Our featured priest this month is Father Jeffrey Norfolk. Father Norfolk was born in Mitchell and was ordained on May 29, 2009. He has an older sister and an older brother, as well as four step-brothers, two half-siblings and three siblings who died of miscarriage. He currently serves as a formator and spiritual director at St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
How did you get your call to the priesthood? Only by God’s grace am I a priest. I didn’t grow up with priests visiting our home for meals or hanging around our local priests. I was an altar server for a few years as a child, and I know that had a positive impact on me. My high school youth minister came at the divinely appointed time and invited me to go to a Steubenville high school conference the summer before my senior year of high school. Before the conference, I had just received the Sacrament of Confirmation and had broken up with my high school girlfriend for the third time, so I was ripe for God to work in me. During adoration at the Steubenville Conference, I told God he could have three millimeters of my heart. He came in and began to take over and transform my life.
Because of this deep change taking place in me and in my life, instead of going to college right after high school, I traveled as a missionary throughout the United States during the 1999-2000 school year with NET (National Evangelization Teams) Ministries. I met incredible diocesan and religious priests from all over the U.S. who God worked through to plant seeds of a priestly vocation, as well as NET teaching me how to pray on a daily basis. This increased my desire for God and his will for my life. After finishing NET and at the recommendation of my dad, I went to Bishop Carlson and asked if the diocese could help me pay for college, and I would help repay them by working for the church or the diocese. Seeing something in me, being the vocations director for the diocese and on the NET Ministries Board of Directors, Bishop asked me if I wanted to go to college or to the seminary? I was open to going to the seminary, but I knew very little about seminary and the life of priests. God took over from there, and eventually he got me into Franciscan University of Steubenville where I lived in a priestly discernment program as a diocesan seminarian for our diocese. I wrestled a lot with the possibility of a priestly vocation, but over time God won the wrestling match, taught me to surrender the desires of marrying my high school sweetheart when she entered the convent, and he brought me to be ordained his priest.
Is there a particular part of Catholicism that really fascinates you? Experiencing the gift of redemptive suffering with Jesus and the divine indwelling of the Holy Trinity within our souls is a daily fascination for me.
Who was most influential in your life? My parents Bob and Julie.
What’s your favorite part of being a priest? I really love walking with people and seeing their growth in their relationship with Jesus.
What’s the most challenging thing? It is very difficult and painful watching friends and parishioners struggle in their marriages and go through divorce.
Who is your go-to saint? Why? I love the Holy Family because when my parents divorced, I began to experience the Holy Family as a deep place of stability and sonship with Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Mother Teresa is my favorite female saint because she lived life so simply, suffered deeply, found Jesus in everyone she met and, having been to Calcutta two times now by walking in her footsteps, there has been an increase in my friendship with her as well as a growth in her spiritual motherly role in my life.
What do you do in your spare time? I enjoy reading, watching documentaries and traveling to visit my family and my godchildren and their families throughout the U.S.
What is something most people don’t know about you? God has sent me on mission to 15 foreign countries.
How can your parishioners and people of the diocese best help you be a great priest? Please pray for me and be a visible presence of Jesus in my life to remind me how close he is, Emmanuel, God with us.
If you could have supper with anyone from history (besides Jesus), who would it be and why? For sure it would be Mother Teresa, because I love hearing her voice and learning from her simple wisdom. I hope after dinner we could walk the streets of Calcutta together to see how she loves in action.
