James Bors He entered the seminary in Baltimore (USA) in 2015, at the age of 53. He looked around at his companions seminarians, who were the same age as their children in their twenties. Would he, who had held such odd jobs and traveled so much, adjust to seminary life?
He soon realized that he actually loved it and was grateful: he had been juggling for years to combine his professional, family, personal and evangelizing life, and now he could focus only on studying and praying. His strict schedule was experienced as a liberating order. He is ordained a priest in Baltimore this June 2022.
Bors has experienced many special things that other priests have not experienced; some beautiful, like having children and watching them grow up; others sad, like suffer in 2010 the suicide of his wife, whom he loved and still loves. There aren’t many priests who can say “I know what it feels like” to both.
Among other peculiarities of his past, he is the time in his youth that he was Protestant, away from the Catholic Church. And his years in the US Navy, first as a nuclear submarine officer of combat USS Birmingham, then as a teacher and instructor at the military naval academy.
And 25 years in the world of business and business consulting, especially machinery and technical products. Now, he will sell Heaven, the best product, and repair souls.
a little religious boy
James Bors grew up in a catholic family that, to his child’s annoyance, insisted on going to mass every Sunday, “Even on vacation!” he was scandalized as a child.
What he liked when he was young was sports and mechanics. He studied mechanical engineering at the Annapolis Naval Academy and was a military officer on a nuclear submarine. Over there He met other soldiers, Protestant Christians, who invited him to a Bible course nondenominational. His joyful faith, his passion, his intentional, determined way of “living the faith outside the four corners of the temple”, with the Word of God and prayer, captivated him. They infected him with living faith and love for the Word.
As he prepared to leave with the submarine, at a picnic in a church he met a girl he loved, Shirley, surrounded by nephews. He lost sight of her, and dedicated himself to visiting all the houses in her neighborhood, knocking on her door and asking for her. Finally, it was the pastor of her church who gave him the right lead. Jim courted her insistently and in a hurry and they were married 4 months later.
James Bors and his wife Shirley, on their wedding day in 1985. They were married on a military base.
a catholic family
Jim and Shirley lived in Hawaii for a few years, had two children, and then moved back to Annapolis, with Jim as a naval instructor at the academy.
Jim was already a Catholic again. Fellow Protestants had raised issues with him about Catholicism that he wanted to investigate seriously. He passionately studied the Catholic doctrine on the Virgin Mary, the Papacy and the sacraments. And the more he studied, the more he fell in love with the Church that had bored him as a child.
Already then he realized what as a seminarian he has been able to confirm even more: “The Catholic faith is based on Scripture, history, tradition and logic, lor everything fits together, it’s organic, it integrates it into the same thing”, he assured in a testimony for the seminar’s website.
Thus, the family in which his children grew up was Catholic. The he organized prayer and Catholic Bible study groups in the local parish. His wife read at mass. Later, he left the Academy and spent 25 years in the corporate world, with many business trips and a fast pace.
The he took advantage of business flights to talk about God with the people who sat next to him: I had a whole strategy to lead the conversation to spiritual topics. He wanted to evangelize.
A tragedy that only faith could console
In 2010 tragedy struck. His wife Shirley committed suicide at the age of 50. It was something unexpected for everyone and devastating. The cause was a mental illness gone haywire with the bad reaction to a drug that was trying to help her. “It was like hitting a wall,” remembers Jim.
“Up to that point I had never really slowed down in my life. And I had never really suffered“, remember.
He was left as the single father of two teenagers. He never got angry with God or doubted his faith. On the contrary, faith gave him strength and comfort.
6 months passed and the people who knew him in his parish and saw his strong faith and hope already he asked him if perhaps he was thinking of becoming a priest. He said no right away. But then he seriously thought about it. It was something to consider, but first the boys had to grow up. He dropped some comments to his children, groping them, and they thought he was joking.
But five years after being widowed, in 2015, on a trip to Europe, Jim talked to them at a restaurant in France. He had 3 options, he told them: remarry, remain single or become a priest, and his preferred option was to be a priest, but he did not intend to do it if they did not see it well, he told them.
James Bors with his sons and daughter-in-law.
“You are not a priest, you are a father”
The older man immediately answered yes. “Although later, when I thought about it, I realized that it was a bit strangeLike, ‘Hey, you’re not a priest, you’re a dad,'” the young man told the seminar’s website.
The little boy was more amazed: “It was something out of the ordinary, I had never thought that my father would be a priest… But when I thought about it, I realized that it fit with his lifelong desire to live and share the gospel.”
And so James entered the seminary at the age of 53. He explains that every day he remembers his wife, when he wakes up, in his morning prayers. He thinks she would be happy to see him serve God with joy. From her seminar, she says that it reminds her of the naval academy: “one trains you to serve the country, the other trains you to serve God.”
And of the parishioners he will serve in this new stage of his life, he says, “I just want to take you on a deeper walk with the Lord, help them to know and understand the scriptures more deeply, and help them to be faithful witnesses“.