“O.C.D” are three letters that, for many people, stand for “obsessive-compulsive disorder” but, for a young Brisbane man, they stand for the way he was called to be, reports The Catholic Leader.
For Brisbane man Fr Adalbert Imperial, “OCD” stands for “Order of the Discalced Carmelites” – discalced meaning without shoes, unshod or barefoot.
Fr Adelbert Imperial OCD. PHOTO: Catholic Leader.
As an OCD priest, he wears sandals with a brown habit.
Ordained last December, the 38-year-old has found peace with the Carmelites.
The path to priesthood hasn’t always been a smooth one though.
Yet, the call has remained constant and, although obsessions and compulsions may be more burdensome for people with OCD, Fr Adalbert’s thoughts of priesthood or religious life were coming and going for much of his life before he joined the Carmelites.
At one stage that meant walking away from a promising career in medicine.
Five years a doctor, employed at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and working towards a specialty in medical oncology, he decided to become a priest. It was something that had been niggling away since he was a boy.
“Growing up I sort of wanted to be a priest …,” Fr Adalbert said.
“I remember as a young kid I was watching something (on TV) – I can’t even remember what – but I stood up and I said, ‘Mum, I’d be happy to die for the faith …’
“And I don’t know where that came from.”
Any idea of priesthood was taken over by the rigour of life and the challenges of growing up in a migrant family struggling on a single income.
He was the third of three sons and with a younger sister, who had migrated with their parents from the Philippines when he was six years old.
“… It was quite hard for us because, even though my father was a civil engineer in the Philippines he couldn’t find a job here as a civil engineer, so it was finding jobs that were … odds and ends, and it was hard raising four kids on one income … My mum wanted to be a stay-at-home mum,” he said.
“So I thought what could I do for my family, and I got good grades, so I thought I’d do medicine instead (of become a priest).
“I could (still) help people, help the family, and do something with meaning and purpose.”
He was succeeding with all of that when a World Youth Day experience turned everything upside-down.
He went to World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011 with other young people from Queensland, starting with a Holy Land pilgrimage led by the late Archbishop John Bathersby.
Dr Adalbert was caught by surprise praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“We were doing this prayer hour, and then something just changed,” he said.
That prayer experience moved him to tears, and he couldn’t explain it.
“… It was just an understanding of God’s presence … the understanding that I was meant for more than just, you know, earning money, finding a good car, finding a good career – all those things …,” he said.
“I think I might have just closed my eyes but the time flew … (and) we’d finished the hour of prayer; … it was time to go. And then I just remember feeling … different.
“And then the next day – we had Mass every day (on the pilgrimage with Archbishop Bathersby) – … and, yeah, it was just overwhelming.
“I just felt this overwhelming sense of love and peace, and I couldn’t express it other than crying.”
Ever since then, and even more so as a Carmelite, prayer continues to be at the heart of everything for Fr Adalbert.
After that prayer experience in the Garden of Gethsemane, he spoke with one of the other pilgrims who had been considering the priesthood.
Having entered the Holy Spirit Seminary at Banyo as a Brisbane seminarian soon after World Youth Day Madrid, prayer again moved Fr Adalbert to a change of direction.
He went on a retreat during his second year at the seminary, and he said “that was really the first time I’d really felt the sense of contemplative prayer”.
“And then I just really felt called to a more prayerful, deeper contemplative life that I knew maybe the diocesan (ministry) wasn’t structured to give.”
A parish placement during that year also led him to believe he was being called to live in community, not as a parish priest.
“I think it was the way that the Carmelites lived their life – the dedication to prayer, that was the centre of their ministry, their apostolate, their community, and then allowing that to colour everything that they do – (that appealed to me).
“That was what’s attracted me so much to the Carmelites.”
With the Carmelites, Fr Adalbert has learned that “first and foremost” we are loved, “and that God’s love for me could not be taken away – that my whole being, my whole understanding of who I was, was first and foremost loved”.
“It’s that ground of being loved in God, created in that love, that we then understand who we are,” he said.
“That can’t be taken away from us, regardless of what happens.
“And it’s from that we then fulfil God’s command to love God and love neighbour.
“Every moment of your life you’re asked to do the same thing, which is love God, love neighbour, and you can love them by praying for them, by thinking good things and serving them …”
This is an excerpt from an article by Peter Bugden was published in The Catholic Leader.