Former echocardiographer to be ordained a priest tomorrow

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent
 
Jonathan E. Amidon was working a well-paid job that he enjoyed. He was an echocardiographer for Boston Medical Center.

He helped save lives by taking ultrasounds so doctors could diagnose and monitor heart conditions.

“I had everything that I could have possibly needed,” the 30-year-old Worcester native said. “I had all my debts paid off, I had everything. But I was like, ‘You know, I’m not really happy. There’s something lingering.’”

He kept feeling the nudge to become a priest. After resisting for about a year, he finally decided to leave his job in 2018 and join friends working in campus ministry at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

A year later, he entered Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and he graduated from the six-year program in early May.

Deacon Amidon was ordained a deacon on May 18, 2024 at St. Paul Cathedral. Tomorrow he will be ordained a priest there. At 5:15 p.m. the next day, he will celebrate his first Mass at St. Peter Parish in Worcester.

“I want others to come to know that there’s a God who loves them,” he said, “who died and rose from the dead and ascended ... so that they might be empowered, that they might come to know him and become the saints that they’re supposed to be.”

Deacon Amidon grew up attending St. Peter Parish and he graduated from St. Peter Central Catholic and St. Peter-Marian Jr./Sr. High School both in Worcester. Then he earned a degree in diagnostic medical sonography, also known as echocardiography, at the Boston campus of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

After graduating from MCPHS, he worked for a couple of years at Boston Medical Center.

“Boston Medical Center is a city hospital,” he said. “So if they didn’t know what to do with you, they dropped you there. We had a lot of drug addicts, people that were basically right off the streets. The cops didn’t know what to do with you, but there was clearly something wrong with you.”

Deacon Amidon saw patients ranging from poor immigrants to those who were affluent to those undergoing routine screenings as outpatients. He monitored patients in the emergency department and intensive care unit.

“I had everything I wanted and more,” he said, “and there was still something almost nagging. I was like, “OK, I’ve thought about, ‘Do I have a vocation or do I not,’ and I got to the point where I said, ‘The only way I could find out is if I [try] it.’"

Friends told him about openings at the campus ministry at Rutgers and he decided to try it for a year. His experiences there prompted him to enter the seminary.

“Would I have chosen this for myself? Odds are, probably not,” he admitted. “I would have very much enjoyed my cushy job making a nice salary, but the Lord called me and he asked me. He invited me.”

Deacon Amidon applied to the Diocese of Worcester to become a priest and he was sent to Mount St. Mary’s.

“I had never heard of the town of Emmitsburg,” he said. “Most people wouldn’t because it’s a small town of only about 2,000 people. We have two stoplights and we just got Dunkin Donuts down there about four years ago.”

The pandemic broke out during the spring semester of his first year at seminary so everyone was sent home. He lived at Holy Name of Jesus House of Studies in Worcester for a few months while taking his classes remotely. About 10 seminarians lived in the house.

The following fall, he returned to Mount St. Mary’s and took some classes via Zoom and others in classrooms with the desks spread out and the students wearing masks. The dining hall used only disposable plates and utensils.

Deacon Amidon stuck with it and the threat of COVID-19 eventually subsided. He graduated last month.

“The biggest thing I learned in seminary is that priests are normal human beings,” he said.

“The same issues and struggles that you go in with, they’re not going to magically disappear. You have to learn to deal with the things you struggle with, admit when you’re having issues and you have to have really solid friendships with other people if you’re going to persevere.”
“Seminary was where I learned that to live the Christian life means to struggle well,” he said. “It means to pick yourself up when you’re having a rough time. Seminary is where guys learn to allow God’s grace to work in their lives.”

As a seminarian, he worked summers at the parishes of St. Denis in Douglas, St. Patrick in Rutland, St. Cecilia in Leominster and St. Mary in Shrewsbury. As a deacon, he worked last summer at Immaculate Conception in Lancaster and St. John the Guardian of Our Lady in Clinton.

He learned that he enjoyed working with people and that the needs of the people can vary by parish. At St. Denis, the need for the parish food pantry skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic so the pantry expanded to three days a week. At St. Mary, when a teacher called in sick one day he filled in teaching math to seventh-graders at the parish grammar school.
“I learned that the ultimate goal of what you’re doing is that no matter where you are,” he said, “you’re supposed to be a bridge for people to come to know Christ.”

Deacon Amidon said, “I don’t really have specific goals, but to simply be what’s needed in the moment.”

Deacon Amidon’s parents, Keith and Carole; his older brother, Michael; other family and friends and priests who have helped him along the way will attend his ordination.

Father James J. Boulette, pastor of St. Roch Parish in Oxford, will vest him at his ordination and Father John L. Larochelle, pastor of Divine Mercy Parish in Blackstone, will preach the next day at his first Mass of Thanksgiving. A reception will follow.

Deacon Amidon didn’t know either Father Boulette or Father Larochelle, but both of them reached out to him during his first semester at seminary and invited him to their parishes during Christmas break. They’ve stayed in touch.

“It’s been a wonderful relationship I’ve had with both of them,” he said.

Now Deacon Amidon expects to begin another wonderful relationship with the parishioners at his new parish assignments.