Answering the call
Beyond the Roman collars they wear, Aaron Huber and Darren Balkey share strikingly similar backgrounds.
Both have been active Catholics since they were kids. Both graduated from Belmont Abbey College. Both dated and considered marriage and a family. And on Saturday, both were ordained, called to serve God as priests.
The two men heard a similar call to the priesthood, yet their paths to ordination day unfolded in unique ways and have inspired them to different ministries.
College seminary’s ‘first fruits’
Father Huber is the first priest ordained for the diocese who came through its St. Joseph College Seminary in Mount Holly. He was among the first group of men to be accepted into the seminary program when it began in 2016.
The college seminary nurtures local vocations among the parishes and families in the diocese, close to home. Graduates go on to major seminaries out of state to complete their priestly formation, then return for ordination to serve in the diocese’s growing parishes.
At 25, Huber embodies how the college seminary will boost priestly vocations for the diocese – a high priority for Bishop Peter Jugis. In five years since its founding, dozens of young men discerning the priesthood have attended the college seminary program, which in 2020 opened a permanent home in Mount Holly.
“The program is a testament to the work and focus of the bishop and the priests involved,” Huber says. “Their perseverance and devotion to God’s will have really paid off, and we are just beginning to see the first fruits.”
The support of parishioners, he says, also was critical: “I think parishioners are pleased to know their kids will have priests that are being formed right here in the diocese. They know they had a role in forming their priests through their support of the program… It’s a unifying force.”
Being part of the nascent program, Huber says he and the seven other seminarians became “just like a family, a brotherhood.”
“We’ve got a good mix of people from different cultures and backgrounds. We’re all very different, but we are united by one thing: Serving our Lord and aspiring to be His instrument in the world.”
Faith laid a firm foundation
The college seminary wasn’t the first influence on Huber’s vocation.
His Catholic faith was ingrained from his earliest memories of growing up in a large family – he’s the third of nine children – attending Mass, going to confession, altar serving, and living the faith with his family at home. Their parish, St. John the Evangelist in Waynesville, is small with a couple hundred families so everyone was expected to pitch in at church.
“That consistent witness was really helpful in my vocation, because it became a foundation which to this day I greatly appreciate,” he says.
Huber also participated in the Diocesan Youth Advisory Council as a teen, and on one of its retreats, he felt the call of the Lord more profoundly. “Youth ministry with my peers was something that helped me with discernment and led me to where I am now,” he says.
When Huber went to Belmont Abbey College, he briefly dated a fellow student he had met back in high school. Like most other young men, he assumed one day he would be married and have a family.
“I was clarifying things (in my life) at the time. I imagined that I would really love having a wife and children, as we are hardwired that way, to have a family. Yet you make the choice to give up some things to do what you are called to do – and really experience the joy of giving your life to the Lord,” he explains.
A visit with Bishop Jugis
Huber kept coming back to the idea of becoming a priest.
The concept had been planted in his mind as a child – and Huber distinctly remembers a visit with Bishop Jugis when he came to Huber’s Waynesville parish for confirmation, when Huber was about 12.
“He would come every year. He remembered our names and he talked about vocations. He gave us rosaries and asked that we pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life,” Huber recalls. “He said, ‘Pray that God will tell you your vocation.’”
Another moment came after he’d entered the college seminary program. At times, he found himself wondering about investing his talents and passion into other pursuits.
“Father Patrick Winslow said something that really stuck with me. He said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that you are so capable, that you could do so many things with your life, and that God is calling you here? That this is where you will put all those talents to work?”
Now, the reality of being a priest means Huber can be more intimately connected to what he loves the most: “There’s one word for everything I love about the Catholic faith, and that’s the Eucharist. Everything is tied into that. It is ‘the source and summit’ (of our faith) for a reason. It is God Himself. Everything in the Catholic faith is found there.”
Navy chaplain and priest
Huber isn’t the only remarkable vocation this year. Balkey is only the second priest ordained for the diocese who will also serve as a chaplain for the U.S. Navy. (The first was Father Michael Klepacki, who became a chaplain in 1988 for the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard 10 years after his ordination.)
Balkey will serve here in the diocese for three years and then get an assignment through the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA.
“I’m looking forward to this period of mentorship and exposure to more experienced priests of the diocese,” says Balkey, 30. “This training period tells the military, ‘We have confidence he can succeed.’”
He will serve as a Navy chaplain for five years, then he can choose to continue serving, go into the Navy Reserve, or return to a parish assignment in the Charlotte diocese.
Why pull the “double duty” – serving the Church and the country?
Balkey says he has always wanted to be the kind of person who can be relied upon when times get tough.
“I have a heart for service,” he explains. “I really couldn’t separate my heart for service for my neighbor and my service for God.”
From a young age, he was encouraged to be independent and have a broad range of experiences. He grew up in State College, Pa., in a Catholic family, the second of three boys, and attended both public schools and homeschooling.
“It taught me to take initiative, to be a self-starter. It gave me a lot of training in looking for opportunities to learn.”
‘The priest is here’
After graduating from Belmont Abbey College, Balkey worked for a couple of years to pay off student loans by working with troubled youth at a wilderness camp.
Even before he could really see it within himself, the campers saw he had a vocation.
“They did ask me there if I was going to be a priest,” he recalls. “They had reached the conclusion even before I was aware of it. I had a sense it might happen, but I didn’t have a when or a how.”
Service called to him – but at first it was volunteering with the Locke Township Volunteer Fire Department in Salisbury.
“Everybody loves a fire truck!” he says, laughing. “What was I looking for? I wanted a 24/7 community. I was looking for something that let me be the person people called. When you have a problem at 3 in the morning, who is going to show up? It was those people that appealed to me.”
Balkey says he loved the feeling he had riding in the fire truck. “The priest and the firefighter are the same in this regard – people have no idea of all the things that you do, but they know exactly what you do in certain circumstances. When you show up in uniform, they trust you to do it right: ‘Solve my problem. Fix my life.’
“You show up in firefighting gear, people say, ‘Oh, the fire department is here.’ You show up in a black shirt and white collar, they say, ‘The priest is here. Let’s let him do his work.’”
Like Huber, Balkey was an altar server, even into his college days. He was impressed by the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey, whose charism is prayer and work, “ora et labora.”
“When I got to college and I was around the monks praying and interacting with students, I recognized, ‘Wow, this is guy doing this full-time.’ Their beliefs and convictions are their livelihood.”
He realized that life as a priest could be an option for him, too.
“I had been thinking I could be a Catholic in the military or I could be a priest,” he says. “Eventually I realized I could do both. There’s a natural match there. And you know you have found what you are meant to do when you don’t have to ask why.”
“There are a lot of other things I could have studied, done or pursued, and they’d be great for what they are, but they don’t touch many areas of my life. It’s just a field that you go into. The Catholic faith is about the whole person and the whole of our lives, and I love that connection.”
Looking forward
Both Huber and Balkey are excited about what God has in store for them.
Says Huber, “One of the things I am most looking forward to is simply being a priest” – offering the sacraments, hearing confessions and being an instrument in the hands of God.
“Having that configuration to Christ the High Priest, and then my life becoming a sacrifice... Not simply when I am offering the Mass am I laying down my life, but every day through my configuration through Christ the High Priest – my whole life becomes a sacrifice. I realize that who I am has changed, and it has changed forever.”
Adds Balkey, “We are trying to save souls here. I will do anything I can to get you there.”
— Catholic News Herald Staff