More than 500 lay Catholics, clergy and men and women religious packed into every available space at Blessed Sacrament Church in Jonesboro May 13 to watch seminarian Quinton Thomas be ordained a transitional deacon.
With this Mass and celebration, Thomas is one step closer to becoming a priest.
For as long as he can remember, Thomas has felt a call to the priesthood.
“I don’t remember learning that there was a God. I think by grace, by providence, I kind of knew that there was a God from very early on,” Thomas told Arkansas Catholic.
Thomas’ mother and his devout Catholic grandparents played a pivotal role in his early faith formation. It was during Thomas’ First Communion that he felt the Lord whisper into his heart.
“I remember after I received my First Communion, I was smiling, and I remember feeling self-conscious about it and looking over to see whether other kids were smiling to see whether I was supposed to be smiling. And I saw that they weren’t. And so I thought I wasn’t supposed to be, so I tried to stop, but I couldn’t quit smiling,” he admitted with a laugh.
“So I ended up putting a hand over my face as I walked back, because I was kind of embarrassed. But I had a really tender kind of closeness to God as a child, but it became more mine very early on. I entered seminary right out of high school because that was what I had wanted to do, basically since my First Communion.”
But Thomas was all smiles May 13 as Bishop Anthony B. Taylor announced from the altar that Thomas, 25, was the first person to be ordained from Blessed Sacrament Church — an announcement that sent murmurs of excitement through the crowd and prompted applause.
During his homily, Bishop Taylor said Thomas’ ordination was the first of five that will be happening in May, and that the lessons he shares in each ordination homily apply to all seminarians.
“By virtue of your ordination here today, your life becomes irrevocably a life lived for the benefit of others,” he said. “As an ordained deacon, you become a minister of the word, sacrament and charity, a servant of Jesus, his Church and indeed the entire human family.”
Thomas said he is enthusiastic about learning different languages in his spare time — a skill that will also be helpful in his priesthood.
“I would say that my Spanish and French are proficient. We just got to go to Italy, so that was my first time to actually try Italian, to try really using it. … I can get by in Italian pretty decently well. Another language I really have fun with is Vietnamese. I was at St. Patrick Church in North Little Rock for my ministry assignment a few years ago. I was assigned there to teach kids and do catechesis, and a friend paid for Vietnamese lessons for me. I took a semester of Vietnamese through an online school in Saigon. And then I do classical languages — my Latin and Hebrew are OK,” he said with a chuckle.
“Quinton has several traits that will make him a great priest, but one stands out. Quinton believes. He believes with Catholic faith from his whole person. Jesus is his savior, and the people under Quinton’s care will come to know that very well,” said Father Jeff Hebert, vocations director for the Diocese of Little Rock.
Thomas will be ministering this summer at St. Theresa Church in Little Rock and is looking forward to getting to know the people he serves. After his final semester this fall, in January he will begin his “vocational synthesis” at a parish before he is ordained a priest in May 2026.