On God's Use of 2x4s

Here's the sort of vocational call that everybody wants to have:

Lightner says he became a priest after demanding, and receiving, signs from God...

In 1994, during his junior year, Lightner's 3-year-old niece found marijuana he had been carrying on a trip home.

His mother, Joyce - whom Lightner said takes Holy Communion and says 15 decades of the rosary each day - was upset and asked him to join one of the trips she led to Medjugorje.

Medjugorje is a small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared and sent messages every day since 1981. It is not officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Lightner said he decided to confess his sins at Medjugorje, but on one condition, telling God: "If you exist, I don't know you. You could be the biggest con the world has ever seen. I can go to reconciliation, but if you don't reveal yourself to me during this week, I'm done with religion."

Lightner said he confessed to misdeeds involving alcohol, drugs and women, and after the priest absolved him of his sins, "it felt like something was standing on my chest."

He said he felt himself pinned to the back of the confessional, screaming in pain, and thinking, "Oh, my God, you're real."

Lightner returned to Medjugorje six months later, in 1995.

He said that as he watched a priest pray over a woman in a wheelchair for more than half an hour, he heard Christ say, "Michael, if I get her out of this wheelchair, will you enter the seminary?"

Lightner said he more or less agreed before watching the woman rise and walk...