Young man forsakes music industry career to pursue priesthood
By Christine Vartanian
Correspondent
CLINTON — A few short months ago, Jack Devaney would have been found shuttling between his full-time job at a cable music channel and his home studio, where he hosted a weekend program for a Los Angeles jazz station. He now sits instead in the seclusion of a priory studying and praying as a novitiate of the Dominican order.
Rather than a drastic and overnight life change, Devaney’s journey was one of two paths that seemed to run parallel — one leading him into the glamorous music industry and the other as a humble servant of God.
The 32-year-old novice, born in Somerville to parents John and Helen Devaney, was raised in Clinton with his sisters Eileen and Sheila. A lifelong parishioner of Immaculate Conception, Annandale, it was in this faith-filled family and parish that his feelings toward God awakened.
“From the beginning, my parents gave me the great gift. Their self-sacrifice and trust in God in good times and bad and my father’s strong devotion to Mary and the rosary really made me feel the importance of God and devotion to him in my life,” he said.
He took those feelings with him when he left for Emerson College, Boston, in 1994 but soon discovered an interest in and gift for broadcasting. In his junior year, he began volunteering two hours a week at WNTI 91.9 FM, the public radio of Centenary College, Hackettstown, shuttling between there and school.
After returning home with a broadcasting/communications degree in 1998, his experience in the industry flourished like fruit on a vine, finding work in a local production company and independent record label, managing a band, co-founding the Black Potatoe music festival and doing public relations promotions while continuing to host radio.
Devaney describes his faith during this period as “there” but his practice of it irregular, with periods of laziness. Instead, he focused on taking on various menial jobs to support his radio work and began dating a woman with whom he would maintain an ongoing chaste relationship.
In fall 2004, his spiritual development took off like a rocket from an unlikely launch pad — he obtained a job as a diplomatic courier delivering documents between Fortune 500 companies, which required him to travel throughout Manhattan and New Jersey for six to eight hours a day.
To deal with the loneliness of driving solo, he invested in satellite radio to have music as a companion.
“That led to something I didn’t see coming,” he remembered. “When I put the radio on, I heard EWTN for the first time,” he said, referring to the 24-hour Catholic radio/television network. “It affected me greatly. Then I would pray or just meditate with the radio off and I found the silence empowering.”
At the same time, the Manhattan-based job provided ample opportunities for him to participate in sacraments daily as well as eucharistic adoration.
As his faith intensified, Devaney could see a new path opening in his journey, but it was only wide enough for one. He and his girlfriend amicably ended their two-year relationship, and Devaney took the first step in discerning a religious vocation by seeking out a priest for a casual discussion about a possible calling.
But when his ex-girlfriend informed him she was dating another, much to Devaney’s surprise, the feelings for the priesthood quickly dissipated.
“I was crushed,” he remembered. “Here I was thinking about the priesthood and yet so broken hearted that this woman I had loved was dating. I had to figure out what my calling really was about. Was it marriage or priesthood?”
He sought the assistance of Father Randall J. Vashon, director of vocations for the Diocese of Metuchen, who told him to keep praying, trusting and asking God.
Devaney thought an answer came when his ex-girlfriend informed him that her new relationship was over. Their own relationship resumed and a few months later they began discussing marriage.
“We were having dinner out and my mind drifted to her side of the table,” he recalled. “Then it hit me. I saw myself in her place, getting ready to commit to someone who didn’t feel the same way, whose faith was, is and always will be ‘no. 1.’ It didn’t seem fair or right. I knew then it was over.”
Yet he could not bring himself to tell her.
The next day brought a different turn of events. Preparing to go to another job he had acquired at the Music Choice cable channel, he discovered a lump in the testicular area that was then diagnosed as cancerous. Over the next few months, he would endure surgery and radiation. During his recovery, he became more withdrawn from his girlfriend.
“Ironically,” he recalled, “I was more bummed out about my feelings for her than about the cancer, knowing I had to break up with her, not telling her and still not wanting to let go.”
He realized his trust in God held back fear of death or illness and that made him want to serve God all the more. In January, he was given clearance that the cancer was held at stage 1 and did not spread.
During National Vocations Week, he committed to fasting, adoration and asking for God’s providence, which brought him to confession at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Manhattan, near his courier job, and to Dominican Father Carleton Jones. He poured out his heart to the priest about his girl, his calling and the feelings about the two that seemed to battle each other constantly.
Devaney recalled, “He said he knew a man who had a calling, studied for a couple of years, and then dropped out and decided to get married, and for years was troubled because his heart seemed to know he missed something and would for the rest of his life. Father Jones told me to tell her everything, and if priesthood was right for me, to consider the Dominican order.”
Devaney followed his advice and to his surprise his girlfriend realized it was his calling and that everything they had been through now made sense. “From then on, it automatically and happily became pure friendship,” Devaney said.
Open to freely pursue this calling, Devaney contacted Father Jones, who became his spiritual director. He read up on the Dominican order and was pleased to find out they had active ministry in the city he loved; a history and involvement in the arts, which suited his own love of culture; and were contemplative, which appealed to the strength he found in solitude.
Joining the Dominicans would require him to take lifelong vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, which he was willing to do. But in September 2006, the sacrificial stakes became higher. He was offered the opportunity to record radio shows for KKJZ, known as KJazz, a Los Angeles all-jazz radio station. It was Devaney’s dream job and sure to lead to others. He held off on the vocation, but not for long.
“I realized I was invited by the creator of the universe to come work for him,” he said, “a call that comes from God himself. How could I possibly turn that down?”
In winter 2007, he applied to the Dominicans’ Province of St. Joseph in the northeast.
This time he was asked to hold off by their vocations director, Dominican Father Bill Garrott, who felt Devaney would benefit from experience in church service and further discernment. Devaney, exercising obedience, did just that, quitting his courier job, joining some ministries, but still remaining a disc jockey.
Last November, he began the long application process and was accepted into the 2008 novice class of the Dominican friars on Feb. 5, 2008. On July 5, he left his dream job and family and friends for Providence College, Providence, R.I., to begin his postulancy for close to one month before he entered the novitiate at the St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he now studies in seclusion.
Before leaving, Devaney told The Catholic Spirit of his excitement at the unknown lying ahead.
“The greatest thing I will have to accept is that even though I’m older and have an identity that’s formed, I must allow the fullness of the formation to create me into the Dominican I am supposed to be.”
He looks forward to opportunities to promote the sacraments, particularly the power of confession, and holds no regrets about giving up a career coveted by so many youth today.
“I won’t lie,” he said. “The radio is my pride and I held on to it to the end. I know what I’m giving up. There’s no doubt I would have had a long future in broadcasting and production. But there’s a real excitement about letting go for God. And I don’t know how or when, but I just know that God will have me use the skills, ideas, and experience I’ve gained for his good. And I can’t wait to see how he will do that.”
