“O.C.D” are three letters that, for many people, stand for “obsessive-compulsive disorder” but, for a young Brisbane man, they stand for the way he was called to be.
For Brisbane man Fr Adalbert Imperial, “OCD” stands for “Order of the Discalced Carmelites” – discalced meaning without shoes, unshod or barefoot.
As an OCD priest, he wears sandals with a brown habit.
Ordained last December, the 38-year-old has found peace with the Carmelites.
The path to priesthood hasn’t always been a smooth one though.
Yet, the call has remained constant and, although obsessions and compulsions may be more burdensome for people with OCD, Fr Adalbert’s thoughts of priesthood or religious life were coming and going for much of his life before he joined the Carmelites.
At one stage that meant walking away from a promising career in medicine.
Five years a doctor, employed at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and working towards a specialty in medical oncology, he decided to become a priest.
It was something that had been niggling away since he was a boy.
“Growing up I sort of wanted to be a priest …,” Fr Adalbert said.
“I remember as a young kid I was watching something (on TV) – I can’t even remember what – but I stood up and I said, ‘Mum, I’d be happy to die for the faith …’
“And I don’t know where that came from.”
Any idea of priesthood was taken over by the rigour of life and the challenges of growing up in a migrant family struggling on a single income.
He was the third of three sons and with a younger sister, who had migrated with their parents from the Philippines when he was six years old.
“… It was quite hard for us because, even though my father was a civil engineer in the Philippines he couldn’t find a job here as a civil engineer, so it was finding jobs that were … odds and ends, and it was hard raising four kids on one income … My mum wanted to be a stay-at-home mum,” he said.
“So I thought what could I do for my family, and I got good grades, so I thought I’d do medicine instead (of become a priest).
“I could (still) help people, help the family, and do something with meaning and purpose.”
He was succeeding with all of that when a World Youth Day experience turned everything upside-down.
He went to World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011 with other young people from Queensland, starting with a Holy Land pilgrimage led by the late Archbishop John Bathersby.
Dr Adalbert was caught by surprise praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“We were doing this prayer hour, and then something just changed,” he said.
That prayer experience moved him to tears, and he couldn’t explain it.
“… It was just an understanding of God’s presence … the understanding that I was meant for more than just, you know, earning money, finding a good car, finding a good career – all those things …,” he said.
“I think I might have just closed my eyes but the time flew … (and) we’d finished the hour of prayer; … it was time to go. And then I just remember feeling … different.
“And then the next day – we had Mass every day (on the pilgrimage with Archbishop Bathersby) – … and, yeah, it was just overwhelming.
“I just felt this overwhelming sense of love and peace, and I couldn’t express it other than crying.”
Ever since then, and even more so as a Carmelite, prayer continues to be at the heart of everything for Fr Adalbert.
After that prayer experience in the Garden of Gethsemane, he spoke with one of the other pilgrims who had been considering the priesthood.
“‘What do I do? How do I become a priest?’,” young Dr Adalbert asked.
He was told he should contact the vocations director in Brisbane archdiocese so that’s what he did as soon as he arrived home.
“I contacted him and we set up a meeting within a week, so I was really nervous, anxious, all those things …,” he said.
“I remember, the night before I was meeting up with Fr Morgan (Batt), who was the vocations director, I was restless and sleepless …”
And then as he reflected in silence on the power of the prayer experience at Gethsemane, he was again moved to tears.
The message that came to him then was, “Contemplate my love”.
“And that’s sort of marked my vocation,” he said.
“The more we understand how God loves and what He’s done for us, the more we can allow that love to live in our hearts.”
Having entered the Holy Spirit Seminary at Banyo as a Brisbane seminarian soon after World Youth Day Madrid, prayer again moved Fr Adalbert to a change of direction.
He went on a retreat during his second year at the seminary, and he said “that was really the first time I’d really felt the sense of contemplative prayer”.
“I was very talkative, but that was a time when we could really have silence and I was really immersed into it in a way that I hadn’t been before,” he said.
“And then I just really felt called to a more prayerful, deeper contemplative life that I knew maybe the diocesan (ministry) wasn’t structured to give.”
A parish placement during that year also led him to believe he was being called to live in community, not as a parish priest.
“So I thought about it, I prayed about it, and I was thinking religious life,” Fr Adalbert said. “And I said to (Carmelite) Fr Paul Chandler, who was the spiritual director (at the seminary), I would maybe consider the Dominicans or the Jesuits, because of their intellectual formation and their training and their emphasis.
“And then he said to me, ‘Well, what about the Carmelites?’ – because I’d spoken to him about John of the Cross (co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites) – he was my favourite saint; he just resonated with me.
“And (Fr Chandler) was an ‘O.Carm’ (member of the Carmelite Order); he was in the Carmelites but a different branch (from the Discalced Carmelites).
“When he said that (about considering the Carmelites), it was sort of like a light-bulb moment, and I was like, ‘Of course’.
“From there, the idea just grew that perhaps I was being called to be a Carmelite.
“And I went on a pilgrimage with a friend – we both left the seminary (and) we went around Europe visiting holy sites, discerning which religious orders to join.
“He ended up joining the Dominicans and I ended up joining the Carmelites.
“As soon as we got back to Australia, I met up with (Discalced Carmelite) Fr Greg Homeming, who’s now the Bishop of Lismore.
“… I explained my story, and … he invited me to have a ‘live-in’ or just an experience (of the Carmelites).
“I remember, as soon as I entered the priory in St Ives, I felt this great sense of belonging, a sense of peace, and it was just this smooth sort of transition into it.
“It just felt right.
“I’d visited my cousin who’s a Jesuit, I visited the Dominican house, and they were quite fine and friendly and prayerful and all of that, and yet I never felt that sense of belonging the way I did with the Carmelites.”
In the end, it was the teachings of St John of the Cross that made the difference for Fr Adalbert.
“St John of the Cross’ writings had always resonated with me, and resonated with me in ways that, early on, I didn’t understand it well, but I knew there was something …,” he said.
“It was really his teaching of this divine intimacy – the divine intimacy with God that God wants and longs for us, and that it’s usually through the dark night, through suffering, through difficulties (that we come to this divine intimacy).
“Those are the times when we can really encounter the living God who’s there and is just really something both real, both profound and yet also hidden.
“So it’s just really the Carmelite teachings and St Teresa (of Avila), and how she was able to grow in holiness despite all her flaws and despite all her limitations.
“I think it was the way that the Carmelites lived their life – the dedication to prayer, that was the centre of their ministry, their apostolate, their community, and then allowing that to colour everything that they do – (that appealed to me).
“That was what’s attracted me so much to the Carmelites.”
Fr Adalbert learnt another important lesson about prayer and his call to religious life when he visited the Benedictines in Monte Cassino, Italy, on a seminary pilgrimage.
“I remember an experience I had where we were given free time to explore the monastery and the surrounding areas,” he said.
“And I quickly ran up to the church, … and I sat in the Blessed Sacrament chapel and I had all these prayer intentions I was praying through.
“I just remember this desire to just be still and be silent, and I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t … I’ve got so many prayers to go through …’
“And then it was that psalm, ‘Be still and know that I am God’. And then I’d say, ‘No, I can’t …’ – still busy to pray.
“When I finally just put it to the side, and I just sat there in stillness, that time just flew again.
“Again it was another moment of just closing my eyes and opening them as if it was just a moment.
“Again, time flew, and I realised stillness is very important for me and (being) in that solitude and that silence, and I think that was all leading up to this idea of contemplative prayer – prayer that’s more grounding yourself, more being rather than doing.
“So, that’s really where all these (experiences) … as I reflect on it, leading me towards the Carmelites.
“It’s quite funny … as we are taught in our constitution, that the Carmelite is the hidden life in God.
“And whenever I wear my habit, people think, ‘Oh, you’re a Franciscan …’, and I say, ‘No, I’m a Carmelite’.
“And when I say I’m a Carmelite, they say, ‘Oh, we know about nuns; we didn’t know they had priests’.
“So it’s very hidden, you know,” he laughs.
“We don’t really know a lot about the Carmelite friars but I think it’s a spirituality that speaks to me in the hiddenness, the idea that you’re not there to try and prove a point or try and exert your own importance, or your own …
“You’re just there to be.
“As Fr Greg (Bishop Homeming) said, earlier on in my formation, ‘being’ a Carmelite is more important than ‘doing’ – this sort of being rather than doing.
“It’s from the ground of being that we do.
“So it’s not like we just be, and do nothing; it’s that we understand ourselves from who we are, and that we do things based on what we are.”
With the Carmelites, Fr Adalbert has learned that “first and foremost” we are loved, “and that God’s love for me could not be taken away – that my whole being, my whole understanding of who I was, was first and foremost loved”.
“It’s that ground of being loved in God, created in that love, that we then understand who we are,” he said.
“That can’t be taken away from us, regardless of what happens.
“And it’s from that we then fulfil God’s command to love God and love neighbour.
“Every moment of your life you’re asked to do the same thing, which is love God, love neighbour, and you can love them by praying for them, by thinking good things and serving them …”
While on holidays recently Fr Adalbert visited Cairns for a Thanksgiving Mass following his ordination.
“You have one year to do to do Thanksgiving Masses (after ordination),” he laughs.
“So I did that (one in Cairns) for my aunty there, and (for) their extended family. About 200 people turned up so it was nice.
“I’ve got one more (Thanksgiving Mass) at Ormiston, and then the last one will be in the Philippines … We have extended family there too …
“I call if my world tour of Thanksgiving Masses.”
