The Path to Holiness

Andrea Vij shares the story of a young mom who discerned her vocation with the help of Saint Joseph. 

All through college, Sydney longed for answers. She prayed and prayed, asking the Lord for clarity. Was He calling her to the religious life?  

I first met Sydney, now a mom of three, through daily Mass at our parish, and I’d been waiting a long time to hear her vocation story. Recently, on a sunny Friday morning, we had a chance to talk. We sat cross-legged on her living room floor as she rocked her two-month-old baby and helped her little boy stay occupied with toy cars and Bluey videos.  

Early Steps 

As we talked, it surprised me to learn that Sydney’s discernment process had started in high school. She told me about Q&A dinners with religious sisters, followed by missionary work in college and weekend retreats at an Iowa monastery. She described holy hours, prayers to Saint Thérèse, meditation with Scripture, and conversations with priests, spiritual advisors, friends, and family.  

Then she got to the part about Saint Joseph. 

“I kind of just threw it in there, like why not?” she said of the novena she prayed to Saint Joseph in the fall of her sophomore year of college. She’d always felt a special closeness to Saint Joseph, and after focusing so much of her attention on religious vocations rather than marriage, she decided to cover all her bases.   

“Just in case,” she explained, “I prayed it with the intention of finding my future husband, and that he would be like Saint Joseph in his humility, and courage, and provision, and faithfulness.” 

Caught Off Guard 

Lifting the baby to her shoulder, Sydney continued her story. On day nine of the novena, she stopped by the campus church before classes to offer her final round of prayers. Later that afternoon she received a barrage of text messages from her girlfriends, all backing out of their plans to attend a swing dance together that evening. But Sydney decided to go anyway. Maybe someone she knew would show up. 

When she arrived at the dance, she didn’t see anyone familiar — but then in walked Alex, a guy she’d met at a church retreat, with one of his friends. She didn’t know him well, but he’d seemed nice, and they ended up dancing together all evening. In fact, they had a wonderful time. After the dance, Alex walked Sydney home, and then, to her surprise, he asked her out. 

Amazing, right? Only hours after Sydney finished the novena, Saint Joseph had answered her prayers! Alex was the guy, right? 

Right?? 

Sydney wasn’t quite ready to see it that way. Caught off guard, she turned Alex down and kept him at arm’s length for weeks as she continued to discern. For his part, Alex didn’t push, but he continued to check in — patiently, faithfully, and humbly. Kind of like Saint Joseph, you might say.  

Discerning God’s Call  

A conversation with her dad convinced Sydney to give dating a chance. She agreed to a first date with Alex, and then another, and another. But still she felt torn. “The whole time we were dating, I remember just worrying I was misreading God’s call.” 

As time passed and their relationship deepened, Sydney and Alex talked about getting engaged. But for Sydney, something about it felt too good to be true. Could this be what God wanted? Wasn’t a religious vocation a better path to holiness? How would she know? 

In her journal she listed all the signs that God might be calling her to marriage, including the novena to Saint Joseph. When she finished her list she prayed and prayed, and then, at a complete loss for what to do, she surrendered the decision to God.  

At last, clarity came. “I felt an overwhelming sense of God saying, ‘This is your choice. I give you the freedom to make this choice.’” Sydney finally understood that after all her years of discernment, God would take care of her either way. 

A Work in Progress 

Sydney and Alex married in June of 2019, and as with any couple, the vocation of marriage provides ongoing lessons in sacrificial love. They continue to seek the intercession of Saint Joseph, who understands the holiness of family life better than anyone. Their own path to holiness remains a work in progress, and as a busy mom, Sydney is learning to rely less on the comforting regularity of things like daily Mass and scheduled prayer, instead allowing the Lord to meet her where she is, looking for Him in the faces of her little ones and viewing their needs not as a hindrance to holiness but the path itself.   

“I think more and more, as a married woman and a mom … the degrees of self-sacrifice and trust in the Lord that I’ve had to have, I wouldn’t have been able to have in any other vocation. It has called me beyond what I ever thought was possible.” 

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Copyright 2025 Andrea Vij
Images: (top, center) Canva; (bottom) courtesy of Sydney Tietz, all rights reserved.