Staunton native planned to be an engineer; God had another plan
Deacon Dillon Bruce knew what he wanted to do. He had it planned.
After graduating from Stuarts Draft High School in 2012, he went to Virginia Tech with the intention of becoming an engineer.
“I love figuring out the how and why things work and to make things efficient,” he said. “I imagined myself working in a manufacturing plant figuring out neat ways to produce different products.”
That was his plan, but God had another one.
“I just knew — he helped me to know that the way he was calling me more profoundly and in a particular way — he had made me to be his priest,” Deacon Bruce said. “I distinctly remember being in the chapel at the Newman community at Virginia Tech, praying to God about my plan, about what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be with, and I just got the clear sense from him, ‘That’s not what I want for you.’”
Deacon Bruce, 29, followed that call — what he termed a “tugging at my heart” — and will be ordained a priest for the Diocese of Richmond 10:30 a.m., Saturday, June 25, in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
More chapel talk with God
That wasn’t Deacon Bruce’s only chapel talk with God.
“We were having a baking party, and a friend invited me to go to the chapel before playing volleyball. He said, ‘Let’s just pray for a little bit,’” the deacon recalled. “I get up there and am talking to (God) about my life, and I just knew it was the greatest certainty I ever had in my prayer life — not just a sense but having a certainty that these things are God saying, ‘This is what I want for you. Remember the priesthood.’ I knew it was going to define my life.”
Deacon Bruce noted that he did not say yes immediately.
“It took me a few days to say yes to that and some time to also make certain it wasn’t just a notion or that I was drawing away from anything,” he said.
He attended Duc in Altum, a retreat sponsored by the diocese’s Vocations Office for men 18 and older discerning a call to priesthood.
“During that retreat, I was really praying about how great it would be to be married and all the blessings that go with that and all the difficulties that go with that,” Deacon Bruce said. “In the next holy hour, I was praying about being a priest and all the blessings that go with that and all the difficulties that go with that.”
In the final holy hour, he prayed, “If I didn’t have one of those, what would be my reaction?”
“Just a feeling of loss came. I was imagining myself being married, but not being totally for the Lord in this way. There was an emptiness,” the deacon said. “I’ve got to pursue what fulfills, what the Lord put as that desire.”
‘Blessings’ in Rome
During the retreat he made his decision.
“I’m going to the seminary to discern and to allow the Church to discern for me because I’m convinced the Church is the Church of Jesus Christ, the instrument through which he continues to work in the world,” Deacon Bruce said.
After completing an undergraduate degree in philosophy at The Catholic University of America in 2017, Deacon Bruce began studies at the Angelicum — the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas — in Rome where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology and is working toward a licentiate in sacred theology, which he is scheduled to receive next year.
He spoke of the opportunity to study in Rome as a time of “blessings.”
“Many of our professors at the Angelicum are Dominicans, and I’m so grateful to be steeped in the Thomistic theology that is presented there,” Deacon Bruce said, noting he looks forward to sharing what he has learned. “Thomas Aquinas’ systematic and logical theology has really spoken to me and my heart with the clarity he provides and the Church promotes. It has been a wonderful part of my education.”
He termed his formation at The North American College “really wonderful,” especially “the practical preparation we receive for homilies, confessions, anointing of the sick.”
Another of the blessings Deacon Bruce has received by studying in Rome is an up-close experience of Pope Francis’ leadership.
“I’ve been inspired by his desire to dialogue and to encounter people where they’re at and not always expecting them to be where we want them to be,” the deacon said. “We’re also bringing them toward what the Lord is asking us to share with them and what the Church invites them to.”
Deacon Bruce noted that serving Mass with the pope (See sidebar) gave him “a great example of how much he cares about the liturgy.”
“In the motu proprio (“’Traditionis Custodes’ on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970”) the comment about the Mass and the forms of the Mass, one thing that particularly stands out he is saying is to make sure you’re celebrating the Mass the way the Church has asked us to,” the deacon said, “because we don’t know how to worship God by ourselves. God reveals to us how to worship him through his Church. When we’re following what the Church is asking us to celebrate, then we’re really able to worship God in the way he knows is best for us.”
‘Inspiring, supportive family’
The oldest of Brian and Jeannette Bruce’s three sons, Deacon Bruce credits them, as well as his brothers Derek and Karson, as being “nothing but supportive” of his vocation.
“I remember my mom’s reaction. I was coming back for Thanksgiving break, and I was telling my mom, ‘I think I’m being called to be a priest.’ And she said, ‘I knew it!’ You should have told me; I didn’t even know myself,” he recalled with a laugh.
He cited his parents’ example and the family’s prayers for him.
“I remember my mom’s rosary beads being out and my dad coming down as we got ready for school and the Bible would be open,” Deacon Bruce said. “They’ve been inspiring and supportive, and I love them so much.”
Another person who has nurtured his vocation is Father David Sharland, campus minister at Virginia Tech since 2013.
“He was so supportive in helping me discern,” the deacon said. “He gathered a group of other men to discern. During my time, there have been five or six men from that ministry who have entered into the seminary to discern a call to priesthood.”
That discernment came by his participation in the Melchizedek Project, a program that, according to Father Sharland, helps groups of young men who are trying to explore what is it that God wants of them.
“It doesn’t mean everybody is going to become a priest,” said Father Sharland, who established the program that meets seven times each semester and of which Deacon Bruce was an early participant. “It’s a safe place where guys can speak from their hearts, where they can listen to one another, where they can laugh, too. It’s about their journey of discernment.”
‘Joy is evident’
In Deacon Bruce’s time at Virginia Tech, two things about him were evident to Father Sharland.
“Dillon has a great heart of service. He never had to be prodded or pushed to help out with something,” the priest said. “He always naturally wanted to serve when there was an opportunity.”
The other noticeable attribute, according to the priest, was the deacon being “naturally inclined to prayer.”
“You’d go to chapel at different times, whether it was evening or morning, and there’s Dillon,” Father Sharland said. “There was so much in the heart of one man, so much that he could be a sign of the Lord pulling him to something new, something beautiful.”
Among the gifts Father Sharland sees in the deacon is joy.
“He has a real joyful spirit about him. That’s so important in the priesthood — that we are joyful men, that when we bring the Gospel to people we’re not hammering something over their head or we’re not giving them a list of rules,” the priest said. “We’re inviting them to a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that should naturally bring them joy. That joy is evident in Dillon each day.”
Father Sharland described the deacon as an “excellent communicator who’s going to be a great preacher.”
“He’s bright and articulate and shares the faith in a way that is authentic to him,” the priest said. “He’s going to be great in pastoral settings as well; he has a good heart, and he’s the kind of person who is going to sit and listen and ponder before he gives us a response, particularly for folks who are coming to him in need.”
‘Worthy vessel’ for the diocese
Father Mark Ivany, director of pastoral formation at St. John Paul II Seminary and one of Deacon Bruce’s formators, said he admired how the seminarian not only engaged in the discernment process but how he engaged in his relationship with God, which allowed him “to discern so clearly.”
“With Dillon, one of his strongest attributes was gratitude. He was so grateful not just that he was called to be a priest, that the seminary gave him a place where he could not just figure it out — it wasn’t, ‘I just need some time to go figure this out’ — but that he needed to grow in his relationship with God,” Father Ivany said. “And once he was in a different place, once he was a little further along the path, then God’s will just became clear to him and he could respond with the great confidence that he did. That was a real joy to see.”
Asked about the kind of priest the diocese is getting, Father Ivany described Deacon Bruce as “a worthy vessel of the belief in the resurrection.”
“They are first and foremost getting a priest who believes in God, and who knows how good God is and who wants to share that truth with others,” he said. “When you have a priest who really believes, it helps other people to believe in God because the world tries to give us a million reasons not to believe and to take our lives into our own hands instead of putting them in God’s. Dillon is someone who’s put his life in God’s hands.”
As he answers the call to priesthood, Deacon Bruce wants people of the diocese to know he wants them to bother him.
“I want the people of God to know that I am there for them, and I hope there is never a time they think that they can’t approach me to help them find healing, help them find the Lord, just have somebody to talk to,” he said. “As (Archbishop) Fulton Sheen wrote, ‘The priest is not his own.’ We don’t live as bachelors; we live as celibate priests who are completely for the people of God so that we can have no other worries than the things of the Lord. So, I hope they never say, ‘Oh, he’s too busy to be bothered.’”
He added, “The priest is ordained to be inconvenienced. I hope I’m in the right place at the right time for people, and I hope they can know the Lord and be near Jesus and that I’m not an obstacle to that bridge.”
Mom’s present from Pope Francis
On Jan. 1, 2019, the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, Deacon Dillon Bruce was the crozier bearer for Pope Francis at the holy day Mass the pope was celebrating. He also brought items to the Holy Father as he was vesting for Mass.
Once vested, the pope came out and greeted the seminarians who were serving.
Deacon Bruce recalled their brief conversation.
“I used Google translate the night before to know how to say in Italian, ‘Please pray for my mother because today is her birthday.’ He asked, ‘What’s her name?’ I told him, ‘Jeannette.’ He said, ‘OK, I’ll pray for her.’”
“So, I got to call my mom on her birthday and say, ‘For your birthday, I got the pope to pray for you.’”
Deacon Bruce called meeting the pope “special,” not only because of the prayers for his mother.
“I got an experience of him in his role as the pope,” he said. “He’s very joyful when he’s meeting people but then he goes into the vesting room and his face just changes and he becomes solemn.”
The deacon continued, “Throughout any Mass, he has a very solemn face. That tells you the importance he places upon the Mass and what is happening there.”
— Brian T. Olszewski