From Karachi to the Baltimore Archdiocese: Deacon Andrades looks forward to a vocation of gratitude

Note: Archbishop William E. Lori will ordain six men to the priesthood June 22 at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland. The following is a profile of one of those future priests. New profiles of the other new priests will be added to the Catholic Review site daily from June 16 to June 21. Click here to read them.

Deacon Daniel Andrades looks forward to his ordination to the priesthood June 22 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland as a gift that will be reciprocated.

“I am the recipient of infinite generosity from the Lord and from the church,” he said. “The response, when you’re ordained, is to be infinitely generous yourself.”

Deacon Andrades, 30, is originally from Karachi, Pakistan, and he experienced multiple instances of generosity before he received the explicit call to the priesthood.

He initially left Pakistan for a less extraordinary vocation – study at Towson University with the eventual goal of becoming a physical therapist “with a sports focus.”

Coming to the U.S., Deacon Andrades said, “was a big change,” Deacon Andrades said. He moved in with his uncle, and “seminary was not on the radar.”

His first “big faith moment” in the U.S. occurred in a chance meeting with a Southern Baptist pastor who, looking for a point of commonality, noted that he had been to Andrades’ native Pakistan on a mission trip.

“That’s kind of bold,” Andrades said. “You don’t just do that.”

Pakistan, he explained, is about 98 percent Muslim. He was brought up in a Catholic household by parents who lived the faith, but the reality of the church is different there, he said.

“This is a Muslim country,” Deacon Andrades said. “Churches have big walls because you have terrorist attacks on churches.”

The Southern Baptist pastor who traveled there to “talk about Jesus,” he said, “had my respect right from there.”

The meeting led to Deacon Andrades’ “first time worshiping out loud (in the U.S.) with people all around me, full of love for the Lord.”

“That sort of shocked me back,” he said.

Soon, he was participating in activities with Towson University’s Newman Center, one of a nationwide network of such centers that minister to Catholic students at colleges and universities that are not affiliated with the church.

“Father Luke Koski and myself were some of the originals,” Deacon Andrades remembered.

Father Koski now serves as chaplain for Archbishop Spalding High School and as associate pastor of St. Bernadette, both in Severn.

Deacon Andrades remembered Father Matthew Buening, then chaplain at Towson and now pastor at St. Matthew in Northwood and Blessed Sacrament in Baltimore, as well as missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

“That was huge,” he said. “They were the ones who challenged me to lead Bible studies and take my faith outside.”

He went on mission trips, including to Skid Row in Los Angeles.

When he graduated from Towson, he went on a vocation retreat with the Baltimore Archdiocese.

“I prayed, and I received many graces,” Deacon Andrades said. “I said to myself, ‘Hey, I’ll give this a shot. I’ll let the Lord have his time, and I’ll go to seminary,’ and now, here I am.”

He underwent formation at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg.

“The gift of the Mount is that every man who goes through formation (there) will come out a man of deep prayer and of deep virtue,” he said. “The Mount is holy ground. You cannot be at the Mount and not be transformed.”

Deacon Andrades’ transformation advanced several more degrees during his pastoral year at St. Isaac Jogues in Carney, with Father Brian Nolan, then the pastor.

“It was the best year of my life,” Deacon Andrades said. “I fell in love with the church that year.”

He said that he has had a taste of the sacrifice inherent to the priesthood.

“We don’t have weekends; that’s a reality,” he said.

But he does not feel that he is missing anything.

“People will say early on, ‘Wow, you are giving up this and that – it’s a lot,’” Deacon Andrades said. “But when you ask guys in formation, they say, ‘No, we’ve given up nothing – the Lord’s given us everything.’ We’ve received so much.”

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