Laboure Society
“I went to the other side of the world looking for the answer, and the answer was back home all along- in the Catholic Church. I want to become a priest and a monk because I want to disappear completely into the mysteries of Our Lord, and hopefully through His will I may guide others into those mysteries as well.”
Meet the rest of my class
My name is Brian Hurley. I am called to bring God’s mercy to His people as a priest with the Order of St. Basil the Great. This is my story.
Though I was baptized Catholic and attended Sunday Mass and Catholic schools from kindergarten through university, the Faith wasn’t truly imbedded in my life in any meaningful way, and my heart never truly connected with God. I was focused instead on violent video games and music, unhealthy tv shows and the like. After going off to college and losing a debate on the existence of God with my atheist roommate, I consciously rejected God in my heart and began just “floating” through life with no real sense of purpose.
After leaving school, I felt restless and decided that living abroad would be freeing. I moved to Shanghai and got a job as an English teacher. Devoid of true inner peace, I attempted to fill the void within in various ways, yet wound up sinking into an even darker place in life. In January 2021, I reached my lowest point. I realized that in consciously turning away from God, I had gotten exactly what I’d asked for — just not in the way I’d anticipated. I cried out to God for forgiveness, with true repentance in my heart, and felt an invisible weight dissolve away. In an instant, my despair and sorrow were replaced with a sense of joy!
I knew from my Catholic upbringing that to truly “get right with God,” I ought to attend the Sacrament of Confession. A Chinese Catholic friend arranged for me to meet with the pastor of her parish. I confessed all the sins of my entire life, weeping once again for them. I was absolved through the Sacrament, and left feeling a warmth around me and a sense of oneness with the Lord. For the first time I could remember, I felt clean, with an interior peace I had never before known.
I recalled my mother telling me about how people are “called” to religious life. I sensed that perhaps God might be calling me. After a long period of prayer and reflection, and discussion with a priest in China, I made the decision to return to America and explore a vocation to the priesthood.
In America, after a period of discerning if and where God might be calling me to serve as a priest, I discovered the Ukrainian Catholic Church. I began attending the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The Eastern rite brought the truths of the Catholic faith alive for me. I met a Byzantine priest-monk, and expressed to him my desire to live a more traditional Christian life. He invited me to his monastery to discern God’s path for me.
St. Josaphat’s is a semi-cloistered monastery. Its primary mission is deepening the prayer life of the Byzantine Catholic community and educating them in the mysteries of the Catholic faith.
I have learned that Christianity is not an ideology or an intellectual project, but a mystical way of life that modernity and the world cannot equal. I look forward to being a spiritual father, especially for youth, to help them avoid the same mistakes that I made. I want them to know that what the world offers is a lie and cannot compare to the truths of the Church and Christ’s love for them in the Blessed Sacrament. I also hope, as a priest, to encourage family fathers to focus on holiness, their own relationships with God, and truly nurturing the faith within their families above all else.
Please pray for me and my fellow Laboure classmates on our vocation journey. Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have brian@rescuevocations.org.
Download a PDF of my story
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