GREENFIELD — In Biblical fashion, Blessed Trinity Parish’s newest priest felt a clarifying call to the vocation during 40 days in a Middle Eastern desert, while he was serving his country in the U.S. Marine Corps.

“We deployed to Iraq for two consecutive Lents,” the Rev. John Williams recounted. “I saw a priest very rarely. It made an impression on me that the ministry of the priesthood is very much needed and wanted, and it’s missed. I was in combat on Easter Sunday, and I had friends die during this most sacred time of the year, and there was no priest to be found, no Mass or confessions before you — hypothetically — get hurt significantly or die. So it made an impression on me.”

That impression led him to the Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, a Roman Catholic professional and graduate theological institution for men 30 and older. Williams was ordained by Bishop William Byrne at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield on June 21 and he was assigned to Blessed Trinity Parish, where he had previously been a transitional deacon, the step before a seminarian is ordained as a priest.

“I feel prepared. In other words, the transition to the priesthood has gone well. I feel well-prepared by the seminary and the diocese,” he said in the church’s basement, known as the Father Casey Hall. “I’m returning to a parish of people that know me. I’m excited not only to get started but I’m excited to be in the diocese for the entire year. For the last four years I’ve been out of the diocese for eight months out of the year, studying in the seminary.”

Holy Trinity Church on Main Street and Blessed Sacrament Church on Federal Street merged into one parish — Blessed Trinity — in 2022.

Williams, 43, grew up just outside Washington D.C., as the youngest of 15 children, nearly all of whom attended his ordination. He was educated in Catholic schools and was always open to the idea of the priesthood, though he took the scenic route there.

He attended the College of William & Mary in Virginia following high school, but dropped out during his junior year in 2002 and enlisted in the Marines, serving from 2003 to 2007. He was deployed on two combat tours in Fallujah, Iraq, and in his spare time he earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Chapman University in California.

He later obtained a master’s degree in philosophical studies from Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and taught in Catholic schools in Jesuit high schools in Maryland and Indiana.

“I enjoyed teaching but I was coming to the end of my usefulness and I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life,” Williams recounted. “The thoughts of the priesthood and desire for the priesthood returned, but I didn’t quite know where that would be. I didn’t think it was going to be staying out in the Midwest. Most of my family’s here on the East Coast.”

He wound up in Franklin County after “a priest that I knew from the Archdiocese of Washington was named bishop of Springfield.”

“I said, ‘Come on up and see if you like it up here,’” Byrne recalled. “And what a blessing he has been and will be to the Catholics of western Massachusetts.”

Byrne said Williams’ broad array of life experiences makes him more relatable to the people of any diocese.

“The people teach you how to be a priest in those first couple of years,” Byrne said. “I’m excited for him and I’m excited for the church and our diocese.”

Williams said he is thrilled to set down roots in Franklin County.

“I’ve made western Mass. my home, and now I’m actually here for … the rest of my life,” he said. “I liked it and I did not want to return to a major metro area, and western Mass. is charming and it’s not too big, it’s not too small.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.