The Home Stretch: Nicholas Duncan Ordained to the Transitional Diaconate

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton welcomes Transitional Deacon Nicholas Duncan in his final year of priestly formation.

Deacon Nicholas Duncan stopped receiving communion in college - and went on to not receive for eight years. He is now a transitional deacon, serving at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Southeast Shreveport for the home stretch of his final year of priestly formation.

So how did that happen? Thirty-five years old and a former football coach and teacher, Duncan had only gone to confession once before college, and he wasn’t sure in his belief.

He didn’t start discerning until he was about twenty-seven, after a plan to “be a professional athlete with a smokin’ hot wife,” didn’t seem to be God’s plan for him. God was calling him to something greater.

While many priests say they felt the call from a very young age, Duncan never envisioned himself in the role. “It was for people that came from holier, more Catholic families,” he said. “It’s not for me, it’s not for the Duncans.”

While he grew up Catholic, he never felt his faith was emphasized in such a way that he was expected to discern the priesthood. He attended public school and played rugby off and on for about fifteen years.

In a sort of quarter-life crisis, Duncan felt he hit the bottom. He reevaluated his aspirations - not sure of what to do or where to go. “I had to become helpless,” he says. “I tried to do things my way and the way society says we should do things. That’s where God lifted me out of it.”

“I rejected prayer before seminary because it seemed more like a vending machine.” He knew if prayer was true, it had to go deeper than asking God for wishes like a genie in a bottle. He began this search for faith, this search for God, and as a result, has reached the conclusion that if he wasn’t Catholic, he wouldn’t even be Christian. “If you’re gonna be Christian, it’s the only way to go.” Duncan describes himself as “unapologetically Catholic,” and now that he’s found that faith, he is never letting it go.

When he told his family he was considering the priesthood, they were surprised, but supportive. “They saw my spirit change in me,” he said, and they knew it was good.

After you begin the vocations process, you may be treated a little differently. “When you encounter Protestants,” he says, “and you tell them you’re becoming a priest, they are usually congratulatory and ask questions and are very interested.” What really surprised him was the reaction he got from other Catholics. “People distanced themselves or thought they couldn’t be themselves around me.” he says. Aside from your daily communicants and devout Catholics, generally, he says he is met with a sense of shock and awe. He’s even had some Catholics tell him, “I can’t believe you would do that.”

Duncan says the vocations materials are not necessarily directed at young men, but rather their parents, who need more of the convincing. “It’s always someone else’s kid,” he says in reference to a parent’s common perspective on vocations. The prayer for vocations is always a general wish, for across a nation or across a world, but never here within your own family.

The priesthood is a holy calling - one that is so counter-cultural to the priorities we hold as a society today. It takes courage and intellect and perseverance to first accept a totally sacrificial life, and second to push through years and years of the seminary.

“What tongue, human or angelic, may ever describe a power so immeasurable as that exercised by the simplest priest in Mass? Who could ever have imagined that the voice of man, which by nature hath not the power even to raise a straw from the ground, should obtain through grace a power so stupendous as to bring from Heaven to earth the Son of God?” — St. Leonard of Port Maurice

Please continue to pray for Deacon Nicholas Duncan as he finishes up his final year of priestly formation. And if you or someone you know is interested in learning more about the priesthood, contact Father Peter Mangum, Vocations Director for the Diocese of Shreveport at fathermangum@yahoo.com.