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June 18, 2021On Vocation Day during his freshman year of high school, Deacon Brannon Lepak sat with fellow students to hear about various vocations. Then, a priest stood at the front of the room and talked about the priesthood. A “spark” ignited in the 15-year-old that he didn’t understand but was determined to follow.
“It was a deep moment I compared everything to. I was on a quest to figure out what it meant,” Lepak said. “I started reading about different saints and writers toward the end of high school and that shot off the quest to find a deeper meaning in life.”
Deacon Lepak, now age 45, will be ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on June 26 at The Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oklahoma City.
Lepak graduated high school and entered Trinity University in San Antonio to study music – one of his two passions; the other being language. He returned to Oklahoma to study classical guitar and bass but was too far behind everyone else and decided to earn a degree in English at the University of Central Oklahoma.
His desire to learn and teach language led him to New York where he lived in Brooklyn during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and then to Japan for two years. It was in Japan, in a small-town Catholic Church, where he gained appreciation for his faith and once again felt a pull to devote his life to prayer and religious life.
“It made me question ‘without this, what would my life be?’ I decided I wanted to be a monk at that point and to try to figure out the monastic experience.”
He stayed with the Camaldolese monastic community in California and eventually became a postulant. Shortly after, his father died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. It was Nov. 10, 2010.
“It made it difficult to continue to follow that path. My family needed me, and I was trying to deal with the sadness and the loss. I needed to be close to home. At some level, it wasn’t the right vocation for me. It’s a good balance, but monastic life was too isolated,” Lepak said.
“My dad knew of my interest in the priesthood or the monastic life and he was very happy for me. He was very supportive. He was a very loving, caring, supporting person. It wasn’t a hard decision for him to make. He spent the last 15 years of his life working with Catholic Charities and was always involved in the Church, so he was happy. At some point I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
Lepak began applying to become a priest in 2011. After studying philosophy and theology with the Dominican friars, he met with Father Brian Buettner, vocations director. But, he still wasn’t sure if being a parish priest would satisfy his need for deep contemplative prayer. Then, he came home to Christ the King Catholic Church.
“I was watching Father Rick Stansberry celebrate Mass and I thought that is actually the highest form of prayer right there. I was trying so hard to find a specific way of prayer, but I realized it’s all in the Eucharist and God already has done it for you, and bringing people to Jesus with you. That was a beautiful moment. So, I started doing the paperwork.”
He was accepted as a seminarian for the archdiocese and recently earned a master’s degree in divinity at Pope Saint John XXIII National Seminary in Massachusetts.
During ordination, while laying prostrate, Lepak said he will be praying for a call to holiness and reconciliation of all people to each other and to God. He said he will pray that God make him an instrument for people.
“I’m very happy. I feel ready. I’ve been thinking about it and studying for so long, it’s a good time to put it into action. I am very thankful for my mother and all the people who helped me to get here. I’m definitely ready.”
Diane Clay is editor of the Sooner Catholic.
