Tower Topics ~ Fall 2000

Back to Table of Contents

The work of the Holy Spirit:
Former seminarian brings unique perspective to recruiting

The first thing Keith Jiron does is invite them to campus.

“It may sound cliché, but this place sells itself,” insists Jiron, Conception Seminary College’s director of admissions and recruitment. “There is something special going on here. There’s a sense of peace.”

Conception recruits come from Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and 16 other states.

They are usually soft-spoken at first – nervous.

Jiron – wearing a polo shirt, slacks and an easy smile – shakes their hands, asks about their trip and starts the tour.

He shows them the student chapel, the Alumni Union, classrooms.

Keith Jiron, left, visits with Marc Lim and Deacon
Gary Welsh from the Archdiocese of Omaha as they
toured the CSC campus recently. Lim is enrolled as a
sophomore at Conception this semester.

As they cross campus, he introduces them to a couple of seminarians.

He points out the monastery and heads toward St. Michael Hall.

“So,” he says with a sly grin, “you freakin’ out yet?”

This draws laughter and the nerves melt away.

Sitting at his desk later, poring over applications, Jiron tends to oversimplify his role.

“I really don’t do much,” he says. “It’s the Holy Spirit at work.”

Yet something is going right, and Jiron, a 1993 graduate of Conception’s pre-theology program, is at the center of it.

Enrollment has risen 75 percent in the past four years. This fall 98 students are attending Conception, the largest student body since 1971.

Jiron, the first layperson to head the seminary’s vocation office, says he is at a loss about why things are going so well.

He cites solid leadership, quality professors and (giving himself a bit of credit ) increased recruiting efforts, “so guys don’t slip through the cracks.” He also points out that today’s teens seem less hesitant to step directly from high school to seminary.

“There are so many factors,” he says, contending that he is all but insignificant. “Vocation work is a mystery. It’s very humbling.”

While the initial recruiting is done by diocesan vocation directors, Jiron provides crucial follow-up.

“Keith is able to expedite the process of taking a guy from those first thoughts about the priesthood to enrollment in the seminary,” says Father Benedict, CSC president-rector. “He is there to assist the diocese, and it makes a big difference to them and to us to have someone working full-time at this.”

Jiron hosts recruits and helps them with paperwork, he coordinates the Encounter With God’s Call retreats for prospective seminarians, he visits with young children and directs the seminary’s annual Companion 2000 summer camp for junior high boys. As a result, he is often a young man’s first contact with Conception Seminary College.

Jiron says he knows well the struggles and fears of entering a seminary, so his first priority is to put recruits at ease.

“I just let them be free to respond to what God has placed in their hearts,” he says. “I think that freedom puts them at peace.”

Father Benedict says Jiron’s seminary background helps.

“Not all students who come here are going to be priests,” he says. “The presence of Keith, a man who tested the seminary very sincerely in his own life, shows these young men that there is nothing disgraceful about testing a vocation and discerning that it’s not for you.”

Although he admits he was originally intimidated about entering a field dominated by priests, Jiron agrees.

“The best way I can promote vocations is by living out my own vocation,” he says.

That message seems to rub off on seminarians.

Conception sophomore Vince Casper remembers listening to Jiron tell his own vocation story during a high school retreat.

“He could relate to us and he told it like it was,” Casper recalls. “He didn’t try to sugarcoat it.”

Sophomore Nick Reid met Jiron for the first time on a recruiting visit.

“He was a nice guy and that’s obvious,” Reid says, “but what impressed me was that he didn’t have a vocation to go on to the priesthood, yet he still liked this place enough to stick around. He doesn’t wear a collar, but he is intimately involved in the vocation of every seminarian who comes through here.”

Reid points out that often when a man deeply loves his faith, people assume he’ll become a priest. “It’s beautiful” he adds, “to see a man who is so in love with his faith, yet who understands that his call might not be to become a priest.”

At age 8 Jiron first dreamed of becoming a priest. At age 27, three years from ordination, he walked away. During those two decades he experienced fear, joy, excitement, peace, and in the end pain.

“I was so sure for so long and then God flipped my world around,” he says.

“Almost every good Catholic boy has thought at one time or another of being a priest,” Jiron says. “But only certain people are called. I’ve spent the past several years learning to lay my heart bare to God and to say ‘Where do you want me?’ I lived this life and it transformed me. In doing that I think I’m able to be a genuine encouragement to these guys.”

Back to Table of Contents