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The day Matthew C. MacDonald answered the call to the priesthood was the same day retired Pope Benedict XVI was elected the 265th pontiff of the Catholic Church.
“April 19, 2005,” Father MacDonald recently reminisced. “That was the day that I knew God wanted me to be a priest. That acknowledgement was just a realization of who He was, who I was in His eyes, that His love for me was real, that my love for Him was real. It was in that I heard the call to the priesthood.”
Just after Pope Benedict was elected, “I remember going into the chapel, getting on my knees before the Blessed Sacrament and God bringing that realization forward in a simple way. It was just a moment of spiritual clarity.”
The eldest of three children, Father MacDonald, 30, was raised in St. Raymond’s parish in East Rockaway, Long Island, where he was an altar server. He later attended St. Vincent Ferrer parish in Manhattan while discerning a call to the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph.
“I remember when I was little, at the parish, always having this very close relationship with God,” Father MacDonald said.
He credits his parents, Austin and Joann MacDonald, for taking him and his brother and sister to Mass each Sunday and on all the other holy days of obligation, and for requiring that the family say grace before every meal.
The devout Catholic example of a number of priests, of Jim Krug, his guidance counselor at Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, a Catholic school operated by Marianists priests and brothers, and of his late maternal grandfather, Edward McGreevy, also made a lasting impression on Father MacDonald’s faith life, he said.
“I remember family parties, when I was 6, 7, 8 years old, he would sit me down and talk about God with me, about his relationship with God,” Father MacDonald said of his grandfather.
Throughout his childhood, Father MacDonald accompanied his grandfather to the Easter Triduum liturgies at church. Through that, “I really developed a love for the Mass,” he said.
Father MacDonald entered St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, in August 2008. Before that, he had worked as an administrative assistant at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in Manhattan since 2006, after graduating from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.
He made it a priority to plug into New York’s Catholic young adult community. “I felt very much at home in the Archdiocese of New York,” MacDonald said, “and, seeing the need for good, solid, parish priests, to just be present to people, to bring them to Christ, to lovingly serve them. That’s when I made the decision to enter seminary for the archdiocese.”
His diaconal assignment was at St. Anthony’s parish in Nanuet. Apostolic assignments as a seminarian included teaching third grade religious education at St. Joseph’s parish in Bronxville and assisting the elderly at the Jeanne Jugan Residence in the Bronx.
From St. Joseph’s Seminary he earned a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology as well as a master of divinity degree and a master of arts degree, both in theology.
“My heart is ready,” Father MacDonald said. “All I want to do is to give my life, completely and totally, to Jesus Christ and to His Church as a priest for Him, for His glory and for the salvation of souls and for the people of this archdiocese—not the way that I see it, but the way He has planned.”
Father MacDonald will celebrate his first Mass at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Nanuet Sunday, May 25 at 11 a.m. Father William Elder, professor of canon law at St. Joseph’s Seminary and judicial vicar of the Interdiocesan Appellate Tribunal, will deliver the homily.
