Alumni Brothers Pursue Priesthood — 3,000 Miles Apart

Our Lord began His public ministry by calling pairs of brothers to follow Him, and it is a practice that continues, as Isaac Cross (’19) and his older brother, Frater George (Patrick ’14) Cross, O. Praem., can attest. Isaac is currently studying for the priesthood for the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Frater George is in the novitiate at St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California.

“As a journalist, I wanted to bring the education I got at TAC into the world and use it to bring people closer to Christ,” he says. “But all of a sudden, it hit me that there’s no better way to do that than as a priest, because you’re not doing it alone — Christ is doing it through you.”

Both began their discernment when, as recent TAC graduates, they took up jobs at their alma mater. Frater George was the first employee to live on the New England campus, where he held down the fort in comparative solitude until his colleagues and the first students arrived in 2019. Solitude did as solitude does, directing his thoughts to God. “I started thinking about the priesthood,” he says.

His priestly thoughts would soon influence his younger brother. “Pat’s discernment put the priesthood on my radar without my realizing it,” Isaac observes. Isaac soon also took a job on the New England campus, serving as a resident director, while writing freelance articles — and exploring a career in journalism in his spare time. “My thought was to write full-time after I finished my stint as an RD,” he says, but that was not to be. “As I got more exposed to the journalism world, I started to realize that I didn’t want to do it, after all. I had spent so many years pursuing it, so I felt a little lost.”

Praying in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, Isaac soon had an epiphany. “As a journalist, I wanted to bring the education I got at TAC into the world and use it to bring people closer to Christ,” he says. “But all of a sudden, it hit me that there’s no better way to do that than as a priest, because you’re not doing it alone — Christ is doing it through you.” That realization left him determined to act: He visited a few religious congregations before becoming a seminarian at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 2021.

Isaac’s swift decision struck Frater George, who — though he never stopped thinking about the priesthood — had not yet translated his thinking into action. “It’s how things have worked our whole lives,” he laughs. “Isaac makes decisions quickly, and I have a lot of inertia. I don’t know if I would be in religious life unless he had thought about seminary.” Inspired, Frater George committed to the long-considered idea of discerning a Norbertine vocation. He began postulancy at St. Michael’s Abbey in 2022 and received his religious name last Christmas when he was formally admitted to the novitiate.

Although the brothers still have several years of discernment ahead, they are both at peace with their decisions. “Over the years, it’s looked increasingly clear that this is what I’m supposed to do,” says Isaac, who recently expressed that clarity at the Candidate Mass, a lesser-known stage in seminary formation. “In the Rite of Candidacy, seminarians declare their intention to finish their formation, making me officially a candidate for Holy Orders in the eyes of the Church,” he says. “It’s a pretty serious moment.”

“We’re brothers in arms. It’s not easy to choose this life, but God gives back so much more than you give Him.”

Although now 3,000 miles apart, the brothers support each other through prayer, as the early apostles must have done during their missions spanning the Mediterranean. But they also find time for the occasional visit, such as when Isaac stopped by St. Michael’s Abbey this summer to see his fellow Cross on the road to Calvary.

“We’re brothers in arms. It’s not easy to choose this life, but God gives back so much more than you give Him,” says Frater George. “Part of what He gives back is knowing that I have a brother doing this, too, and the encouragement and grace that come with that knowledge.”