A 22-year journey to priesthood

by ROWENA OREJANA
AUCKLAND — It took Jeremy Palman 22 years to become a priest, but it was a great joy when he got there.
Fr Palman was ordained by Bishop Patrick Dunn on August 9 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, in Auckland. “It was a great joy, it was an enormous joy. Sometimes I tell people it’s still surreal. I couldn’t believe I was finally here,” he said with a laugh.

Although born into a Catholic family, he said he experienced faith only in a vague way until a deeper conversion through a Charismatic Renewal event when he was almost 18.
“I never really prayed, but when I saw this change in my friends, I saw that there was something real. So I went searching a little bit. I felt the Lord was obviously drawing me,” he said.
Throughout his faith journey, he encountered Christ. At 19, he entered Holy Cross Seminary, at Mosgiel, but soon left.
However, he still felt the call. He read books on the lives of the saints and felt again a deeper conversion, falling a little deeper in love with the Church, Mary and Christ in the Eucharist.
Those experiences led him to join the Beatitudes Community, first in New Caledonia and later in France.
“It was very traditional, but it was also very new,” he said. “The work of the house was to receive the poorest of the poor of the streets, very fragile, broken people.
They discovered their weaknesses weren’t a handicap. Their weaknesses were a source where Christ could meet them and them his mercy.”
He tried to discern God’s call, but again it wasn’t clear to him. “It was like God was
waiting,” he said. He went back to New Zealand and joined the Beatitudes Community
in Christchurch.
“I stayed for about six months. And felt the Lord asking me to leave the community and to go back,” he said. “I didn’t understand necessarily what was going on.”
He went back to university and studied mechanical engineering. Then he moved back to Auckland and worked for an agrotechnology firm.
For a while, he thought marriage might be his calling and that he might spend his life as a layperson.
He became involved with Hearts Aflame and started wondering again if he was being called to priesthood. “A very good priest friend, Fr Anthony Bernal from Opus Dei, helped me discern that the Lord was calling me. I decided the only way I’ll know was by jumping in,” he said. He reentered Holy Cross Seminary in 2008.
Fr Palman reflected that the journey took him a long time because, these days, it is a struggle to make a commitment.
“You know how so many options there are in life. But still the attraction was there and the call was there. And God has been very patient with me and very merciful in the sense that I’ve wandered and sort of done and tried different things,” he said.
“The vocation is about a response of love. Really, it comes down to: What does Jesus want?
“For me, the priesthood is an immense gift given, but it’s for the Church. It’s a mystery, these frail men being used in order to mediate the divine life that Christ gives into the Church.
“It’s a wonderful joy to be in that, and it’s a privilege.”