Fr. Simon Esshaki shares his inspiring journey to priesthood. From a young boy captivated by his local priest to a dedicated seminarian, discover the path that led him to serve God. Learn about the impact of his Catholic upbringing, the challenges of adolescence, and the pivotal role of prayer and Scripture in his spiritual formation. This heartwarming interview reveals the personal side of a man devoted to his faith.
Transcript:
So you pray the rosary, your father’s a deacon. It’s a very faithful religious family. So you just knew you were going to be a priest from the time you were a child. You had a conversion experience. How do you end up a priest?
So actually from my very early childhood years, there was a priest here, his name is Father Michael Bozi, and he was one of the first priests here in San Diego. And the priest that served here the longest, the community out here. And so I just remember being so involved in the community, but I remember asking the question, he was the only priest here. He’s pretty old. I mean, I think he’s like 85 or something like that. But I just remember asking the question after him, who’s going to do it? Really? Yeah.
Oh, what an interesting way to, I had never heard of someone coming to the priest. So you saw the community’s going to need a priest? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So that’s when I was a little kid.
Little kid.
And I just loved being at church. And I was an altar boy as well. I would go to the catechism classes that we had, and then I started to go to the youth groups and everything. When I became a teenager, it kind of left me a little bit. I was in my teenage years, but that foundation was always there in the back of my mind and the foundation of the Catholic upbringing that I had of praying the rosary and of being involved in the church community, praying with my family. And then I went to high school and for a few years I actually went to a very tiny Catholic school. Do you know St. Ephraim? It’s a Maronite community.
Yes.
So they actually had a Catholic school, Maronite Catholic school, very small school. Literally 20, 30 people in the whole school. And I’m talking K to 12. So I went there for my freshman year. They had high school. And the high school was literally me, my sisters, my cousin, and two other people. But we used to have daily mass there. It was a very beautiful experience. And then that school had to close down. And then from my freshman year, after doing freshman year there, I went to Steel Canyon High School. So I go from a school of 20, 30 people to a school of about 2000 people, 20, 30 Catholic people
To a secular
Public to very secular high school. So it was very much culture shock for me. But the thing that got me through it was my Catholic foundation at home and also the church community that I was going to. I would go to the youth group for example, and I would have friends there that really helped me in my spiritual life. And it was around that time that the faith was always there for me as a child. Like I said, we would pray the rosary at home. I would go to church and I would learn. So the community aspect of the faith was always there for me. But it wasn’t until that time I started going to the youth group that the relationship, the personal aspect of the relationship with Jesus really took form or started to really develop. And so I would start to read the Bible every day by myself.
And it was a beautiful experience. But the thing I did, actually, before I started to read the Bible, I want to share this story because it’s about kind of how my vocation and relationship with Jesus really took form one day. It was a summer day and we didn’t have Netflix or TikTok or anything like that back in the day when I was in high school. So my dad used to go to Catholic conferences. He used to go to the Catholic entrance conferences. He used to get a lot of the material and other things. And so one day I was so bored that I ended up going and looking through my dad’s books. See, this
Is something I don’t think parents understand. Boredom is a gift to your child sometimes. Let them be bored. Exactly. They’ll discover the most amazing thing if you just let them be bored. Exactly.
Yeah. So there was nothing for me to do. Right. I would go and turn on the TV and watch the prices right at 10:00 AM and then there’s nothing on afterwards. And so I was so bored. I went to go look through my dad’s books and I was just looking around and I saw a book, true Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Monfort. Wow. And just every book, I was just looking at the back, just reading what it says. And this says, this is probably the greatest book about Mary ever written. And I was really shocked about that. I didn’t really know a lot about Mother Mary. I would do the Rosary since I was a kid, but I didn’t really think about it that much about her role in the Christian life. So that was the first book I ever read by my own choice, not a school book. I read the whole book. And
How old
Were you think I was? Probably 14, 15 at that time. Great. Yeah. Alright. And so that summer I read that book and that book and the Devotion to Mary that developed from that book was the greatest thing of my life actually, because it led me to love Jesus so much. And it led me, I mentioned I was reading the Bible, it led me to reading the scriptures by myself. We would read the Bible at home. Sometimes I would go to church, Bible study, but this was the first time, like I said, my personal relationship with Christ really took effect because I was reading the Bible every day. I started from the gospels and I remember this beautiful time in my life when I did, I didn’t know until I read it that Jesus commanded us to do this. But I would go to my room and I would close the door after everybody was asleep and I would just read the scriptures. And I enjoyed that time so much, and I learned so much and really developed my relationship. What a great
God that is really still a child. He called you to that personal connection with him.
And so that’s why my vocation is an early vocation. So right at 17, right when I finished high school, I joined the seminary.