In 2016, when Sam Severance was a sophomore outfielder on the Otterbein University baseball team, he listed as his plans after college to continue playing baseball and get a job.
Life has a funny way of changing the best-laid plans.
Nine years later, Severance’s baseball career is in the rear-view mirror and he’s not going to be working a 9-to-5 job like many of his peers.
His career aspirations became a vocation. He answered a calling to serve.
And on Saturday, May 17, at Westerville St. Paul the Apostle Church – just a long home run away from the baseball stadium where he had started his college baseball career – he was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Columbus with two other seminarians by Bishop Earl Fernandes.
Along the way, Father Severance, 29, has overcome some significant obstacles – the most difficult by far an aggressive form of bone cancer that led to the partial amputation of his right leg.
Through the grace of God, he survived that ordeal, finished college and then entered seminary at the Pontifical College Josephinum, where he spent the past six years preparing for the priesthood.
“As I was getting ready to be ordained, I was thinking that went kind of quick,” he reflected. “But in other ways it also felt like it’s taken forever.”
The new priest’s vocation story might be familiar to some, but it’s worth telling again to emphasize that challenges – medical or otherwise — can be overcome through perseverance and belief.
The stirrings of a possible call to the priesthood started in eighth grade at Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare School. From there, he went to high school at Columbus Bishop Watterson, where more vocational seeds were planted in theology class.
But his focus centered more around athletics and any thoughts of becoming a priest one day were placed on the back burner. Still, there were signs along the way of a potential calling.
“I didn’t have a sophisticated understanding of the Eucharist,” he recalled, “but I would sign out of study hall and go sit in the chapel for 10 minutes. There was something different about the chapel than any other room in the building.”
After graduating in 2014, he went off to college at Otterbein, where he spent two years taking classes, playing baseball and considering a career in sports management.
He enjoyed his Otterbein experience, but he had always wanted to attend the College of Wooster and decided to transfer there to continue his college career. There was one problem, though. Wooster did not have a sports management major, leaving him with an academic quandary.
He took a variety of classes at Wooster hoping to find a major that suited him. In the meantime, he said he kept considering the priesthood while still trying to ignore thoughts.
“I remember the first time I told one of my friends I was thinking about it, you should have seen his face,” Severance said. “It was pretty hysterical. He was just shocked. He didn’t know what to say.”
His dilemma turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At that point, Severance decided to see what steps he needed to take to get to seminary. Seeking guidance, he scheduled a meeting with the religious studies department chair at Wooster. He figured a religion degree would help him get into seminary.
He met with Dr. Ron Hustwit, a philosophy professor who was the acting religious studies chair. Providentially, Hustwit was Catholic and suggested Severance take some philosophy classes.
“And that was a big moment for me because there’s no way I walked into his office by accident,” Severance said. “But I said to him, Dr. Hustwit, I need you to tell me what philosophy is.”
Severence enrolled in a logic and a philosophy of God class, and he loved them. “Something changed in me,” he said.
While the academic portion of his life seemed to be on the right track, he faced a more serious issue.
For several years, he had dealt with a foot issue, a benign osteoid osteoma tumor normally found in the long bones of the lower extremities. He tried to ignore it the best he could and tough it out. But he was limited to playing in four baseball games for Wooster in the spring of 2017 and reached the point where something had to be done.
During a visit to the Ohio State University’s James Cancer Hospital, a scan determined that the tumor had significantly grown in size. He was diagnosed with osteoblastoma, a tumor that’s not cancerous but one that weakens the bones and poses a danger of coming back after surgery.
On July 6, 2017, the tumor was removed. A month or so later, he headed to Wooster for the fall semester. He felt better, but it wasn’t long before the tumor returned.
On Dec. 19, 2017, he returned to the James for another surgery to take out the tumor. When he arrived at the James for a wound check on Jan. 5, 2018, he felt the Holy Spirit letting him know something wasn’t right.
The pathology report came back. It showed osteosarcoma, a cancer that normally affects children and young adults.
“That was obviously a difficult thing to deal with,” he said. “I was on the fast track to seminary, but then I’m diagnosed with cancer.”
The only viable option was to undergo an amputation.
“My foot had deteriorated, I couldn’t walk very well and I remember asking, ‘Doctor (Thomas Scharschmidt), can we cut off my leg?” Severance said. “And I was dead serious. And he kind of paused because I think he was relieved that he didn’t have to tell me he was going to do that anyway.
“I was like, ‘Can we just do this and get rid of it?”
On Jan. 25, 2018, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, he had the surgery.
“Vocation-wise, things were moving toward seminary and now I’m like, ‘I might die.’ That’s difficult to deal with as a young man,” he said.
For the next nine months, he underwent treatment on the 18th floor of the James. In fact, he spent so much time there receiving inpatient chemotherapy infusions that he gave himself the title of mayor of the 18th floor because everyone knew him.
There were plenty of complications along the way, including atrial fibrillation when doctors put a port into his heart. Doctors also found a blood clot that led to a visit to OSU’s Ross Heart Hospital for a cardiac MRI.
He recalled one profound moment when he was waiting for testing at the heart hospital.
“I remember being in a hallway alone with my rosary with me and just having this moment of grace – just a realization of how much I need God in my life because I was alone,” he said. “I didn’t have anybody but God. And I was like, ‘OK, God, this is me and you.”
During his frequent hospital stays over the next nine months, he would call his parish priest, Father Stash Dailey, who was then the pastor at Columbus Holy Family Church, to bring him the sacraments. Father Dailey would stick around in his room and the two would watch the Band of Brothers mini-series on DVD and engage in friendly conversation.
“What was impactful about that was it gave me a sense of what a priest can be, not some strange guy isolated by himself,” he said. “I fell in love with who the man of the priest is because I’m like, ‘Look at what the priest can do.’”
On Sept. 7, 2018, he finished his last cancer treatment. Since then, he has returned every six months for appointments and, thank God, the cancer has showed no signs of returning.
“The two-year mark is huge,” he said, “and five years (with a recurrence) is bigger. So that brought down some of the anxiety.”
Severance headed back to Wooster with a prosthetic right leg and completed his undergraduate degree. He also finished out his baseball career, which had been put on hold during the treatment.
Legendary Wooster coach Tim Pettorini agreed to give Severance a shot at contributing to the team. The prosthetic leg would limit him to pinch hitting, but that was OK.
In the spring of 2019, Severance saw action in nine games and walked five times in nine plate appearances. He believes pitchers, after they saw the prosthetic peeking out from under his sock, were saying to themselves, ‘I don’t want to give up a hit to this guy, so I’m just going to walk him,’” he joked.
His last at-bat in college turned out to be a memorable one. In a North Coast Athletic Conference tournament game against Wabash College at Paint Stadium in Chillicothe, Severance stepped to the plate as a pinch hitter and, facing a 2-and-2 count, connected with a fastball that ran inside toward his hands.
“I hit a little blooper and I started jogging and I remember saying out loud, ‘Come on, Our Lady,’ asking her to guide the ball to fall in no man’s land,” he said. “And it did.”
The bloop single drove in a run.
“That’s how my baseball career ended – not how I had pictured it when it started,” he said.
A few months later, he entered seminary at the Pontifical College Josephinum to begin studies that ultimately led to his ordination two weeks ago.
In addition to classes, Father Severance completed parish assignments at Columbus Our Lady of Peace, Zanesville St. Nicholas and St. Thomas Aquinas and Worthington St. Michael churches. He also spent two summers in Hispanic ministry immersions – one in Columbus and the other in Mexico City.
He credited his professors and advisers at Wooster and at the Josephinum as well as the priests at the parishes he served, including Father Dailey, Father Robert Kitsmiller, Father David Young, Father Sean Dooley in the diocese and Father Steve Moran, pastor at Wooster St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church, for their guidance.
“One thing I’ve noticed is that the needs of God’s people are the same wherever you’re living,” he said. “It may change a little depending on where you live, but they all want the same thing, which is Jesus. And being welcomed by families has been very impactful for me.”
Reflecting on the journey, Father Severance said “there’s been a lot of change in me that maybe other people can’t necessarily detect. The way I communicate with other people has changed radically since I entered the doors. I think the spiritual awareness is probably where I’ve grown the most.”
As he prepares for his first assignment as a priest at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church, he knows the world outside the seminary will be much different, but he’s looking forward to serving nonetheless.
“I think confessions will be good, saying the Mass, and then hospital visits,” he said. “I think it’s not a shock to say that I’m very comfortable in hospitals. Going into a hospital and being comfortable is pretty much second nature for me because I lived there for about a year.”
Father Severance celebrated his first Mass after ordination on Sunday, May 18 at Holy Family.