He had, in fact, gone through a discernment process while he was still in his 20s, but the conclusion at that time was that he did not have a vocation. And he doesn’t think he got it wrong — “it just wasn’t my time,” he says.
“I think I had to experience life as a layman and as a nurse. I had to be patient and prayerful, and wait for my life to evolve,” says Fr. Medina, who lived in the Corktown area and was a member of SS. Peter & Paul (Jesuit) Parish, downtown, while working as a registered nurse.
But he underwent a second period of discernment when he was in his 40s, and he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 2002 at the age of 47.
Fr. Medina cites as a key experience the feeling he had on the last day of a discernment retreat, while in the chapel, “a sense of being surrounded by God, a sense of God telling me I needed to focus on Him alone.”
During his novitiate, he says, he came to have “a sense of God’s love for me and of God’s mercy — a confirmation that I wanted to be a priest, and that God was calling me to be a priest.”
Fr. Medina was ordained to the priesthood June 11 at St. Frances Xavier Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Archbishop William D’Souza of Patna, India. He is the only priest being ordained this year for the Jesuits’ Chicago-Detroit Province.
His first assignment will be as a hospital chaplain at Stroger Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, and he will also serve as an associate pastor of St. Procopius Parish in Chicago.
Fr. Medina was born in 1955 in McAllen, Texas, but his parents moved to Jackson, Mich., when he was 4 and he grew up in St. John the Evangelist Parish there. He attended the parish grade school and Lumen Christi High School in Jackson.
He returned to St. John the Evangelist Church June 19 to celebrate his Mass of Thanksgiving. His father has passed away, but his mother, Amada Medina, 81, still lives in Jackson, and attended his ordination in Cincinnati. He has two brothers and five sisters.
Fr. Medina earned an associate’s degree in nursing from Jackson Community College, and then a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
In his nursing career, he worked for a few years for Sinai Hospital of Detroit and Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital, Detroit, then for 14 years with the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor.
He did post-graduate studies in theology at Regis College, Toronto, Ontario, and the University of Notre Dame before entering the Jesuits.
After entering the Jesuits, he studied philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, and earned his Master of Divinity degree from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry in Massachusetts.
To other men of mature years who think they might have a vocation to the priesthood, Fr. Medina stressed the importance of prayer in their discernment process.
“Pray for God’s light — that He will guide you to His will,” he advised.
