When he was ordained June 17 as a priest for The Roman Catholic Archdicoese of Washington, Father Taylor Colwell embarked on what he called “a life of service” with the “privilege of being close to people precisely in the deepest part of their interior lives, their relationship with the Lord.”
“Celebrating the Eucharist is the high point of this privileged relationship, as Jesus will act in and through me … to make Himself sacramentally present, to nourish, console, and strengthen the members of His Body and draw them into unity with Him and each other,” Father Colwell said.
The day after he was ordained , Father Colwell, 30, celebrated his first Mass at St. John Neumann Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The newly ordained priest is the son of Gregory and Dawn Taylor Colwell of Griffin, Georgia. He has one sister, Alexis James, who is a nurse and who with her husband, Bryan are parents of 11-month old Matthew Taylor James.
A convert, Father Colwell’s journey to the Catholic faith and priesthood began in his native Georgia, where he said he was “born and raised Baptist, was active in Church growing up, and had a strong, inquisitive faith passed on to me through my parents and grandparents.”
“As a convert from a mostly Protestant area, I knew barely any Catholics growing up and certainly did not think about the priesthood until many years later,” Father Colwell said. “However, I did as a young child think about becoming a Baptist minister ... Hence, my current path is both surprising and fitting in a way.”
He noted that during his high school years, he began questioning his faith and drifting away from the practice of it. After high school, he attended Georgetown University, which he said was “a time of exploration, both exciting and unsettling, in which I encountered new people, places, ideas, and ways of life: this opened me to consider anew my own beliefs and seek truth and meaning more deeply.”
He said he became attracted to the Catholic faith by reading apologetic works by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and literature by Catholic authors such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Evelyn Waugh.
“I was struck by the coherence, profundity, and beauty of the Church’s intellectual tradition, and the high vision of Christian living offered by her moral teachings,” Father Colwell said. “Later, I was blessed with deep, supportive friendships that helped bring me the rest of the way into the Church and to begin life as a Catholic. These friends also inspired and supported me as I discerned and embraced a vocation to the priesthood.”
The future priest was received into the Church in 2014. While he discerned his vocation to the priesthood, he worked as a paralegal with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition. He said he was inspired to consider the priesthood by what he called “the witness, mentorship, and spiritual fatherhood” of Jesuit Father Stephen Fields, one of Father Colwell’s professors at Georgetown.
“Father Fields showed me what it looks like to live a life dedicated to the Church and her mission of drawing all people to Jesus Christ,” Father Colwell said. “He helped me discover within myself a budding desire to serve Christ and the Church as a priest, and to explore and discern that desire more deeply.”
He entered the Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 2017, and completed his seminary studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
Father Colwell said that becoming a priest is “the fruit of my journey of conversion which Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me as the answer to my intellectual, moral, and existential searching.” He added that he is “filled with great excitement by the call to represent Christ to His People.” However, the future priest began to heed that call to represent Jesus to others even before his ordination: his own faith journey inspired his mother to convert to the Catholic faith,
He said that while his parents were supportive of his decision to become a Catholic, “coming from an area with few Catholics, it was all new to them, especially when I began thinking about the priesthood.” Father Colwell said at first his mother was a bit unsure about her son’s decision to become a priest, “however, she soon began to see and understand more about the beauty of the Catholic faith, and this became part of her own faith journey, as she decided to become Catholic.”
“It has been a great joy for me to in some way play a role in my mom deepening her faith,” he said, “since she was the one who first taught me about Jesus, the Scriptures, prayer, and everything else that still forms the basis of my faith.”
Father Colwell said he is “deeply grateful to God and to everyone who has helped me arrive at this point of dedicating my life to continuing Christ’s priestly ministry.”
Looking to the future, he said, “My goal is that the people I encounter as a priest may glimpse some reflection in me, however partial, of the Lord whom I represent and in whose name I minister.”
