A simple question from a friend brought Deacon Jonathan “Tony” Bennett back to the faith. Though he was raised Catholic, Deacon Bennett wasn’t practicing when a friend asked him what he was giving up for Lent. “I said, ‘I’m not even going to Mass, why would I want to give something up?’ ” said Deacon Bennett. “Then (my friend) said to me very casually, ‘Well instead of giving something up, why don’t you start doing something, why don’t we start going back to Mass?’ I realized in that moment I had just been waiting for someone to invite me back.”
From then on, Deacon Bennett began to rediscover the beauty of his faith and gradually discerned a call to the priesthood. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said.
Deacon Bennett was born July 15, 1987, in Washington, D.C., the third son of Charles and Ninfa Bennett. He grew up in the Rockville area and graduated from The Heights School in Potomac, Md., in 2006 and spent a semester at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md. He coached lacrosse, worked at a grocery store and volunteered with the fire department. He later worked as a pipe fitter for a fire protection company and moved to Northern Virginia and attended St. Agnes Church in Arlington.
Though his career was going well, he felt something was missing. “(I realized) maybe my thoughts and desires as a boy of becoming a priest were real, and I needed to investigate that,” he said. He began priestly formation in 2015 at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, before finishing his studies at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary. “It was a full circle,” he said with a laugh.
After ordination, Deacon Bennett, whose hobbies include fishing and barbecuing, is looking forward to serving his new parish. “I’m ready to hit the ground running and in relationship with the flock, empower them to be who God wants them to be as called in their own baptism,” he said. “Baptism is the divine indwelling of the triune God, it’s his divine life that he offers us. We become a new creation — things are different from that point on. We’re like superheroes. We have all these superhero movies and we think about all their super powers but we have a super nature from our baptism. I think all too often (we) don’t realize that gift that’s been given to us, and the power, too.”
