I belonged,” he says.

The more active he was with LifeTeen and his prayer life, the more frequently and fervently the idea of joining the priesthood began coming up. He began going to confession and listening to praise and worship music in the car, which only strengthened his desire to devote his life to God.

When a friend from LifeTeen who was terminally ill testified about listening to the ways God is calling you and not wast-ing any time in answering the call, Fr. Dan felt convicted to finally tell someone he was considering the priesthood. At that friend’s funeral, Fr. Dan spoke to Fr. Bill Jacobs, who advised him to attend a discernment weekend at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

“Fr. Bill turned to my mom and told her I should go on a discernment weekend, not knowing I hadn’t told her anything about this,” he recalls. “It was no longer my secret; it had been brought into the light. I went home and thought ‘What have you done? Who am I?’ and had all these metaphysical questions. After hours of questioning everything, I finally collapsed in my chair and the greatest sense of peace I’ve ever experienced washed over me.

“I remember when I arrived at Sacred Heart for my discernment weekend, I felt this overwhelming sense of being home, like this is where I belong.”

By then, he was in his mid-20s, had a successful career as a journeyman die maker, and was a homeowner. A couple of months before he was to move to Detroit to attend seminary, he spent time in adoration talking to God about how he had to sell his house before he could move.

“I was almost done with some renovations to my house. I had buddies who were contractors or had experience with putting in walls and windows and a complete stranger even showed up one day and wanted to help mud the upstairs. All these things just lined right up; God was completely taking care of everything.”

So much so that the day after he prayed asking God to sell his house, the first person to set foot on his property made an offer. Though he received four other offers; he accepted the first one and never even had to put his house on the market.

FINDING COMMUNITY AT SEMINARY

“I loved seminary,” Fr. Dan recalls. “For me, where else do you get to go to Mass every day and have three beautiful chapels right there to go whenever you need to? On top of being a beautiful place of prayer. There were lots of other guys there, so there was a tremendous sense of community. Right away, I got involved with ultimate frisbee and basketball, learned how to play racquetball, and was just diving in and forming community with other guys learning the faith.”

Fr. Dan poured himself into learning everything he could, growing in his faith and in his knowledge, to best prepare himself to be a “doctor of souls,” allowing his formation classes to stretch him and push him toward holiness.

“I also had this sense of duty and responsibility, that the people of God were paying for me to be there, so I just gave myself completely to the formation process of seminary.”

Fr. Dan recalls the seminary experience as a wonderful period of his life, with class trips, visits to the holy land and Rome, a silent retreat with fellow seminarians (which he called “life changing”), studying Spanish in Mexico, summer assignments, and meeting so many interesting people.

“They take you out of the world, even though you have a lot of people you’re coming into contact with, you’re all working toward the same goal of holiness so it felt kind of like they cocooned you, put you in a place where you’re praying and doing all the things a good Catholic should do, being stretched and formed,” he says. “Some people will leave and realize it’s not quite for them, and that’s fine, but you’re still surrounding yourself with people who are inten-tionally striving toward becoming saints.”

During his priesthood, he has tackled challenges with the same devotion with which he tackled his seminary studies. At his current assignment, where one of his parishes has a Spanish-speaking community, he spent hours every day studying the liturgy in Spanish so he could best minister to them (and hopefully pro-nounce the words correctly).

He’s also embraced caring for the unique spiritual needs of young children through his work with Catholic schools at St. Mary’s Assumption, Bronson and St. Charles Borromeo, Coldwater.

“It’s always good to see the energy of new life with the kids and to connect with them and encourage them. They're just so full of love and innocence they just brighten your day.”

Being a priest is no cakewalk, though. While many think priests just celebrate Mass and the occasional funeral, one look at Fr. Dan’s workload shows that’s not the case.

“Priests have a lot going on,” he says. “You’re studying and planning, and you have meetings. You’re running multiple parishes, or in my case, you’ve got two schools and a hospital and a jail. You’ve got people who drop in to talk with you and [on top of it] you’ve got diocesan responsibilities.

“I thought my 55-hour weeks back in the trade were tough, but it seems light now. But I’m always growing, always learning and being stretched."