The following testimony is by Joshua Miechels, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Sydney in the Emmanuel Community.

The first time somebody suggested to me that I do the St Joseph year, I replied with a very quick and firm « No thanks.». I wasn't interested. I had already decided to do a year at a mission school in Rome, and this seemed to me quite enough to help me discern my vocation. Furthermore, I had absolutely no desire to spend a second year in Europe, with a bunch of French-speakers.

The thing was though that, 3 months into doing this school, while having moved forward on a lot of fronts, I had not advanced in this question in the way that I thought I would. The idea of St Joseph wouldn't go away. I found it entering into my prayer in a very irritating kind of way. I was soon so anxious about the thing that I started asking the Lord for his help in dealing with the question. Finally I did a retreat during Holy Week, where we had a lot of opportunity for prayer, to talk to priests, and to really live Jesus' passion with him. My question looming bigger and bigger, I decided to ask Jesus « Lord, what do you want me to do? ».

The second-last day of the retreat – Holy Saturday – we all received a list of texts in the bible, and were asked to go by ourselves and pray with them. A lot of them I knew already, but one gave me a huge surprise. It was Jeremiah 1:5: « Before I formed you in the womb I knew you ». Praying with this text, suddenly there was a 'click'. The Lord spoke to me through this text. I understood that Jesus was asking me to do this St Joseph Year as something important for me to do – and that until now I had been deeply afraid of having to go and learn French, and to abandon my life in Australia for another year. But I also understood that it was the Lord who made me, who knew me from before I was born, and so that if he ever asked me to do something, it was for my good and that He would be with me.

The biggest surprise about the St Joseph Year when I did it was...that it was just excellent! It was exactly the kind of year I needed. It is a year of discerning two things: whether the Lord is calling me to the priesthood, and also whether he was inviting me into the Emmanuel Community.

It is very oriented toward prayer. The praise together every morning, before the Blessed Sacrament, and the way the Lord would lift us up and teach us in that praise was always something really marvellous for me. Because the Blessed Sacrament is exposed 8 hours a day, I could really spend as much time as I wanted listening and talking to the Lord – or just looking at him! Prayer – time with the Lord – was really the motor of the year.

While I had spiritual direction with a good and holy priest, I also found extremely important the time of accompaniment by a layman in the world, where we discussed questions of what it means to be a man, and to be a Christian. Another important step for me was the month-long 'work-experience' in a Nursing Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor. I was touched both by the older people's real hunger for love, and by the Witness of the amazing Little Sisters, who treated the older people with a real respect that I had never really noticed before, as well as a patient and determined serviability. This was love!

Above all, the daily life in a household of 6 brothers was a real and surprisingly deep school of sanctification and fraternal love. And of joy: that even though there were irritating, stupid things that can drive you nuts, even though life can be incredibly hard – nothing can eclipse the joy of the resurrection.

I am now a seminarian. If God wants, one day I may be a priest. What I can say now though is that during the St Joseph Year, the Lord really formed me, spoke to me, freed me and loved me – in real, concrete ways. The work is not finished yet – we're just starting out - but I can really say that I have never been so free – and never so happy.