Mercedarian postulant, Scott McLeod tells his journey from living in the world for himself to striving for holiness as a seminarian:
I was raised in a suburb north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My family was only modestly Catholic, so when I got to college the practice of the Faith was not something immediately pressing on my conscience. This changed sophomore year, when a friend challenged me on my living the faith and started what would turn into a conversion.
While this wasn’t something that took place all at once or without a significant fight, it was a deep change in both lifestyle and outlook. Now, I struggled not to live my own life, but to live the life of Christ in me. This is a challenge, of course, but with the eyes of Faith, it is the only rewarding way for a Christian to live. I started serving Masses and volunteering with the Pittsburgh Oratory and the Pitt Campus Ministry around this time.
By serving Masses, I grew closer to the liturgy and the worship of the Church and fed an already growing desire to for more complete consecration to God and a life focused and centered around the Sacraments and the example of the Saints. By the end of college, I had also begun to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, which became an important part of my dailyprayer life and also my discernment.
I visited several mendicant orders, even volunteering with onefor a summer, but eventually found that the combination of community life, Marian devotion, liturgical life, and (most importantly) redeeming charism of the Mercedarians attracted me in a unique way. If Christ came among usin order to redeem us, what greater imitation of Christ can a religious offer than the imitation of His redeeming mission?