Duluth, Minn., Aug 6, 2011 / 11:07 am
You could say Deacon Anthony Craig had everything going for a priestly vocation.
“My parents showed me the way of charity, the way of loving God and neighbor above myself,” he said. He said he watched his father, Deacon David Craig, minister to people in hospitals and through food shelves and in parishes. He watched his mother sacrifice for her family, giving up things like new shoes for a period of years to enable the children to get them. He had faithful and joyful priests who led by example and also sometimes with prodding questions about whether he had considered the priesthood.
He had good Catholic friends, went to vocations dinners and had gone on a seminary visit to St. John Vianney, where he was impressed. “I saw the lives of these normal guys in the seminary and they were following Christ as best they could,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that life, which brought these men such vitality and strength. I was attracted to live that life.”
Yet Deacon Anthony, who was ordained to the priesthood July 15 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary, said he entered high school and “rarely gave the priesthood half a thought.” And at the end of high school, the captain of his high school football team, recruited by several universities, he decided on joining the Division II football team at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minn.