Dominic Lawes was about midway through the first year of his professional career when he decided to pursue a vocation to the priesthood. \u2018I\u2019ve just got to do it,\u2019 he thought. \u2018If it\u2019s not meant to be, I\u2019m sure God will lead it that way, and if it is\u2014which I think it is\u2014I\u2019ll just continue.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Now in his seventh and final year of seminary life at Corpus Christi College, Deacon Dominic says his \u2018yes\u2019 to God has been confirmed for him \u2018year after year\u2019. <\/p>\n
Born and raised in England, Deacon Dominic is the sixth of seven children. \u2018I grew up in the small rural city of Salisbury in Wiltshire, the southwest region of England, near Stonehenge. Lots of people know Stonehenge,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
\u2018I was born into a lovely Catholic family. I\u2019m one of seven\u2014three brothers, three sisters\u2014and I was raised to pray,\u2019 he says. \u2018We prayed together growing up, and my parents had the faith. They were very strong, and they believed in it.\u2019<\/p>\n
The centrality of faith was impressed upon the Lawes children from a young age. He remembers his parents saying that they\u2019d rather \u2018he was poor, but a believer.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018And so right through my childhood, [we] went to youth camps, we had youth groups, and we always used to talk about the faith, even among my siblings.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Two of his brothers are priests in England, and when his first brother went into the seminary, he started to consider the possibility of the priesthood. \u2018When my first [brother] went into the seminary, that sort of dispelled any myths that I had that the priests were these sort of weird people that just prayed all day and didn\u2019t really have a life. So I started thinking about it too.\u2019 He was 16 at the time, and it would take another few years and a move to another continent before he decided to pursue this calling.<\/p>\n
\u2018I moved to Australia when I was 18. My mum\u2019s Australian. I may have been born and raised in England, but I always had that Australian stock, as you might call it, in my life.<\/p>\n
\u2018And so when I went to university, I kept on growing in my faith, kept on growing in my sense of independence from my family, and that helped me mature in that sense,\u2019 he says. <\/p>\n
These small connections \u2026 from a small seed, they grow like a flower.<\/p>\n
At university, he studied accounting and finance, which he enjoyed. \u2018I loved it. It\u2019s what my mind is made for, that kind of thing.\u2019 During his studies he also attended events like Theology at the Pub and became heavily involved with the student group Catholics of One Spirit Down Under (COSDU).<\/p>\n
\u2018I got to know a lot of people through those events and being connected to the youth group there [COSDU],\u2019 he says. \u2018That\u2019s a very international-based community, but likewise, that\u2019s the Church.\u2019<\/p>\n
His discernment journey was also helped along by local priest Fr Andrew McCarter, who Deacon Dominic met during his early years in Melbourne. \u2018I was very new to Melbourne in 2015 and I didn\u2019t know anyone really. He was the first priest that I got to know in Australia, and he showed me this community [of] Melbourne and what we have to offer. \u2018And so, these small connections \u2026 from a small seed, they grow like a flower.\u2019<\/p>\n
After completing his degree, he entered the workforce but couldn\u2019t shake a sense of wanting \u2018something more\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u2018Over the years it was just a growing sense that I was called to something more, and a growing sense I couldn\u2019t really do anything else other than become a priest.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominic Lawes was about midway through the first year of his professional career when he decided to pursue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6866,6864,6865,6310,6868,6869,260,6867,6870,68],"class_list":["post-65221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-archbishop","tag-archdiocese","tag-catholic","tag-child-safety","tag-community","tag-jesus","tag-melbourne","tag-parish","tag-sacraments","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}