CAMBRIDGE -- For Father Johnathan Saniuk, the most exciting thing about being a priest will be getting to hold Jesus in his hands.

"That's crazy," he said. "That blows my mind every time I think about it. That's going to take some time getting used to, but I'm very excited for it."

Father Saniuk, who was formed at St. John's Seminary in Brighton and is currently a transitional deacon at St. Mary of the Annunciation in Cambridge, is one of five men who will be ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Boston on May 16. The 28-year-old, who strokes his beard when he thinks and enjoys Japanese role-playing video games in his spare time, has lived and worked in St. Mary's for two years. St. John's recently instituted a program called the Synthesis Stage where seminarians work full-time in parishes as part of their formation. He assists with daily Masses both at St. Mary's and its sister parish of St. Francis of Assisi.

"I help out with whatever the pastor needs," he said. "It could be anything from organizing the office to going out and meeting people or working on getting in some more sick calls and Communion calls and things like that."

When The Pilot visited him on March 2, Father Saniuk was seated in St. Mary's rectory kitchen. That day, Father Saniuk planned to visit a local nursing home with a parish priest and help bring its residents the Eucharist. He asked to go because it's something he wants more experience in before his ordination.

"Being with the people is one of my favorite things," he said. "It's the most life-giving for me. Even in difficulty, there's something incredibly beautiful about being with people in their struggles, in their sickness, in their tragedies, and being there just to be Christ for them."

He has gotten to know St. Mary's parishioners well, in their best and worst moments. One parishioner recently dropped Vietnamese food off at the rectory.

"They're very good to us," he said.

When he wasn't sleeping, Father Saniuk had worked continuously over the prior two days. At a retreat that weekend, he gave a talk entitled "Transformed at the Altar."

"I started from where we receive our identity, and that has been a key point of my own prayer throughout seminary," he said. "Where does my identity come from? What kind of wounds do I have in the past that have warped that a bit?"

Bringing those wounds to the altar, and letting God heal them, has allowed him to discover who he is meant to be.

"It's been a winding journey, right?" he said. "It's been a process of returning to the Lord time and time again, and bringing to him every aspect of my life and every aspect of my past."

Father Saniuk was born in Boston on Aug. 27, 1997, and grew up in Milford. His father worked for Eversource and his mother, along with taking care of the household, would cook for families in the neighborhood. He had two siblings over a decade older than him.

"I had a very blessed childhood, I really did," he said. "I had parents that loved me. I had siblings that loved me. We weren't poor, we weren't rich, either. We had everything we needed and a lot of what we wanted, but not always everything."

He attended Catholic school until third grade. He would fidget in class, and one of his teachers was so strict in punishing him that he would come home from school each day in despair.

"That was a long healing journey, and I'm honestly still finding effects of that in my own life," he said. "The way I react to things and the way I have relationships, and so a big part of my seminary journey has been walking through that and other instances, and sitting with Jesus in that."

Around that time, the "deep love" of his local priest stirred a calling in him. Faith was everything to him, even in public school. He wore a big cross around his neck until it wore down, then replaced it with another and wore that one until it wore down, and so on. Under his shirt, he still wears a cross his sister gave him when he was confirmed. Despite inklings of a priestly vocation, he studied engineering at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester and Umass Lowell. He hated his classes, but he was good at them. Engineering was a lucrative career that could support a family, he figured.

The chaplain at Umass Lowell invited him on a priestly discernment retreat that reawakened his long-dormant calling. When he entered St. John's Seminary in 2020, he still wasn't sure whether he would end up a priest. Due to the pandemic, he didn't get his acceptance until five days before classes began. The seminary was its own "bubble." Once their COVID tests came back negative, clergy and seminarians could interact without masks or social distancing, but were completely isolated from the rest of the world.

"It was actually a really great grace for me, I think, to come in and start this new journey with a clean slate," he said. "I was able to be present with the guys that were there and what it means to be a seminarian, pray and learn how to discern that call without a million things from outside pulling me in other directions."

There were 65 seminarians and an additional 10 priests at St. John's.

"Authentic male friendships were something I didn't have enough of, and I was looking for, especially in terms of the faith," Father Saniuk said, adding: "Getting to know the other guys in the house and getting to strive for holiness with them was an incredible blessing."

He decided that priesthood was his calling when it came time for his candidacy -- his public profession before a bishop that he intended to become a priest. That, he said, was the moment he went "all in" on priesthood. Daily Mass, prayers, and holy hour removed his doubts.

"That much time with Jesus, especially in community, really formed my heart to hear his call," he said. "Seeing the example of the priests that I was around, and the priests that I was assigned to, their heroic love for the people, all of that really helped me see that this is what I want to do."

An additional six years of tough classes, after his time at Quinsigamond and Umass Lowell, was the toughest part of his formation. God's grace got him through it.

"There are more of us coming," he said. "We have a very young house right now, and I think a lot of young men are beginning to become interested and turn to God and hear that call in a lot of ways."

In his spare time, he is a "lover of stories," avidly reading fantasy novels and playing video games like "Final Fantasy" and "Fire Emblem." Such stories, he said, are a way of tackling tough questions about morality.

"Our faith really is dramatic, right?" he said. "I mean, think about it. Broken humanity, struggling to be free of our own vices and sins, and then God breaks into that and comes himself to sacrifice his own life to rescue us."

That ended up being Father Saniuk's story, too.



This article originally appeared in the April 10 issue of The Pilot.