It was around 2014 when Father David Johnstone, 38, met a priest for the first time. Now, a decade later, he is one.

Father Johnstone, who is from Marysville, was ordained on Saturday, May 18 along with four other priests for the Diocese of Columbus.

His journey to the priesthood began in 2017. He was welcomed into the Catholic Church and entered seminary later the same year.

Before converting and entering seminary, Father Johnstone, who was raised as a non-denominational Christian, worked as a disaster case manager for the Salvation Army, an English teacher at a private university in China and a substitute teacher in the Marysville school district.

He graduated from Marysville High School and Ohio Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in history and minor in computer science.

His first glimpse of the priesthood came before his conversion while working at the Salvation Army. At the time, Father Johnstone said, he met weekly with a priest who helped work with families affected by natural disasters. 

His impression of the priest was profound.

“He loved in a way that I’d never seen before,” Father Johnstone said. “He was like 80 hours, 100 hours a week working with not only his two parishes but then the families who are affected who weren’t even Catholic. 

“He was spending time with them and helping them out, so I saw somebody love like I’ve never seen before, and he was joyful, and he was always helpful, and that was the first time I really thought, ‘This is what I’ve always been looking for,’ but I didn’t know it.”

While it might seem reasonable to begin exploring the Catholic faith and a vocation to the priesthood, there was one holdup: Father Johnstone was engaged to be married. He said he knew priests were not married, and so, there was no sense looking into the priesthood.

However, everything changed when the relationship ended.

Father Johnstone was living in Seattle at the time. After he and his former fiancée went their separate ways, he began the process of converting to Catholicism.

Father Johnstone moved home to Marysville to be with his family, and he was welcomed into the Catholic Church at Marysville Our Lady of Lourdes Church.

With the priesthood still on his mind, he took a leap of faith and applied to seminary. He was accepted and entered later that fall. Father Johnstone described his thought process as:

“Am I going to go find another menial job that I don’t really find fulfillment in, or am I going to seek out the priesthood, which is something that I was drawn to when I first started learning about it, so I said, ‘Why not?’”

While his “why not” proved worthwhile, at times during seminary, it could be tempting to doubt his worthiness for the vocation. He trusted that God would supply what he needed, if He was calling him to the priesthood.

“I think every person who’s going through the seminary has that question of, ‘Why me?’ because I know who I am. I know I'm a sinner; I know I'm not worthy of doing something like this. So, those questions, those thoughts definitely have come up multiple times.

“But then there’s the hope and the faith and the trust that God is the One Who … helps you along, Who calls you, Who’s going to give you whatever abilities, gifts that you need to follow through with it. And so, it’s more like, ‘OK, I can be a steward of the gifts that God has given me.’”

Bishop Earl Fernandes lays hands, an ancient apostolic gesture of ordination, on David Fox during the ordination.

Reflecting on when he first learned about Catholicism, the priesthood and entered seminary, Father Johnstone recognized that God was preparing him for his vocation all along. As a disaster case manager, he said, he walked with individuals during the most difficult time of their lives.

“I could walk with somebody and help them carry their burden and help them through it, and it felt natural to me,” he said. “I feel like that’s another aspect of the priesthood: helping somebody carry their burdens, to pray for them and pray with them and help them along through the bad times but the good times as well.”

The opportunity to walk with individuals and help carry their cross is something Father Johnstone admires about the priesthood. It impacted his personal relationship with the Lord.

“There’s that special charism of the priesthood that helps pick up the cross like Jesus did with somebody but in a way that it’s not mine to carry; it’s Christ’s to carry,” Father Johnstone said. “He … saved that person, not me, but we get to participate in that encounter with Christ in a special way.”

Father Johnstone expressed gratitude to his parents for teaching him to love Christ, church and the Bible. Although he no longer belongs to the same church, he said, he is grateful for his parents and what they taught him so he can be where he is today.

Growing up “fairly anti-Catholic,” Father Johnstone said, he did not consider converting to Catholicism until he learned about the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

“Once I learned that the Real Presence of Jesus was in the Eucharist, then I had to have it because I needed Christ,” he said.

Father Johnstone said he began attending Eucharistic Adoration and Mass, although he was not yet Catholic, because “I knew that Jesus was truly present there.” He knew Christ was present in the various Christian churches he attended, he said, but not in the same way as the Catholic Church, where He was truly present in the Eucharist.

“That was a big part of my conversion – Jesus being truly present in the Eucharist,” he said.

“When … I learned these truths about Christianity in the Catholic Church, then it’s like, well, I have to be Catholic, even though I don’t really want to be, because that’s where Jesus is, that’s where the truth is, so I have to become Catholic, and I have to trust that, even though I don’t want to, this is the right way to go. And so, I did.”

Father Johnstone trusted in the Lord amid doubts. Perhaps one of the “biggest struggles that I had becoming Catholic,” he said, “was the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God.”

He did not understand the concept and “it wasn’t in my heart either,” he said, but he trusted the Church was correct in its Marian doctrine. He began praying the rosary in the evenings with Eternal Word Television Network.

Father Johnstone continued to walk by faith and trust in the Lord and Church teaching. Much to his surprise, he had a change of heart, which he discovered after becoming Catholic.

“The day after I was received into the Church … I remember at some point thinking that I love Mary, and it was like all of a sudden, ‘Whoa, where did that come from? I don’t understand,’ because it had been such a long time that I had a block,” he said.

“Once I had been united to Christ through the Eucharist, all of a sudden, He opened up for me this path, or removed the blockage or whatever it was, so that I could love His Mother in a way that I never could understand.”

Before his conversion, Father Johnstone said he also turned to the Fathers of the Church to understand what they taught and believed about Christ. He sought to understand how they lived the faith in the early Church.

He was drawn to the Church Fathers’ writings, he said, particularly St. Ignatius of Antioch on the Eucharist, St. Justin Martyr’s description of the early Mass, as well as Eastern Church Fathers St. Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Maximus the Confessor.

During seminary, his assignments included Westerville St. Paul the Apostle, Mount Vernon St. Vincent de Paul, Danville St. Luke, Wheelersburg St. Peter in Chains, Portsmouth St. Mary of the Annunciation, Holy Trinity and Holy Redeemer, the former New Boston St. Monica, Basilica of Regina Pacis in Brooklyn, New York, Chillicothe St. Mary and St. Peter, Waverly St. Mary, Gahanna St. Matthew and Columbus Our Lady of Peace churches.

His will serve as parochial vicar at Worthington St. Michael the Archangel Church and chaplain at Columbus St. Francis DeSales High School, effective July 9.