By: By Jennifer Willems

If things had gone according to his plans, Deacon Daniel Gifford would have been a teacher, gotten married and settled down with a family.

God had other plans.

“It was a gradual revelation,” Deacon Gifford told The Catholic Post. “It became a serious question early in my second year at Illinois Central College.”

The son of Diane Matheson of Morton and Michael Gifford of East Peoria, he grew up in Blessed Sacrament Parish in Morton. While he started to develop a serious prayer life and love for Scripture early on and had many friends who encouraged him to lead a good Christian life, none of them were Catholic and he started to drift away from the Catholic Church.

By the time he started his freshman year at Morton High School he had stopped identifying himself as Catholic — but he didn’t stop going to Mass.

“I had a lot of questions. There were things I didn’t understand,” Deacon Gifford said.

That started to change when he was coaxed to go to a Teens Encounter Christ weekend in Peoria and found, for the first time, Catholic peer support and a deeper understanding of the faith.

With the encouragement of Msgr. Brownsey and friends from TEC he went to eucharistic adoration and admitted that at the time it struck him as a strange way to connect with Jesus.

“It wasn’t until the second experience that I felt the Lord spoke to my heart and convicted me about my lack of faith,” Deacon Gifford said. “That was largely connected to my own poor understandings. It made his presence in the Eucharist very clear.”

That was the beginning of what he calls his “long, stubborn walk ‘home.'”
At the end of his freshman year of college — May 6, 2004 — he was confirmed and realizes now that it was the grace of his confirmation that allowed him to discern God’s will for his life.

Within a year of his confirmation, Deacon Gifford applied to be a seminarian of the Diocese of Peoria and was sent to Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

“When I entered seminary I was only convinced of one thing — that God wanted me to go to seminary. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. I definitely wasn’t sure I wanted to be a priest,” he said.

“By the end of the first semester I was very much at home and very happy to be there,” Deacon Gifford said. “At the end of the first year, I wanted to be a priest.”

After three years at Immaculate Heart of Mary he went to the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, for four years to complete his studies for the priesthood.

“Now there’s a sense of peace and confidence not only when I pray about the priesthood but in the pastoral experiences I’ve had,” Deacon Gifford said, citing the positive feedback and support he’s received in his summer assignments at St. Paul’s in Danville, St. Philomena’s in Peoria, Holy Cross in Champaign, and St. Patrick’s and St. Hyacinth’s in LaSalle. He was also the chaplain at a Boy Scout camp and spent one summer at the Institute for Priestly Formation at Creighton University in Omaha.

Among the important influences during his formation have been “the countless priests who have shown me good, holy examples of what a priest is.” He added that his relationship with the Blessed Mother has been “a constant anchor” and that Divine Mercy also played a role in his discernment and vocation.

His vesting priest at the ordination liturgy will be Father Mark DeSutter, pastor at Blessed Sacrament in Morton. Deacon Gifford will celebrate his first Mass on Sunday, May 27, at 3:30 p.m. at Blessed Sacrament. A reception will follow in the parish hall.