Rev. Mr. Jacob Hartman to be ordained to Priesthood on June 6, 2026, in Cathedral
All are invited to attend Visit diojeffcity.org/ordination-2026 to RSVP for reception
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Young Jacob Hartman was leaning toward applying for the seminary, but he had real concerns.
Could he find love as a priest?
“I kept saying to the Lord, ‘The love between a husband and wife in marriage is obvious to me,’” he recalled. “‘But if you’re calling me to be a priest, will there be love in this vocation, too?’”
His senior year in high school, he joined thousands of other teen-aged Catholics at the National Catholic Youth Conference.
There, two of his priestly mentors who were leading his group had a brief but joyful reunion with a priest who had taught them in the seminary.
“It was so evident how proud he was of them and everything they had accomplished in their journeys with the Lord,” Rev. Mr. Hartman recalled.
The priest was like a father to them.
“That was one of my first real, tangible encounters where I walked away knowing what spiritual fatherhood looks like, and that there is love in this vocation,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman, a transitional deacon preparing to become a priest.
“It’s different, but it’s very real,” he said.
That proud father went on to be known as Bishop Ralph B. O’Donnell.
On Saturday, June 6, he will ordain Rev. Mr. Hartman to the Holy Priesthood.
All are invited to the Ordination Mass, which will begin at 10 a.m. in the Cathedral of St. Joseph, 2305 W. Main St. in Jefferson City.
Please visit diojeffcity.org/ordination-2026 to register for the luncheon reception.
“I’m excited about crossing that threshold and looking toward ministry with all the joys, all the struggles and the realization that this is what the Lord made me for,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
Planting and harvesting
Rev. Mr. Hartman emphasized that becoming a priest wasn’t his idea.
“This is not my own will, it’s not my own doing,” he said. “But it’s a gift of the Lord every step of the way.”
A son of Patrick and Kristina Hartman of Holts Summit, Rev. Mr. Hartman is a graduate of St. Peter School and Helias Catholic High School, both in Jefferson City.
He studied at Conception Seminary College in northwestern Missouri, Holy Trinity Seminary at the University of Dallas, and Mundelein Seminary near Chicago, completing a Master’s in Divinity degree from Mundelein in December.
He spent time as a seminarian serving at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Columbia, St. Peter Parish in Marshall and St. Joseph Parish in Slater.
Bishop (now Archbishop) Shawn McKnight, who led this diocese from 2018-2025, ordained him a transitional deacon last June.
For the past six months, Rev. Mr. Hartman has been assisting the pastor of Ss. Peter & Paul Parish in Boonville and St. Joseph Parish in Pilot Grove.
“This diocese is my home and where my formation and priestly discernment started,” the future priest stated. “It started here, in this place, with these people who brought about my love for the Lord, my desire to follow his will.”
Ministering in Cooper County has acquainted him with relatives of the late Monsignor Donald W. Lammers P.A., a Martinsville native who baptized Rev. Mr. Hartman while serving as pastor of St. Peter Parish in Jefferson City.
“So, there’s this long line of people who received the faith here and were stewards of that faith,” he said. “And Msgr. Lammers being the priest through whom I received the grace of Baptism, I now get to serve in the community where he got to know Christ. That’s awesome!”
Growing up Catholic with three siblings on a farm just outside Holts Summit, Rev. Mr. Hartman worked hard, practiced the faith with his family and admired the priests of his home parish, St. Andrew in Holts Summit, but he never gave Priesthood a thought.
He enjoyed playing sports and working outdoors and anticipated following his parents into family life.
Living trust
Monsignor Gregory Higley was pastor in Holts Summit during much of Rev. Mr. Hartman’s childhood and helped form an understanding of God and the Church.
“He always felt like part of our family,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
Father Joseph Corel succeeded Msgr. Higley when Rev. Mr. Hartman was in eighth grade.
The priest invited him to sign up for retreats, attend parish events and live out his Catholic faith more intentionally.
Rev. Mr. Hartman first felt drawn to Priesthood during a weeklong diocesan ChristPower service retreat the summer before his junior year.
At Helias Catholic, he got to know Father Joshua Duncan and Father Christopher Aubuchon, who are closer to him in age.
He joined the Frassati Fraternity, a group of young men who were very interested in helping each other grow in holiness.
The group was named for St. Pier Georgio Frassati, an amiable, athletic Italian layman of the early 20th-century, who was declared a saint last August.
Rev. Mr. Hartman took Pier Georgio Frassati as his own Confirmation name.
“He was somebody I could relate to,” he said. “He was an athlete who enjoyed sports and climbing mountains and riding horses and swimming. And he loved being around friends and bringing joy into other people’s lives. But he also had a really intentional and deep love of the Lord and love for the poor, that appealed to me deeply.”
Rev. Mr. Hartman began to realize that he could find genuine happiness, purpose and joy in being a priest.
He discovered how much he enjoys listening to people, spending time with them and guiding them.
He gradually surrendered to the idea of forsaking a family of his own.
“There’s mourning that comes with that,” he acknowledged, “because marriage and family are very good things! But just as intensely, the Lord was truly showing me who I am and how he’s calling me to genuinely fill those desires.”
His life experiences have taught him to keep trusting in God’s guidance.
“It’s like, ‘Remember that any time you’ve said yes to a proposal I’ve given you?’” said Rev. Mr. Hartman. “‘It’s made you happier. It’s made you more fulfilled. It’s made you more at peace.
“Given that, why would I be afraid to follow him?” the future priest stated. “So, he’s still leading me, and I see the fruits of that in my life and the lives of those around me.”
Freely given
For Rev. Mr. Harman, the most moving part of his Priestly Ordination will be when he lays prostrate before the altar and hears the people call upon the intercession of the saints.
“It’s a reminder that it’s not my own human abilities that are going to do the things the Lord desires of me,” he said. “It will be the prayers of the Church, the prayers of the saints and the goodness of God that will get me through.”
Rev. Mr. Hartman already gave himself fully to God and to serving his people last June when he was ordained a deacon — an order he will continue to hold throughout his Priesthood.
“So, there’s this freedom of being totally the Lord’s and able to receive the Priesthood as a gift that he desires to give,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
He’s convinced that the past eight years of seminary formation have been God answering the question: “How have you fashioned my heart to love in this world?”
A major goal of seminary formation is to find out and pursue, with help from the faculty and fellow seminarians, the fullness of who God created each seminarian to be.
“Seminary has really been the process of the Lord revealing his heart to me, revealing my heart to me, and revealing how he desires those two hearts to be one for the people,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
“Because the reality is, the Lord is who made me,” he said. “He’s made my heart, and he has made me to do some definite service for him.”
What the future priest appreciated most about his time in the seminary was the experience of brotherhood, with each seminarian taking an interest in helping the others succeed.
“When you’re part of a group of 50 or 60 men who are discerning that maybe the Priesthood is what the Lord is asking of them, it creates an environment different from any other in the world,” he said.
Rev. Mr. Hartman learned to let go of whatever kind of priest he thinks he should be and to open himself fully to whatever kind of priest God wants him to be.
He sees that Priesthood is not a way for him to try to prove his worthiness, but simply the way God has chosen for him to follow the Lord.
“I am simply called to be a beloved son of the Father,” the future priest noted.
Understanding that and fully accepting it “really frees you to do whatever he asks you to do,” he said, “to really sit with the Lord and say, ‘Lord, what do you desire of me?’”
Lifelong pursuit
Rev. Mr. Hartman believes it will take the rest of his life to understand the full meaning of the Holy Orders he will receive on June 6.
“But it’s something I’m certainly looking forward to,” he said.
Msgr. Higley will ceremonially help him put on his priestly vestments during the ordination, binding up the new priest’s earliest memories of Church with the new identity he’ll take on as a priest.
The future priest has been meditating a lot lately on the Prayer of Ordination that Bishop O’Donnell will pray over him.
“It’s this reality of being called forth from a people for the sake of serving those same people,” he said. “It’s the reality of coming home, and that’s something I’m really grateful for.”
He relates to the image presented by Venerable Fulton Sheen and repeated by Bishop Robert Barron, of a priest being like Jacob’s ladder — “that he is one who connects heaven and earth.”
“At the end of the day, you’re a ladder, you’re a bridge,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
“Before you even think about the Sacraments, the homily or greeting people outside church, you must be able to go down low enough to reach even the most lost of the lost, and at the same time reach up high enough to facilitate an encounter with our Lord,” he said.
A friend once explained to him that the word Catholic comes from the Greek phrase for “encompassing the whole.”
Twentieth-century theologian Henri De Lubac, said “encompassing the whole” means that “the faith we preach speaks not to a people, but to our human nature.”
“So, to be Catholic, as I understand it, really means that our faith encompasses the whole of our being,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
“It’s not just something we do on Sunday, but it’s something that is present to us every day from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, that affects every encounter we have with every person,” he said.
Since Christ is the head of the Church, “this Catholicism we speak about encompasses our whole life,” said Rev. Mr. Hartman.
“To be Catholic means to recognize that the Lord is present with us all day, and we encounter him in all of our desires and interactions with other people,” he said.
Answered prayers
Rev. Mr. Hartman spent six weeks this year in a Spanish-language-immersion program in Guatemala.
It brought him face-to-face once again with his own vulnerability and need to rely fully on God.
“It wasn’t easy, but it was good,” he said.
He’s thankful to the hundreds of people who have had a role in his getting to know God and preparing to serve him as a priest.
Prominent among these are his parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, pastors, bishops, diocesan vocation directors and the teachers and formation staffs at the seminaries he attended.
He’s also grateful to all the people who have been praying for him and will continue to do so.
“To see those prayers being answered now is very humbling,” he said. “It gives me so much excitement to get to be a priest here, to be able to serve the people of my home diocese, because this is where I grew up and received my faith.”
He’s comfortable knowing that although he won’t have his own family, he will be part of numerous other families.
“They will love me. They will know me. They will desire my good, my flourishing, my happiness in the way that your natural family desires that,” he said.
