Powerful experience at adoration helps lead Calvert Hall grad to the priesthood

Archbishop William E. Lori will ordain five men to the priesthood June 20 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 14 to June 18. Click here to read them. 

Deacon Alexander Kulik was at a low point when a friend from organic chemistry class at Tulane University invited him to visit a perpetual adoration chapel just off campus in New Orleans.

He wasn’t sure what he believed about the Eucharist, but he knelt anyway.

“Lord, have mercy,” he pleaded. “I’ve strayed so far. I’m depressed. Take me back. Have mercy on me.”

He kept returning for the next two weeks. Slowly, things began to change.

“I’m thinking, ‘What is going on? My life is getting better by coming to this place,'” he recalled.

Deacon Kulik threw himself into studying Church teaching on the Eucharist and the writings of early Christians. He became convinced that when Christ spoke of the bread and wine as his true body and blood, he was not speaking metaphorically.

“That really cut me to the core and convicted me,” said Deacon Kulik, a graduate of Calvert Hall College High School in Towson.

Now preparing for ordination to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, he credits that encounter in the adoration chapel with setting the course of his life.

After graduating from Tulane University with a degree in chemistry, Deacon Kulik put aside medical school acceptance to serve two years as a missionary with FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. The experience deepened his sense of purpose and pointed him toward seminary.

“I became a FOCUS missionary to save souls,” he said, “and that’s why I’m becoming a priest. I wanted to be a doctor – healing the body. But this is also being a doctor – healing the soul.”

After studying at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg and completing his diaconal year at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland, the 31-year-old former parishioner of Church of the Nativity in Timonium said one of the greatest joys of his ministry so far has been preaching – something he looks forward to continuing as a priest.

“I love preaching because what would take hundreds of hours sitting down with individual people, you can accomplish in 15 minutes,” he said.

Throughout his discernment, Deacon Kulik worshiped regularly at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where Father James Boric, then rector, offered encouragement and spiritual support.

“I realized very early on that he’s a very devout soul and he just wants to do God’s work,” said Father Boric, now pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Hagerstown. “I think he’s going to be a wonderful priest. He’s gentle. He’s faithful. He’s prayerful and he’s courageous. Those are the things I think we need in the priesthood today.”

Email George Matysek at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org

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