Welcome, Fr. Nick!

As you might have heard, Nativity of Our Lord will be welcoming its new Parochial Vicar (Associate Pastor) Father Nicholas Hagen next weekend (July 21-22). While we will all certainly miss Fr. John Powers, we are so fortunate that Fr. Nick will be joining us to share his faith and ministry with us.
 
Fr. Nick will be sharing a bit about himself in next week’s Nativity bulletin, but in the meantime, I wanted to share excerpts from a Catholic Spirit article from May 2017 (when he was ordained) highlighting Fr. Nick’s priestly journey:

Nick Hagen (pictured at right) was around 8 years old when his parents invited a visiting missionary priest to dinner — something they hadn’t done before — and they talked late into the night. The priest’s presence and that conversation, however, had a profound and lasting effect.
 
“I saw a real shift in my family,” said Father Hagen. “I saw that what the priest said and witnessed made a concrete difference in my family life.”
 
Father Hagen’s parents, Bret and Mary Hagen, deepened their understanding of their vocation and their family’s commitment to their faith. Their increased involvement in Church activities — and the flexibility that required — led his parents to homeschool him and his four younger siblings.
 
In high school, Father Hagen remembers sitting in front of the Eucharist in adoration and feeling as if he had to make a decision about his discipleship — and his vocation. If Jesus was who he said he was, “then there can be nothing more important in my life,” he recalled thinking.
 
As Father Hagen was deciding where to go to college, he went to confession on Divine Mercy Sunday at his parish, Holy Family in St. Louis Park. Afterward, he felt he heard God telling him clearly: “I offer an amazing plan. I’m not going to tell you everything it is right now, but if you trust me completely and totally … I will make your life something great, and you will not make it yourself,” he recalled. With this affirmation, Father Hagen enrolled at St. John Vianney College Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul in 2009.
 
He describes his discernment process as “a slow, gradual one” in which he has gone from “part-time disciple to full-time disciple, and realizing that God’s dreams and plans were far greater than what I could have dreamed up myself.”
 
“In seminary, it’s been realizing more and more deeply the romance of God and his people — that romance story is one that involves all of my life,” he said.
 
After four years at SJV, he moved to Rome in 2013 to complete his studies first at the Gregorian University and then the Lateran University while living at the Pontifical North American College.
 
Life in the Eternal City has given him the opportunity to encounter a variety of religious orders and lay movements, and understand their different roles in the Church and God’s “custom-fit” plan for each person and how God “seeks to grab our hearts,” he said…He’s also been able to experience Pope Francis as a person, and not just a news figure.
 
“I’m very convinced that the parochial Church is meant to serve the domestic Church, and I can’t wait to work with couples preparing for marriage and families, to try to work together on what’s the Holy Spirit doing in your family,” Fr. Nick said.
 
While Father Nick is especially passionate about the liturgy, one of his hobbies is helping others articulate their own passions and expertise as a host of the Catholic Bytes podcast, short audio segments on Church apologetics, history and teaching.
 
He said the best advice he’s received about priesthood is to keep learning and never forget that he’s on a journey, too. “I’m never going to be able to say, ‘I’ve figured out God, and now I can tell everybody exactly who God is,’ because he’s always beyond me, too. That’s part of the humility of the priesthood,” he said.
 
( Full Catholic Spirit article by Maria Wiering is available here).
 
Please join me for any of the weekend masses July 21-22 to welcome Fr. Nick Hagen.  Blessings on you and your family in the coming week and always.
 
FPH