On a retreat in Italy during his junior year in college, Deacon Clayton Forner was sitting in a chapel with an assignment: meditate on the Nativity. He was trying to place himself in the scene, imagining what he would see, smell, hear. And as prayed, he found himself viewing the scene through the eyes of Joseph — witnessing Jesus’ birth, wiping the infant with a towel and gazing upon him.

“And I just had this thought to myself: Maybe I’ll take care of kids who aren’t my own, just like Joseph did, taking care of Jesus,” he said.

And the thought clicked. “It was like, yup, this is the vocation for me.”

He was thinking of the priesthood, a vocation he had considered on and off since he was a kid. At that time, he was a student at St. John Vianney College Seminary at the University of St. Thomas, but had wrestled with the idea of forgoing marriage and fatherhood. But after that Nativity meditation, he never again had serious doubts about his path toward the “spiritual fatherhood” of a priest.

Deacon Forner, 26, grew up surrounded by extended family in East Union in Carver County, the son of a Ken and Laurie Forner. His dad, an artist and graphic designer, encouraged his only son and his four sisters — three older, one younger — to develop their imagination, and Deacon Forner spent much of his free time as a child playing outside. Or reading — his mother, a chemist, taught at an early age, and he recalls waking up on Saturday mornings as a kid and lying in bed, reading for hours until he was hungry.

His family attended Guardian Angels in Chaska, where his parents were avid volunteers. “From the time I was little (but) tall enough to fold a folding chair, I was setting up chairs and tables for different things or wiping down stuff after an event at church,” he said. He attended the parish school, and was part of the funeral serving team. Even though it was an excuse to miss class — and eat lunch twice, both at the funeral and school cafeteria — the extra experience assisting his pastor was spiritually beneficial.

“One of the great benefits of being at Guardian Angels was it gave me a lot of ‘wood for the fire,’” he said.

Deacon Forner’s road to seminary involved a series of gentle nudges toward considering the priesthood. The idea was apparently planted early: He’s been told that, as a young child, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d answer, “A priest.” He has a memory of being much older — seventh or eighth grade — and, while preparing to serve the Easter Vigil Mass, laying out the altar linens and feeling at home.

Father Nick VanDenBroeke, a seminarian assigned to help at Guardian Angels parish, enthusiastically encouraged Deacon Forner — then a middle schooler — and a few other young men to deepen their prayer life, read Scripture and ask questions about the faith. He also brought them to NET Ministries’ Lifeline Masses for teenagers in Inver Grove Heights — including one focused on vocations. There, they were given the opportunity to be prayed over, and Deacon Forner found “a nun who looked like she knew what she was doing.”

“I walked up to her and asked her, ‘Well, I’m here at this vocations Mass. I ask you to pray that I would know what the Lord wants me to do with my life.’” She held his hands. He doesn’t remember all of what she said, except for what she said last: “Lord, if I’m holding hands with a future priest, that would be the greatest gift of all.”

It made an impact.

“My heart just exploded,” Deacon Forner said. “It was kind of that ignition moment. … I had all this wood from the fire — knowledge about God, but all of a sudden, I also had this experience of God.”

And he felt like he was on a path to priesthood. He went on to Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria, graduating in 2006, and then straight to seminary. At St. Thomas, he majored in philosophy and Catholic Studies — spending a semester his junior year in Rome — before continuing formation at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where his ministry experiences have included street ministry and serving a Catholic parish at an American Naval base in Naples. For the past two summers, he’s assisted at St. John the Baptist in Savage, working alongside now-Bishop Donald DeGrood, installed bishop of Sioux Falls in February.

After Deacon Forner’s ordination to the priesthood May 30 — and if the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t thwart his plans — he’ll return to Rome to complete a degree in spiritual theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He’s currently wrapping up the semester via Zoom, after COVID-19 forced his return to the U.S. in late March.

As Deacon Forner reflects on that moment of seeing through St. Joseph’s eyes in the Italian chapel six years ago, he thinks of it as “the Lord being generous with me.”

“Because you look at the task ahead of you, and it can be overwhelming if you look at it only from your strength,” he said. “It was the way of the Lord saying, ‘It’s not going to be you providing this, I’m going to provide through you, and you’ve got to trust me.”