Editor’s Note: In December, Paulist Fr. Charlie Donahue will complete his current stint at the Newman Center in Columbus, OH. He will head south to become the new pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, TN. Before Fr. Charlie makes the move, we take a new look at his life and ministry.

Some say Paulist Fr. Charlie Donahue could talk the paint off a barn.

But he just as often uses his words to engage others to speak––to inquire and to struggle out loud with life’s hard questions. He empowers people to discern the meaning and direction of their lives as beloved children of God and members of a community.

Fr. Charlie often employs technology in preaching. Perhaps not surprising given that the Paulist Fathers are known for using tech to preach. Another Paulist hallmark is great preaching–also one of Fr. Charlie’s traits. But he occasionally offers a twist–dialogue homilies.

Take, for example, a recent Sunday night Mass at the St. Thomas More Newman Center at the Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.

To illustrate evangelization, he projects onto a big screen the famed Catholic Worker Fritz Eichenberg’s engraving of Christ in a bread line. After discussing several steps in the process of evangelization, Fr. Charlie invites the mostly student congregation to share how they spread the Gospel. About four people raise their hands and speak into the wireless microphone Fr. Charlie walks over to each. The interaction leads to students continuing the conversations in the pews after Mass ends.

Fr. Charlie doesn’t do this often, but it’s emblematic of how he reaches out to people regularly.

Growing up in Long Island with a large extended family of more than 40 cousins, Fr. Charlie had built-in community and felt a deep comfort in church. He went to a Jesuit preparatory high school and made lifelong friends, including some of the priests who lived and taught there.

He studied business information systems and broadcast journalism at the Jesuit-run Fairfield University in Connecticut. That’s where he both fell out of love, and back in love with the church, he says.

“I had two tough years in my life kind of finding and re-finding myself,” Fr. Charlie said.

In the next years, though, he was a leader in campus ministry.

“My junior and senior year, I was running retreats and service trips,” Fr. Charlie said. “And it felt very much like home. And I made some real solid friends. A few of which I’m still friends with today.”

However, his path to the priesthood was not determined until well after he’d graduated Fairfield.

“I had a pretty neat career in publishing,” Fr. Charlie said. “But I knew kind of in my heart that—to use science fiction language—I was not in my correct timeline.”

He started discerning with the Jesuit Fathers, and while at a book fair in Frankfurt, he spotted a priest with a laptop–not a device well-used by churchmen a few decades ago.

Fr. Charlie followed the priest down an aisle “that led to a gigantic display for Paulist Press.”

“I loved the fact that there was a religious community dedicated to media and publishing. And I had spent the last 11 years of my life in media and publishing. And so rather than shutting the door on my old life and saying ‘I’m new and here I go,’I was able to say ‘God has been preparing me for this even when I didn’t know it.’”

Fr. Charlie was ordained in 2005. Since then, he’s worn many hats. Now he is associate director of St. Thomas More Newman Center. Previously, he served as pastor of St. John XXIII University Parish at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. Before that he was associate director of Newman Hall – Holy Spirit Parish at the University of California, Berkeley. For several years he served as director of formation and as superior of the Paulist Fathers in Washington, D.C.

Fr. Charlie is open about his struggles both before and during his priesthood, first as a recovering alcoholic and later facing an emotional crisis when he felt crushed by work responsibilities. The presence and mentorship of others—family, friends, spiritual heroes, his brother Paulists—lit his path with insight, encouragement, and grace.

Grace, Fr. Charlie says, “is God’s power in the world,” surrounding us abundantly and connecting us to Him and to one another, whether we need a complete reboot or just need to get through the day. He cites St. Francis de Sales (Bishop of Geneva and patron saint of writers and journalists), who wrote, “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them. Every day begin the task anew.”

Fr. Charlie’s favorite ways to pray include taking long walks (“where I can talk to God, and where I can listen to God”) or praying with the sick. He tells a story about a dying woman whose extended family had gathered by her bedside. The woman asked Fr. Charlie to pray with them and suggested he say a prayer for grace such as would be said over a meal.

“And so we all held hands and we all prayed, ‘Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts which we are about to receive through Jesus Christ.’ She knew that was probably the only prayer they would all know from start to finish,” he says. “That was probably my most profound moment of prayer, as she was caretaking that whole gaggle of people and as they were…loving her out of this world.”

St. Joseph is one of Fr. Charlie’s spiritual heroes. A small plaster statue of St. Joseph sat on his father’s dresser for all of Charlie’s childhood, and the priest keeps a replica with him wherever he goes.

“St. Joseph reminds me to be quiet, to listen, to watch God at work, and to let (my) heart be molded.”

When Fr. Charlie celebrates weddings, he encourages the videographer to capture every minute and to include the full homily in the finished piece. Some priests or parishioners may consider recording sacraments intrusive or irreverent, but Fr. Charlie says that when a couple may be having a rough patch years later, seeing a recording of their commitment may help.