Deacon Allan Arneaud greets worshippers following Mass May 4 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Lindenhurst.

Deacon Allan Arneaud found out that you can’t outrun God.

“God pursued me” for years, he said, until he finally accepted his call to the priesthood. The soft-spoken man from the island of Trinidad will be ordained for the Rockville Centre Diocese in June.

Deacon Arneaud said he first thought about the priesthood in his late teens, but he kept his feelings to himself because he did not want to be pressured into making the decision.

“It (the calling) was always there ... I prayed about it,” he said. “I would say, ‘Lord if you want me to be a priest, have people tell me I would make a good priest.’ I was very involved in the Church, and I had people come up and ask me if I ever thought about being a priest.” Still, he was not ready to say yes to God.

He continued to think about it and stayed active in the Church, teaching first Communion classes, serving as a lector and lay minister, and as part of the men’s prayer group.

Thinking of joining the Carmelite order, Deacon Arneaud came to Sparkill, N.Y., to study philosophy and religious studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

“Then I realized, through prayer ... that God was not calling me to a religious community. That was a big shift. When I decided not to continue with the Carmelites, I didn’t have a plan B or plan C,” he said. “I would pray, ‘Lord if you want me to be a priest, you have to open the way.’”

And that’s exactly what He did. Deacon Arneaud had come in contact with Rockville Centre priest and singer Father Charles Mangano years earlier when Father Mangano came to perform in Trinidad. In New York, one of Deacon Arneaud’s friends, who was also a singer, introduced the two men. Father Mangano invited Deacon Arneaud to join a pilgrimage he was leading to Medjugorje. The group was made up of men trying to discern their vocations.

“This was a big help. It was a real prayerful environment. It was a group of real serious, real Catholic people trying to understand what God had in store for them,” recalled Arneaud.

One night, the group was singing “Salve Regina” after a meeting, and Deacon Arneaud was overcome with emotion. “I had to stop singing. I don’t know what was going on. Something was happening. I was so moved. I can barely put it into words,” he recalled. Around midnight, he went with a few other pilgrims for private prayer at Apparition Hill, the place where the Blessed Mother was reported to appear.

A woman from Sweden asked him to pray the rosary with her. When he finished and said goodbye, this total stranger called him back and asked, “Do you know ‘Salve Regina’?”

Deacon Arneaud doesn’t believe it was just coincidence, but he still wasn’t quite ready to take the leap of faith needed for the priesthood.

“I had a full schedule,” he said, finishing his double major and working on campus. “I stopped praying ... I thought if I did that, I could go on with my life and do my own thing,” he said.

Deacon Allan Arneaud reads the general intercessions during Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Lindenhurst May 4. TLIC photos/Gregory A. Shemit

“I knew that I was running from God. Out of nowhere, God still called. When I was not even thinking of Him, God kept knocking. God pursued me,” he said. He found himself singing a song he wrote: “I keep running, running, running. God keeps calling. Where do I run from you Lord? Where can I hide from you?”

Finally, he knew he was ready to take the next step. Father Mangano had introduced Deacon Arneaud to Father Tom Coogan, who was Rockville Centre’s vocations director at the time. A few months after he graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas, Deacon Arneaud was enrolled in Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, ready to
accept the call he first felt so many years ago.

Deacon Arneaud spent his pastoral year at Blessed Sacrament, Valley Stream, and assisted at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Lindenhurst, during his time as a transitional deacon.