Dear Tyler,

That's the six-million-dollar question!

Fortunately, it is not total guesswork. But fortunately or unfortunately there is not an immediate and mathematically sure answer either. It takes faith, and though faith is not against reason, it does go beyond it, a gift that God gave us at Baptism. And it takes trust, which is really an expression of our faith and a sign of our love. 

You will have a pretty good sense of what God wants in your life this way: you look at the gifts he has given you (your faith, your family, your upbringing...), look at what he has done for you, and then on top of that you see what he puts in your heart (the desire to help others, wanting to do his will, the importance of spiritual things, the desire to use our life in the best way possible... the thought of the priesthood...). There are lots of good young men who think of the priesthood and it doesn't affect them in the same way as it does you. Then you can look at things from the other side: is there anything in your life that is definitely a sign that God does not want you to be his priest? Any impediments, either temporary or permanent?

Once you go through these types of reflections, adding in a good doses of generous prayer in which you offer yourself to him to do his work and purify yourself from your attachments, and ask for help from a spiritual director, you will get a sense of where the scales are leaning. From there on it is a question of the adventure of faith and generosity.

God bless.