Ryan Mann

OTTAWA — Ryan Mann pretty much had the rest of his junior year at Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, planned. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic that sent him back to central Illinois.

While it may have changed his location, it did not change what was important: his intention to continue praying and discerning his vocation to the priesthood.

“There was a certain level of fear on my part. I wondered, how is this all going to work,” he said. “Jesus has definitely done a lot over the last couple of days of reminding me that as good and holy as the seminary structure is . . . that it’s ultimately him. He’s the one who is going to bring about that growth in us,” Mann said.

“If I bring myself to him and have that desire — ‘Lord, do this work in me’ — he’s going to use whatever the situation is,” he told The Catholic Post. “As crazy as this (situation) seems, he’ll use it.”

Mann has been letting Jesus do that since he was a student at Marquette Academy in Ottawa.

JOY HAD AN IMPACT

Along with the rest of the seminarians who returned to the Diocese of Peoria after the seminaries suspended in-person classes for the rest of the semester, Mann is living in a rectory as he continues his studies for the priesthood online. In his case, he is living at his home parish, St. Columba in Ottawa.

The son of Glenn and Mary Mann, he attended St. Columba School through fifth grade and continued at Marquette Academy after the Catholic schools in Ottawa combined in 2010. He graduated as the school’s salutatorian in 2017.

Even though he had served at Mass since the third grade and was used to people asking if he’d ever thought of the priesthood, he didn’t until he assisted at the Easter Vigil during his freshman year. Mann said he had spent that Lent going to daily Mass and asking the Lord how he could have a deeper relationship with him, and as he left the sacristy on Holy Saturday the Lord showed him.

“I had this moment of looking at the altar in church and in that moment of prayer I could see myself celebrating Mass at that altar,” he said. “I got this feeling of my heart burning with a desire to do that. There was also a sense of complete peace.”

Mann didn’t fully accept the idea until he was involved in a day of service with the Little Sisters of the Poor in Toledo, Ohio, on the way to the national March for Life during his sophomore year. Seeing the joy with which they served had a profound impact.

“I remember falling asleep that night and telling the Lord, ‘I don’t know what you’re calling me to, but I know for certain I want that joy I saw in those Sisters. I want that love that comes from being with you and that they were able to share with the people they serve,'” he said.

EYES FIXED ON JESUS

From then on, Mann started to intentionally pray and discern his vocation. When senior year rolled around he talked with Father Timothy Hepner, diocesan vocation director of recruitment.

“I knew I could never go off and do anything else wholeheartedly without going to seminary and seeing what the Lord was calling me to, to test out my vocation,” Mann said.

As a seminarian he is studying philosophy, Scripture and Latin, and is majoring in history at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, which is adjacent to Immaculate Heart of Mary. He is focusing on church history.

“The Lord has been more generous than I would have ever thought possible,” he said, adding that his years at the seminary have started to show him who he is, with all his gifts and talents and how loved we are by God, who wants to make us what we are called to be.

“Every moment . . . the Lord is using it for his glory and my growth,” Mann said. He is confident that will continue to happen while living and studying at St. Columba rectory, under the pastoral care and supervision of Father David Kipfer, his longtime pastor.

“Our lives have been turned upside down in some respect, but that’s all the more reason to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to have that confidence and trust,” Mann told The Post.

Mindful of the fact that he is able to attend Mass and receive the Eucharist every day when many others can’t, Mann isn’t taking that for granted. “We are definitely praying for all the faithful of the diocese during this time.”