Wants to ‘align with what God wants for me’
No one could have known that day in February 1980, in the midst of a Richmond blizzard, that a boy born at the Medical College of Virginia with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck would — 41 years later — be less than three weeks away from becoming a priest for the Diocese of Richmond.
Bishop Barry C. Knestout will ordain Deacon Thomas “Tom” Bagley Lawrence III a priest on Saturday, June 5, 10:30 a.m., at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Richmond. The Mass will be livestreamed on the diocesan website.
His parents, Elsie King Miller Lawrence, a residential mortgage broker, and Thomas Bagley Lawrence Jr., a commercial properties’ financer, had their own business. Their only child’s early years paralleled those of the first years of desktop computers for homes and businesses.
“They asked me during one summer, probably when I had way too much time on my hands, to help them work on some project that either they didn’t have the time or the inclination to do — or it was just a teaching opportunity to shove me in a room with a computer,” he recalled with a laugh.
That experience led to him becoming a “go to” person for others dealing with the unknowns of home computer technology. By age 13, he was on an entrepreneurial path in which he built computers, installed networks and trained their users well into the third millennium.
Following graduation from Benedictine High School, Deacon Lawrence attended the University of Richmond where he was involved in technology-related activities like website development, and from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2002.
“Even throughout most of college, I had thought I’d continue to work with technology, and that changed from hardware to software and then, of course, out to the internet as that emerged,” he recalled, noting he was “still primarily dedicated to the business and furthering technology goals.”
While he couldn’t identify at the time what was happening in his life, Deacon Lawrence sensed a difference.
“It was only at a certain moment when I realized motivations had changed and interests had changed very slowly over time that I could wake up and realize there’s a different path,” he said.
Early influence
While interest in technology made an impact on Deacon Lawrence’s preadolescent and adolescent years, the Church had also gotten his attention while he was in middle school at St. Bridget School, Richmond.
“The then-youth minister of St. Bridget, Debbie McDonald, was sort of a homeroom teacher or assigned person, and those conversations with her and the other middle schoolers showed me that there was someone associated with the Church who was willing to talk to me, and I think that was a beginning moment,” he recalled.
McDonald, coordinator of youth ministry at the parish from 1986-2001, met daily for a half hour prior to the start of classes with seven or eight boys.
“It was a small faith community,” she recalled of her accompanying them. “We shared about faith, prayed, laughed, played games, had fellowship, did homework.”
As youth minister, McDonald, who is an assistant secretary for the Office of Pastoral Ministry and Social Concerns for the Archdiocese of Washington, oversaw confirmation preparation for the parish’s high school juniors.
“Sometimes we talk about confirmation as an adult decision. You know, it’s certainly a rational decision, and adult faith formation in general is critical in the Church today. And the more we can look at that for children that we want to operate as fruitful adults in the world, the better,” Deacon Lawrence said. “My confirmation experience was really sort of like a small adult faith formation that was available to me as a high schooler.”
Traditional witness
The following year, he was part of the parish’s confirmation preparation team, serving as a peer advisor. He would continue helping with confirmation preparation long after college.
“Our retreats had a lot to do with your own personal response and true relationship with Jesus,” McDonald said. “Tom called me to make it more traditional — to include prayers and experiences that were more traditional in nature.”
Msgr. William Carr, pastor at St. Bridget since 2005, said Deacon Lawrence’s personal witness resonated with confirmation students.
“Tom’s own love of the Lord and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, particularly in confirmation, was something that caught on with many of the students,” the priest said. “He was a good presence and a good witness, and they did rally around him. He led them and went with them on the journey.”
‘Mild epiphany’
Deacon Lawrence continued along the technology business path, but the Church remained a part of his life, and his vocation to the priesthood was simmering.
“I suppose most people in their vocational response have something that slowly changes them, and then at a certain point, the change is significant enough to bubble over or tip over,” he said. “For years, without even realizing it, I was slowly growing closer to the Lord, learning more about the Church, and understanding a call that I didn’t fully know how to process or even respond to.”
What he termed a “mild epiphany” occurred following the Easter Vigil at St. Bridget in April 2014.
“I was sitting in the church all by myself, most of the lights were off, everyone was gone, and I was just praying before the Blessed Sacrament, and this feeling of calm and peace came over me, and I realized sort of what my next step in life was going to be and needed to be,” Deacon Lawrence said.
He recalled asking himself, “How did this liturgy go so well? That never happens.” That was followed by “What do you do next — with your life?” and a response came.
At 1 a.m. Easter morning, he sent Father Michael Boehling, then the diocese’s vocation director, “a far-too-lengthy email” asking to set up a meeting. In fall 2015, he began his seminary studies at the Theological College at the Catholic University of America.
“But until that moment (before the Blessed Sacrament), it was a very small background piece, but it was building a little more every week, every month, every day,” Deacon Lawrence said.
Throughout the realization of his vocation, he has been influenced and nurtured by various people.
“What had a huge impact in slowly coming closer and closer to the Lord was working with adults either coming into full communion or receiving their sacraments of initiation and hearing their stories, what they turned away from and what they turned toward – with the Church, with the Lord – their stories of conversion and in some cases clawing toward the Gospel and the sacraments,” he said.
Hearing those inspiring stories “about the emergent and critical areas of the faith,” Deacon Lawrence said, “slowly turned my head and my heart.”
‘Forget about me’
Nearing ordination, Deacon Lawrence continues to reflect on the call he is answering. “I hope my vocation is and will be in alignment with what God wants for me and wants for us, and that I can surrender to that will,” he said. “It comes into play when you talk about promises of obedience not just to our bishop and his successors, but to the Lord.”
Deacon Lawrence takes to heart the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).
“Certainly, as we aspire toward holiness as we’ve been asked to do, certainly as we fulfill our roles and our duties of the workaday world, allowing Christ to be more present, listening, allowing ourselves to be more quiet, to be eventually maybe silent, so that the Lord can be present to people, is something I’m really looking forward to,” he said.
McDonald sees her former confirmation colleague being the kind of priest Pope Francis describes.
“He’ll be a priest who is really active and knows his flock. He’ll be fully engaged with his community,” she said. “That’s the good pastor; he knows his people and serves that community.”
Noting Deacon Lawrence’s combination of “academic achievement and intellect, and simple, humble, personal witness,” Msgr. Carr said, “I think Tom is going to make a darn good priest.”
He continued, “Tom will come to a parish, come to an altar and to an ambo and will reveal the living Christ more than himself. That’s what people really want. They want to know a little about him, but they want to know more about the Lord. Tom will present that and share that.”
The soon-to-be priest is already thinking in those terms.
“I hope the people will forget me,” he said. “I want to be less and less of what distinguishes me as me going forward, in a sense that I want the Lord to show through more. And so, if they could just forget me, that would be great.”
Inspired, influenced by three saints
Deacon Tom Lawrence said he is “hard pressed” to pick any particular saint as his favorite, so he defers to his first and last names.
“(Thomas) Aquinas is just a master in both organizing the deposit of faith and what we’ve been able to draw out of it, and yet at the same time, a very targeted mystic,” he said of the 13th century doctor of the Church. “His is a balance that I think I’d like to better emulate and can certainly aspire to.”
Deacon Lawrence named St. Lawrence of Rome as “a large influence” on his life, noting he had a holy card of the saint printed for his diaconate ordination.
The influence of the third century martyr, he said, was “both as a deacon, a man of service, and a man who understands and protected the poor and the vulnerable in the Church.”
“These are things that we need to pay an increasing amount of attention to in our world today,” Deacon Lawrence said, “and I’m happy for the intercession of both of these named saints in my life.”
He noted that in this Year of St. Joseph, the Diocese of Richmond’s seminarians at the Theological College had participated in a consecration to St. Joseph.
“The litany of St Joseph brought us together every day this semester in morning prayer, so it’s inspired those of us at Theological College to spend about 20-30 minutes in the morning together in prayer and share a meal, which is a fantastic way to start the day — besides the holy sacrifice of the Mass,” the deacon said.
Deacon Lawrence said that St. Joseph had a “silent influence,” especially as a protector.
“St Joseph has a number of names – terror of demons was a favorite,” he said. “But dreamer is one — how do the dreams, how do our images that we receive from God and our own experience, motivate us and move us into providential paths? There’s a lot with St Joseph to look at, but those are the ways he’s intersected with my life.”
— Brian T. Olszewski