Aidan is a fine young Christian – warm, thoughtful and articulate. ‘I want to live my life well,’ he says.
A regular attender at Mass as a child with his parents and three younger brothers, he says ‘the reality of God has always been very present to me’.
Teenage aspirations included becoming either an RAF pilot or a teacher, but aged 15 he had a vivid sense at a Catholic youth festival of God calling him to priesthood.
Initially, he wasn’t sure if he wanted this: it would entail relinquishing, out of sheer love for God, his desire for a secular career, for marriage and a family.
Aidan told no one about this for two years. He prayed, thought, studied, grew increasingly convinced of the truth of the Christian gospel, and realised that for him ‘living my life well’ meant embracing priesthood. He began the application process in 2017, conscious of ‘a great desire to serve God with everything I have’.
Growing up, Aidan occasionally struggled to align his life with the values dear to him, but he was open about faith with school-friends and colleagues at his Saturday job. He talks of parties reaching ‘the philosophical stage’ when people would ask him what he believed and why.
Now, as a priest, he loves working closely with people, listening to their stories, praying with them, hearing confession and offering absolution, preparing homilies which will connect with them. He is open to discernment as to how to respond, seeking neither to ‘fix’ people, nor to get in the way of what God is doing in their lives, but simply to be part of that process.
He brings great assurance to those of us who have messed up badly, not living our lives well. ‘The Christian message is one of redemption,’ Aidan says. ‘In God we find mercy and unconditional love. We may not have begun well, but there’s always hope.’
I asked Aidan whether he was inspired by his namesake St Aidan who brought the Christian faith to Northumbria in the 7th century. His eyes lit up. The Saint was ‘a great unifier’, ‘a man of integrity who lived the way he preached’. People loved this priest who spoke truth to their hearts warmly and gently.
I see these qualities in Aidan Matheson too - someone who realises that the secret of living well lies in loving God, and knowing yourself loved by God.