By Jessica Easthope
It’s a frigid morning in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. The sun isn’t up yet, but at St. Bartholomew the Apostle Church the Sons of Thunder are starting their day with prayer.
“The kind of feeling that you can let your guard down, it’s really amazing because you can you can relax and you can, grow in faith with each other,” said Jack Deangelo.
Deangelo is new to the Sons of Thunder. Father Matthew Gonzalez, the parochial vicar at St. Bart’s founded the group last year, they live by three principles – faith, fraternity and service.
“If we want to see more vocations to the priesthood, you need relationship and encounter,” said Fr. Gonzalez.
“The idea of a group of all guys who share my faith is just like a really neat thing for me,” Deangelo said.
Sometimes that means winterizing their backyard garden and gathering the last of the harvest for the food pantry and other times it looks like a game of pickup basketball before school. On-and-off the court the teens are digging deep to see if discerning a call to the priesthood is for them.
Lately, it’s been on Steven Badilla Sanchez’s mind.
“It’s been something in my mind, and this group has definitely enhanced that idea of becoming a priest. That’s the main reason why we are all in this group, because it’s not just for ourselves, but for each other,” said Badilla Sanchez. “It’s for the community. We want to help in the service. We want to do.”
In a country where, according to the Official Catholic Directory, Catholic seminary enrollments have slid in the past year leaving just below 3,000 men training to become diocesan priests nationwide, the 12 Sons of Thunder are gearing up for a possible boom in vocations.
“Meeting young men where they’re at, helping them discover their gifts, and then empowering them to use them for the good of others,” Fr. Matt said. “Because it’s within that environment that I think vocations really flourish. At least that’s what happens in my life.”
So what’s with the name?
“When people hear ‘Sons of Thunder,’ they think, where are the motorcycles,” Fr. Gonzalez joked. “James and John were so full of passion and energy and vigor, they wanted to call fire down on people.”
“And Jesus was like, ‘Okay, let’s calm it down there’,” Badilla Sanchez said, finishing Fr. Gonzalez’s sentence. “But yeah, they were given that name because of their passion.”
“And so he gave them that name, Sons of Thunder. And isn’t that what young people are full of fire, full of zeal, full of energy,” said Fr. Matt.
While ordinations have steadily declined in the past decade, the Sons of Thunder are a pocket of hope in the Archdiocese of Newark.
“There’s as many vocation stories as there are people on this planet,” said Fr. Gonzalez. “All of these young men might not be called to the priesthood, but it’s an environment where they get to listen to the voice of God.”
Their motto is “feel the spark.” Fr. Gonzalez hopes that long after they leave the group, if it’s still there, they’ll follow it.