Angelus News | June 4, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 11

Michael Masteller
Age: 30
Hometown: Santa Paula
Home parish: St. Sebastian,
Santa Paula
Parish assignment: St. Helen,
South Gate
While ordination signals the
end of one journey, it also
marks the beginning of a
new one, and this is key to Michael
Masteller. While much attention
is placed on a man saying yes to a
vocation, he believes it is equally
important to renew that affirmation
regularly.
“It’s that continual saying yes wherever
the Lord wants to go in our life,”
he said. “Saying ‘Yes, Lord, you can
go here. Yes, Lord, you can bring your
light to this dark area where I haven’t
shown anyone, or I don’t want to.’ ”
The seeds of his vocation began
to grow while teaching high school
theology after college. Struggling to
find a real direction in his life, he
eventually found himself at a discernment
retreat at a Milwaukee seminary.
But even there, he felt disconnected
and fearful.
“I was searching, wandering, I didn’t
really have a clear path before me.
But I had a sense that the Lord might
want me to be a priest. Still, I was very
afraid. I remember just going into my
room and I opened up this pamphlet,
and inside there was this quote from
Masteller at his diaconate ordination last year with
recently ordained priests Father Brian Humphrey and
Father Justin Oh.
Masteller drives to the basket at the 2020 Priests vs. Seminarians basketball game last February, where he led Team
Seminarians in scoring.
Masteller grew up in Santa Paula,
the second of four children in a
Catholic family. He studied just a few
minutes away at St. Thomas Aquinas
College, where he double majored in
theology and philosophy (a decision
that would later shave a year off of
time in the seminary).
Pope Francis, saying, ‘I don’t care
who you are, where you’ve been, what
you’ve done. I ask you, I beg you right
here, right now, just open your heart
to Christ.’ ”
When he did, he said all the fear that
had welled up in him simply went
away.
“The light of Christ just filled my
heart,” he said. “It just banished these
deep fears that I had, it took away
that darkness and filled it with hope
and with a future and a path. At that
moment, I knew. It was like, ‘Lord, I’ll
follow you wherever you want me to
go.’ ”
Having said yes that first time, Masteller
finds himself devoted to living
that yes every day. If there’s one thing
he’s sure of, it’s that prayer can bring
about the kind of circumstances that
change lives. It did for him.
“The Lord can slowly melt any kind
of cold or ice that’s around our heart.
And so I think that that’s the greatest
thing that I would say in my life, was
just a certain determination and faithfulness
to prayer, as basic or as empty
as it might seem, the Lord can take
that and transform it.
“That’s been my experience, that
Christ doesn’t work from the outside,
pulling or pushing, he wants to enter
and to move from within.”
June 4, 2021 • ANGELUS • 17