Nathaniel Roberts

My life before the seminary:

I graduated from Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA in 2013 and moved to the DC area a few weeks after graduation to start working in the commercial construction industry. I worked for two different general contractors as a Superintendent. I was tasked with working on the construction site and supervising the subcontractors and their work. Over the course of five years I worked on many different projects including office renovations, public playgrounds, and hotels.

What convinced me to enter the seminary:

I began to seriously consider the seminary after two close friends were ordained. I went to their ordination and during the weekend, which included their ordination and first mass, all of their priest friends asked me what I was doing and why I wasn’t considering the seminary. After that weekend, I began to seriously consider the seminary and the priesthood. I began to do spiritual direction with my pastor and increase my prayer life. After a few months of working with my pastor, I still could not shake the idea that God might be calling me to the priesthood. At this point I reached out to the vocations director to begin discussing the idea of entering the seminary. After a few more months of speaking regularly with my pastor and the vocations director, I came to realize two things: first, instead of asking God to show me that I should be in seminary, I began asking God to let me know if going to the seminary was not the path that he wanted me on. Second, I realized that when I first started discerning, I was doing it because I thought that the seminary and the priesthood were something that God wanted me to do. But by the time that I applied to the seminary, not only did I think that that was where God wanted me, but I wanted to join the seminary; I wanted to continue discerning the priesthood.

Other interests include:

I am an avid reader, mainly of science fiction and fantasy. I also enjoy building my own computers, playing board games, and saltwater fishing.