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Writing straight with crooked lines

Christine Stoddard | Catholic Herald

Since childhood, Deacon Dort Bigg dreamed of becoming a professional violinist.

“But God had a different plan,” said Deacon Bigg, who studied at The Julliard School in New York after graduating from DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md., in 2001.

A medical condition delayed his graduation by two years. During that time, he said he began to “seriously pray” and know with all his heart that “Jesus is really in the Blessed Sacrament.”

As a child, Deacon Bigg attended Mass at different parishes, often while visiting his grandparents in St. Mary’s County, Md. Yet he said it was not until illness suddenly struck that he began to re-evaluate and then live out his faith.

That’s when the priesthood called.

After he graduated from Julliard in 2007, he enrolled in Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. His home parish is St. Mary Church in Alexandria in part because his mother now teaches at St. Mary School.

After completing his studies at Mount St. Mary’s, Deacon Bigg assisted with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington. Last year, he was ordained to the transitional diaconate at the cathedral and has served at Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria.

Now Deacon Bigg is looking forward to the “surprise” of his next assignment and hoping “to do God’s will the best” he can as a priest.

“God’s will is an adventure,” he said. “Trust that the Lord – and the bishop- will put you where you’re supposed to be … we (can get) in our own way by focusing on (a) question too much.”

Or, to put it as a priest once told him: “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

Stoddard can be reached at [email protected].

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