Faith passed down from generation to generation, soon-to-be priest says

BY MARIA LEDOUX
THE CATHOLIC FREE PRESS 
 
“Our Fathers, chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free. How sweet would be their children’s fate if they, like them, could die for thee! Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!”
The Catholic hymn “Faith of Our Fathers” is Deacon Derek Mobilio’s favorite. “This faith is literally passed down from generation to generation for the past 2,000 years ... I am indebted to my parents and grandparents for their faith.” 
At the age of 32, Deacon Mobilio eagerly anticipates his upcoming ordination to the priesthood on June 18 at St. Paul Cathedral in Worcester. He says he feels “comfortable, but thrilled” and “cannot wait.” Still, he is not naïve to the inevitable challenges life may present him. He is “confident that the Lord will provide, like he has.” 
Deacon Mobilio did not always know that he was being called to the priesthood. He said that he “had no clue that this is what God was asking of me ... I could have been happy and do many good things [having not decided to be a priest], but the reality of a divine call – how do you say no?”
Despite living in Barre for most of his youth, Deacon Mobilio considers himself a Worcester native. He went to school at Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter-Marian, and spent his afternoons with his grandmother, Antoinette Mobilio, a resident in the Burncoat area of Worcester.
In his free time, Deacon Mobilio played and refereed hockey games. He jokes, “I like the color scheme, black and white.” Throughout his hockey career, he said, he learned the skills of being a leader and a servant to his teammates, and their families. 
Deacon Mobilio reminisced about the long car rides he would have with his parents, Anthony and Michelle Mobilio, back and forth from Barre to Worcester, where they would be engaged in conversation, or he would simply read a book.
“Looking back on it – although I did not realize it in the moment – that quality time that a lot of kids may not have, I am grateful for that,” he said.
 He recounts the times he had spent with his grandmother and the influence she had on him just by living faithfully and authentically. He had not realized it at the time but said that she “really loved her priests. She had great admiration for them and gave me a really positive view of the priesthood ... and of the Church. Her love for Christ had a big impact on me as a boy.”
 Deacon Mobilio talks about the Church’s “mystery of election” and how he did not know how entangled he was in this mystery. When he was a teaching assistant at UMass Amherst while getting his master’s degree in statistics, he was in his office in the math building. He was scrolling through Twitter on March 13, 2013, and saw a tweet that said, “white smoke.” A new pope had been elected! Acknowledging the momentous occasion in the Church’s history, he ran to the Newman Center near campus where he spent much of his time in the company of friends. But, to his surprise, there was no one there. He decided to run home because he did not want to miss the announcement. He swiftly ran “like a little boy being called for dinner,” with his school bag on his shoulders, like a “sweaty fool.” He stopped at a set of railroad tracks. In this moment, he realized that something was happening and that there was a call from God. It was that day, he now realizes, that “from all eternity, God has desired [the priesthood] for me ... I was chosen by God for something – for this.”
 In 2015, Deacon Mobilio was a teacher, coach, and the dean of discipline at St. Mary School in Worcester. Though he had many roles at the school, he recalled a meeting he had with a mother and a student who was always getting into trouble. He did not know how to help the student anymore and found himself asking: “What do these people need? What can we do for them?” He answered his own question: “They need a priest. They need me to be a priest.” 
On Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, he was sitting in the back of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church and the children’s choir began singing the hymn “Immaculate Mary.”  He said it was “like a choir of angels” was singing to him, and he knew in that moment that “it was clear” – he would go into the seminary. 
Despite the two moments being eye opening for him, Deacon Mobilio stated that neither time was a grand epiphany where he heard the thunderous voice of God speak to him. Rather, his discernment came after what he identified as the “slow burn.” Throughout his life, he was influenced by the Catholic faith, by his parents and grandparents, his teachers and friends at the Newman Center, and his own desire to go to Mass as often as possible, to confession, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Deacon Mobilio would often find himself at Our Lady of Czestochowa Church where images of St. John Paul II, Our Lady of Fatima, and the Divine Mercy surrounded him. He remembers as a boy when Pope John Paul II established Divine Mercy Sunday and his father brought the images to his family home. 
“The world needs real mercy, that particular mercy that flowed from the side of Christ on Good Friday,” he said. 
What are some areas that Deacon Mobilio hopes to focus on after ordination? 
The first: “I plan to spend a lot of time in the confessional.” 
Secondly, “there seems to be a crisis in society of authentic masculinity.” He plans to use his gifts to teach others, and in particular the everyday man, what it means to “sacrificially love” and to grow in a culture where “perpetual adolescence” is accepted and normalized. He hopes to “teach men how to love like Christ loves the Church” and how these normal, everyday men can be “a saint, a minister, a husband, and a father.”
Third, Deacon Mobilio hopes to “restore a sense of the supernatural in divine worship and to turn to God, particularly in the unique sacrifice of Christ.” He says it is imperative to “make it less about ourselves ... because if that is where it stops, that is not enough.” He is ready to “embrace whatever these next few years bring.”
During formation, while attending St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Deacon Mobilio served in the diocesan parishes of Our Lady of Providence, Worcester, in 2018; Good Shepherd, Linwood, and St. Augustine, Millville, in 2019; and St. Mary in Shrewsbury in 2020 and 2021. Deacon Mobilio has also served at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Worcester.