A unique and heartwarming moment unfolded during the diaconate ordination of seminarian Andrew Heidelbaugh last month. After receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders on the altar at St. Patrick Cathedral, he was vested by his grandfather, Deacon Ronald Nowak.
A retired deacon of the Diocese of Trenton, Deacon Nowak received the honor of vesting his grandson during the Ordination Rite, celebrated on May 17. And when the moment concluded, he smiled widely at his grandson before drawing him into the kind of embrace that can only speak to the love and pride shared from a grandparent to a grandchild.
But “Poppo,” as the Heidelbaugh grandchildren call him, wasn’t the only familial presence taking part in the Mass that day. Deacon Heidelbaugh’s brother Matthew and father Michael were participants too, serving as lectors for the solemn Mass.
And when you consider that Michael is a member of the Diocese’s permanent diaconate formation class set to be ordained next fall – just a few months after his son Andrew’s anticipated ordination to the priesthood – you get a bigger picture of the blessings God has bestowed upon their family in terms of religious vocations.
In a recent interview via Zoom, the three men spoke about faith and discernment – and the family’s role in fostering both – and the rare blessing of three religious vocations across three generations.
A Quiet Influence
“I always kind of took it for granted that my grandpa was a deacon,” said Deacon Heidelbaugh, a native of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Enola. “It’s something I grew up with, so I never thought it was out of the ordinary.”
“While I don’t ever remember consciously thinking that I would like to be a deacon or a priest when I was growing up, looking back, I had to have been influenced by him as a role model. Seeing my Poppo serving the Church has to have impacted me.”
Michael Heidelbaugh – Andrew’s father and Deacon Nowak’s son-in-law – was on the receiving end of his father-in-law’s quiet influence and steady presence as well.
“I knew he was a deacon, but I don’t remember thinking much about it until my wife Cindy and I started having kids and he was baptizing them. But even then, I was so ungrounded in my Christianity that his vocation didn’t prompt me to think about discerning anything,” said Michael Heidelbaugh, who grew up in the Presbyterian Church.
“But I was growing in my faith at the time and being challenged to study. My mother-in-law and father-in-law were very influential in never pushing the Catholic faith on me but gave me good resources and good things to study that opened my eyes to things I never considered,” he said.
Still, in baptizing his grandchildren, providing study materials and inviting the men in his family to join him at the Diocese of Trenton’s men’s conference each year, Deacon Nowak never pressured his children, in-laws or grandchildren along their faith journey.
Perhaps that’s because he remembered his own journey and saw the ways in which God worked.
“I was brought up Catholic but was pretty much non-practicing. I grew up, got married. Things were going good for us in the 1970s – I had a good job, good family. But I had an emptiness in my life and I didn’t know what it was,” Deacon Nowak shared. “I was driving to work one day and I simply reached out to God. I said, ‘If you are real, would you please show yourself to me.’ I didn’t think anything more of it. Then, for the first time, I asked to go to Mass with my wife, who always took the children because I never went. At the elevation of the Eucharist, I broke into tears for the first time in my life. That was the beginning of my conversion.”
He received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and returned fully to the Church. He joined the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and grew in his faith. Before long, people began suggesting that he should consider becoming a deacon.
“I’d say, ‘Absolutely not, it’s just not what I want to do.’”
But the thought wouldn’t go away, and when he decided to pursue the diaconate, God opened up every door to make it possible.
“In reflecting on this over my life, if there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that I was called to the diaconate. I know it was a calling from God,” he said. “I see the fruit of the labor. Is it something I would have normally pursued? No. Since then, I’ve lived a normal Catholic life. I am who I am. I raised my kids as Catholics and tried to be a good father, but I am human and never shied away from my humanity.”
Retired with faculties and serving liturgically at the Church of the Epiphany in Brick, N.J., Deacon Nowak, 79, said “It’s been gratifying for me to see us grow together and socialize as Catholic men. That included my sons and grandsons as well. We’re all on different spiritual paths but we can see the impact it’s had on their life.”
Free to be Themselves
Deacon Andrew Heidelbaugh began discerning the priesthood when he was in high school. Months after participating in the Diocese’s Quo Vadis Days vocation discernment retreat, he realized that God was calling him to be a priest.
“There was a real peace that came over me when I followed his call. I felt like I was on the path of doing what I was meant to do,” he said.
“Since both my dad and Poppo have been role models for me in my life, and with both of them serious about their faith, I’m sure that impacted me and made me much more open to a vocation myself,” he added.
His decision to pursue the seminary after high school was met with great support from his parents and grandparents.
“Our faith was strong enough that, if this is what God was calling him to do, then we wanted him to keep saying yes to it. And if for some reason he didn’t end up being a priest, we’d still love and support him no matter what,” Michael Heidelbaugh said.
As for Deacon Nowak and his wife, Kathleen, “We absolutely affirmed him in his call. What was going through my mind was that God would either open doors or close doors as Drew pursued the priesthood, and that he should be open to the Spirit to listen to where he is being led.”
With Andrew in the seminary and the youngest of the four Heidelbaugh children in middle school, Michael took a step in pursuing his own call to Holy Orders by entering the Diocese’s diaconate formation program – something he had been urged to do when the diaconate class ordained in 2020 was getting underway and his conversion had him on fire with the faith.
Having joined the Church after his study of the Catholic faith, attending those men’s conferences with his father-in-law was key in Heidelbaugh’s deepening faith.
“I didn’t understand what true Catholicism was until maybe after seven years of those conferences. That particular year, I received the Eucharist, came back to my seat and I just started bawling, and I didn’t know why. It was a big, ugly cry for five minutes,” Heidelbaugh said.
After that, he started going to daily Mass and made a Cursillo retreat. “That’s when I started to realize how I was supposed to live as a Catholic man,” he said.
His pastor at the time, Father Michael Grab, saw how much Heidelbaugh was on fire with the faith and invited him to consider the diaconate formation class that was forming in 2015. But the husband and father raising four young kids and coaching several soccer teams decided it wasn’t the best timing.
Several years passed and the Diocese’s began a new class for the permanent diaconate in 2021 with a projected ordination date of September 2026; Heidelbaugh applied, and now he and his son are preparing for their anticipated ordination – Andrew to the priesthood, Michael to the diaconate – next year.
“It’s been a great experience. I talk to my Poppo a lot about Church-related things. There are seminarians who don’t have relatives who are clergy, so to be able to talk to Poppo about his knowledge and his experience has been a treasure,” Deacon Heidelbaugh said. “With dad in the diaconate formation program, we talk a lot about classes. There are times that I take a course that he takes a year later, or vice versa, so we can share our experiences and talk about those lessons.”
Nothing is off the table when it comes to discussion about the faith and discernment. Because of that, the three men have authentic discussions about what it means to be a man – and a member of the clergy – in today’s Church.
“There are not a lot of fathers who can say that they’ve learned a lot about the faith from their sons,” Michael Heidelbaugh said. “I’ve learned a lot about the way Drew handles and carries himself. As he started discerning and entered seminary, and we got to be around his formators, fellow seminarians and their parents, it has been a wonderful blessing for our whole family. Not everybody is in the same place spiritually, and that will always be the case. But just being around Drew’s brother seminarians and seeing how funny they are, how normal they are, how intelligent they are, has been eye opening.”
“For me, one of the biggest things is just to be around people who are fully alive and free enough to be able to be themselves,” he added. “When you start giving yourself completely to God, you can truly be who you are meant to be. I’m experiencing that with Drew’s cohort from the seminary and now with my own cohort of men in the diaconate formation program and their wives and families. They’re true bands of brothers. It’s something I wish everyone can experience in their own parish and faith communities – being your true, authentic self because you share values, faith and baptism.”
Being part of his grandson’s journey has given Deacon Nowak great hope for the future of the Church.
“For the past couple years, I’ve been taking Drew and a few seminarians fishing. My hope has been restored for the priesthood based on the experiences I’ve had with these real and good men who are alive in their faith and true to who they are as individuals,” he said. “Having conversations with them over wings and steaks has really boosted my hope for the Church’s future.”
A Family Journey
The triad of faith, family and vocation came together for the trio at Deacon Heidelbaugh’s ordination at St. Patrick Cathedral on May 17. Seeing his Poppo as the vesting clergy and his dad and brother as lectors offered moments of peace for Deacon Heidelbaugh.
“I was a wreck that day, especially in the morning before Mass,” he said. “I was so nervous, I felt like I had swallowed a blender and my head was spinning. I was thinking about what steps were next in the Rite and, because I was the only one being ordained, I didn’t have anyone’s lead to follow.”
“I was so happy to see Poppo up there when he came to vest me, and he gave me a great hug that I needed at the time,” he said. “The whole experience of him vesting me and my dad and brother reading was incredible. It brought home for me how much I’ve been given by the men who have influenced me. God has done a lot of wonderful things through this whole experience.”
Tears welled in Deacon Nowak’s eyes when he spoke about his grandson’s ordination and their moment on the altar.
“So much was going through my mind during the Mass. I had memories of my whole life – going to Mass, seeing the kids grow up,” he said. “I was thanking God for the opportunity to experience something like this in my life and how awesome it was to be part of it. It was one of the highlights of my life. This is a mountaintop experience and I’m overwhelmed with joy and emotion. I am so, so proud of him.”
These three men share a special bond in their family and in their vocations but are quick to point out that their faith and journeys are individual and unique.
“I can understand how somebody would look at our three generations here with a religious vocation and they might think that it’s an expectation that runs in our family. That’s not the case,” Deacon Heidelbaugh said. “But you can see what God has done in our family. Each of us has our own story that didn’t involve the other two of us directly. My dad and I didn’t pursue our vocations strictly because of Poppo, but it is clear that God has worked in our family in beautiful ways.”
Their story is also one of family – the seedbed of vocations – and those in our lives can be pillars of support for each other’s call.
“All three of our own vocations – all vocations – are never just about one or two people. The people in our families have also been part of this journey,” Michael Heidelbaugh said. “Without the help I was given by my mother-in-law and father-in-law and the rest of our family, I would not have gotten where I am today. It’s all by God’s grace. I can look back now and see how He has used so many different people to help me grow in my faith. I know the same is true for my father-in-law and for Drew.”
“We are in a family that has a lot of discussion about our faith,” he added. “It’s central to who we are, but we are not perfect. We are trying to grow in holiness. We have our failures and weaknesses and we’ve never tried to hide any of that. We’re not perfect but we’re moving toward perfection together. We all love each other and come back to each other in love, regardless of what’s happening.”
(Photos by Chris Heisey, The Catholic Witness.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
