Father John Sajdak

Father John Sajdak

In an act of foreshadowing nearly 80 years ago, Society of Mary Father John Sajdak said his mother prayed for the Blessed Mother’s intercession as she hoped to conceive her first child. He was born three years after his parents married.

When he was 18, he overheard his mother’s phone conversation with his grandmother, when she said, “Mary gave him to me for 18 years, and now she’s taking him back.”

Father Sajdak, 78, pastor of St. Louis King of France in St. Paul, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his priesthood this year. His religious order is devoted to the Blessed Mother.

He grew up in Yonkers, New York, and attended a Catholic college-preparatory school in nearby New Rochelle. He decided his senior year that he wanted to become a priest. At a retreat that year, Father Sajdak said he was bowled over by the fact that “God really loves us.”

“And so, I decided that I really wanted to spend the rest of my life trying to let people know how much God loves us,” he said.

The vocations director for the Society of Mary, also known as Marists, gave a talk at his high school that year. The religious order was new to him.

“He was a very distinguished man,” Father Sajdak recalled. “He was tall and straight, and came in with his cassock and a huge crucifix. And he had this beautiful blue cape. So, I thought, ‘Hmmm, I wouldn’t mind wearing that cape,’ so I put down that I was interested.”

Now 50 years past his ordination, Father Sajdak said he has never seen a blue cape since, but he has always valued the Marist charism and spirit. “We do Mary’s work in the Church, like Mary does,” he said — kind of quiet, not in the forefront, more leading from behind, maternal in the way a mother encourages her children and gets to know them well.

“We figure out where people are at and then gently lead them from that point,” he said. Men in the religious order go about doing the Lord’s work, which is also Mary’s work, Father Sajdak said, “and we have a really good community life.”

Men in the order are Mary in the world today, he said. “She gives us her name and we give her our service,” he said.

Father Sajdak taught for most of his career, starting in 1977 with a 10-year stint at then-Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods, Michigan. He taught religious studies from 1987 to 1997 at Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan, when he returned to Notre Dame High School as its principal. He went back to Madonna in 2005 and served for eight years as chair of the university’s Religious Studies Department.

“When I got back there as chair, it was basically developing online courses for the Religious Studies Department,” he said. At the high school, he taught “basically anything but math or science,” including Latin, English, computer programming and religion.

He left academia in 2013 to minister at a Marist parish in Brooklyn, New York, before receiving a call about five years ago to serve as “a fill-in” at St. Louis King of France for a year. After a month, the provincial asked if he would consider a full contract. “So, I signed up for six years,” he said, and is open to serving longer as pastor.

“When I got here, I just really, really liked the whole place,” Father Sajdak said. “I like the set-up, I like the ministry that we do here,” largely confessions and celebrating Eucharist, “which is the heart of priesthood,” he said.

With few young families at the parish, there is no religious education program offered. “We don’t have any committees because there just aren’t that many people that are signed up as parishioners that warrant that kind of huge organization,” he said. But members are very good at volunteering for what is needed, he noted.

With his love of serving the Church and as an educator, Father Sajdak said his greatest joy is being a Marist. “It suits me,” he said. “I really like the whole charism. And any place I’ve been, I love teaching. It’s kind of my basic passion. I really, really liked it a lot.”

He said he sometimes hears from former students, who share things from class he didn’t realize would have had a lasting impact.

“As I look over the 50 years, I just had one really good time,” Father Sajdak said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”