When Father Martin Begley was ordained as a new priest for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington on June 17, the desire that he had since grade school, to become a priest someday, came true.

The next day, the 27-year-old priest celebrated his first Mass at St. Raphael Parish in Rockville, where he had been baptized and received First Communion and Confirmation, and where his parents, Martin and Caroline Begley, were married.

In an interview before his ordination, he noted how his parents’ example shaped him. “Faith is a part of their life… I wanted it to be a part of my life.”

During his high school years, the family moved to Laytonsville and became members of St. Peter’s Parish in Olney.

The oldest of seven children, Father Begley has two younger brothers and four younger sisters. “I liked being the oldest, you definitely have to get used to responsibility faster – you’re watching the younger ones,” he said.

Growing up, he was homeschooled, and he made many friends among students in a Montgomery County homeschooling group.

“I loved it,” he said of his homeschool experience, which included participating in Shakespeare Theater in high school.

Current priests of the archdiocese who were homeschooled in that area include two sets of brothers, Father James Morrison and Father Nicholas Morrison, and Father Brendan Glasgow and Father James Glasgow.

Martin Begley attended three Quo Vadis camps during his high school years, and he later helped there three times as a seminarian. The camp’s name comes from a Latin phrase meaning “Where are you going?” Priests and seminarians staff the camp, which is designed to help high school youth discern God’s will for their lives.

“It helped make it (the priesthood) accessible,” he said, adding that his family had friendships with a lot of priests and invited them to their home for dinner.

After high school, he commuted to the University of Maryland and was active in the Catholic Student Center on campus. In a reflection on the DC Priest website, he wrote, “There my friendship with Christ deepened.” On a retreat his sophomore year, he felt called to enter the seminary.

The Saint John Paul II Seminary where he began those studies “still feels like home,” he said. Later he studied at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, which he said “is such a peaceful place to pray. Mary is present in a special way there.”

During his seminary years, he served at parishes in rural and suburban Maryland and in the city of Washington. “Every place has a different feel,” he said. “…The people at all of them were awesome.”

In the summer of 2018, he served in Southern Maryland at St. Cecilia Parish in St. Mary’s City and St. Peter Claver Parish in Saint Inigoes, with Father Scott Woods, a priest mentor who was then pastor at those parishes and who preached the homily at his first Mass.

In the spring and summer of 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic he was quarantined at the rectory of his original parish, St. Raphael in Rockville, and continued his seminary classes online in the rectory. When public Masses resumed there, “It was really nice to see people again,” he said.

Then in the summer of 2021, he served at Sacred Heart in Bowie, where some parish families invited him to dinner at their homes. “It’s a great way for a seminarian to get to know people, and for them to know him,” he said.

The next summer he experienced life at a city parish, serving at Immaculate Conception in Washington, which has a lot of young adult parishioners.

This year before his priestly ordination, then-Deacon Begley served at St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg, whose pastor, Msgr. Robert Panke, had been his rector at Saint John Paul II Seminary. In addition to preaching at Masses, a highlight for him there was doing some Baptisms and being “an instrument of grace in a sacramental way.”

In his free time, he enjoys cycling and running and reading novels.

Father Begley said he was looking forward to hearing Confessions and helping “people experience the love and mercy of Jesus.”

The week before his ordination, he said he was “trying to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, and be ready to receive this gift that He’s going to give me.”