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From NASA Hopeful to Priest: Fr. Christopher Plant Still Focused on the Heavens
7/30/2008
 From a young age, Christopher Plant had his eyes focused on the football field and his mind in the heavens. Just as any child dreams of what they want to be when they grow up, Plant was determined to pursue his “All-American” aspirations.
“After high school I wanted to do one of two things: I wanted to be an astronaut or an engineer for NASA, or I wanted to play professional football,” Plant said.
As an engineering student at Texas A&M University, Plant was closing in on the countdown to make his dreams of becoming an aerospace engineer a reality until he saw finally something in himself that his mother, family and friends had seen in him all along.
Plant still has his mind in the heavens, but now for an entirely different purpose. Plant, a graduate of the University of St. Thomas School of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary, was ordained into the priesthood on May 31, 2008 at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. Father Plant began his duties as a parochial vicar for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe on July 1.
Plant was forced to forgo one his of dream-jobs when he experienced a personal setback in high school. However, that obstacle eventually created a new path leading to greater possibilities.
“I loved football so much, I wanted to do it for the rest of my life,” he said. “But I was injured in my senior year in varsity football, and that was a really big thing for me. That was when I really started paying attention to what the Lord had to say, especially since I felt so vulnerable. My mother asked me if I had ever thought about becoming a priest, and I had never really thought about it, but I will think about it now.”
At first, it was difficult to listen to God’s call, and to surrender his personal ambitions, he said. His ears were tuned into the divine frequency, but he continued to study engineering, enjoying the academic pursuits more and more as they progressed in difficulty.
“The question kept popping up: what am I doing here?” he said. “I found myself having to explain to myself why I was continuing to study engineering when there was a part of me that knew that God was calling me to Seminary.”
The decision to enter into the priesthood was not one to enter into lightly, so Fr. Plant spent four years discerning and asking himself life-changing questions.
“One of the big questions I spent two years discerning was celibacy,” he said. “Can I give up having a family? Can I give up having an intimate relationship in the context of marriage? Eventually it became a very personal invitation by Jesus Christ to trust him and to take that step and to enter into the Seminary. This relationship with Him – that is what celibacy is for me now – it is more than just giving something up, it’s entering into a real relationship with Jesus Christ. This experience of celibacy, where I am entirely devoted to Jesus Christ, is what allowed me to go into the priesthood.”
Drawing from his own experiences, Fr. Plant advises those who face the same decision and those who may experience the same doubts to at least pause, take some time and listen to the call to the priesthood.
“I would advise them to be honest with themselves, and be honest with God. If they feel that tickle, that whisper, even with all their ambitions, at least just listen to it and not to be,” Fr. Plant said. “God never calls his children to do something that would make them miserable or bring them into a bad place; it’s always into happiness. The call is always a gift. So whatever they think they might be giving up is nowhere near equal to what we receive when we follow God’s call. It can’t even be compared on the same scale,” he said.
Fr. Plant said he is eager to begin serving the Parish and feels that his education at St. Mary’s Seminary has prepared him well to begin his first assignment as an ordained priest.
“My education at St. Mary’s has been very good especially in regard to systematic theology and in regard to the practical things they rehearsed us in such as celebrating the mass, weddings and funerals,” Fr. Plant said. “We spent three semesters practicing preaching which I thought was just incredible. It helped a great deal and prepared us well to preach. It also instilled in us a greater desire to continue to learn theology, to learn to prioritize how we articulate that theology so we are no lost in loftiness – always desiring to bring back knowledge to people of God in a language that they can under help them to live their lives as followers of Christ.”
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