For Fa­ther Mikkel Tre­strail, his jour­ney to the priest­hood has lit­er­al­ly been the scrip­ture of 2 Corinthi­ans 5:7, a walk by faith and not by sight. One of four Ro­man Catholic priests to be or­dained this month, Fa­ther Tre­strail lost his sight at the age of 11.

“I made a jour­ney with God, at first, just re­al­ly want­i­ng to be healed and to see again,” he told us in a one-on-one in­ter­view. The faith of his fam­i­ly and those close to him would guide his life in those ear­ly months fol­low­ing blind­ness. Still, he strug­gled to come to terms with this new im­ped­i­ment. “I was de­pressed and I want­ed to die,” he said.

But as Fa­ther Tre­strail got deep­er in his Catholic faith, he was build­ing a strong foun­da­tion that would one day make him the first blind priest to be or­dained in the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. He re­called how at Diego Mar­tin Sec­ondary School, Je­ho­vah Wit­ness stu­dents, Mus­lims and Hin­dus were cu­ri­ous to find out about his Catholic faith. This, he said, caused him to dig deep­er and dis­cov­er things he nev­er knew about his re­li­gion.

By age 16, he be­gan hear­ing “whis­pers” from God about what his fu­ture would look like. Five years af­ter go­ing blind, the young man’s per­spec­tive on his life had changed. “I had a lit­tle en­counter and move­ment in my heart where it was no longer about heal­ing and what God could do for me but about the re­la­tion­ship I want­ed to have with God,” Fa­ther Tre­strail said. A year lat­er he got the call­ing for the priest­hood.

In the first five years of his vi­su­al dis­abil­i­ty, Fa­ther Tre­strail had moved from down and out to stand­ing on the brink of a jour­ney no oth­er priest had trav­elled to or­di­na­tion in this arch­dio­cese. He says pray­ing the rosary was a ma­jor part of main­tain­ing and strength­en­ing his faith in God. He ex­plained, “One of my favourite movies is the Lord of the Rings and in the Re­turn of the King, there is a point where Fro­do falls and he can’t go any­more and Sam says I can­not car­ry your bur­den for you but I can car­ry you, and for me, that was my ex­pe­ri­ence at age 11 where I couldn’t car­ry it.”

Now, in 2009, Fa­ther Tre­strail wasn’t on­ly car­ry­ing the bur­den of blind­ness, but al­so blaz­ing a new trail as he en­tered the Sem­i­nary of St John Vian­ney & the Ugan­da Mar­tyrs on Mount St Bene­dict. If God had guid­ed him to the ob­sta­cle, He was cer­tain­ly help­ing him to get over it. As he be­gan stud­ies to be a priest, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed Fa­ther Tre­strail with a schol­ar­ship that would as­sist in the re­sources he need­ed as a blind man to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the cours­es at the sem­i­nary.

Walk­ing a path no oth­er priest had in this coun­try

While Fa­ther Tre­strail be­gan walk­ing a path no oth­er priest had in this coun­try, he found in­spi­ra­tion in know­ing that it was done be­fore. “From very ear­ly, I start­ed Googling blind priests and mak­ing con­tact with blind priests through­out the world. They gave me a lot of help, sup­port and en­cour­age­ment and so it helped me to know that this is very pos­si­ble.”

Yet, while many doors were open­ing for the new sem­i­nar­i­an, the chal­lenges nev­er stopped com­ing. “The on­ly re­al strug­gle came when I had just joined the sem­i­nary, I thought I met the per­son I may have want­ed to mar­ry, and I had to deal with that and face that and pray that through.” He ad­mits he nev­er asked her to mar­ry him. “My dis­cus­sions with oth­er con­se­crat­ed peo­ple, it’s some­thing that you have to face at some point in the jour­ney where you face a ma­jor de­ci­sion like that, so I re­al­ized when talk­ing to oth­ers, it’s a nor­mal part of mak­ing this jour­ney.”

Ten years lat­er, at 36-years-old, Fa­ther Tre­strail’s walk by faith and not by sight took him to the priest­hood where he was or­dained on Sep­tem­ber 14 along with Fa­ther Stephan Alexan­der, Fa­ther Kwe­si Al­leyne and Fa­ther Ken­win Sylvester, start­ing an­oth­er chap­ter in his sto­ried life. On­ly he was a mem­ber of the Com­pan­ions of the Trans­fig­ured Christ Com­mu­ni­ty and not an or­der.

Ear­li­er this year, he gave the Catholic church a glimpse of what was to come when he was or­dained a dea­con in San Fer­nan­do. Many are still con­fused as to how he re­cites the gospel and oth­er scrip­tures on the pul­pit, with one per­son even ask­ing if the Ro­man Missals are print­ed in braille. He said, “I use an app on my phone that pro­vides both the prayers for the Mass and al­so the read­ings for the Mass and I ba­si­cal­ly lis­ten to them in my head­set and I re­peat as it goes along.”

His blind­ness may be the first thing laypeo­ple see, but Fa­ther Tre­strail is de­ter­mined that it will not de­rail him from achiev­ing his des­tiny. “My fo­cus on life wasn’t so much on what I couldn’t do but the things that I could do in a dif­fer­ent way,” he said. “I don’t iden­ti­fy my­self first­ly as a blind and dis­abled per­son. I am a per­son. I hap­pen to have a dis­abil­i­ty, but I am a per­son at the same time so there­fore I have gifts, tal­ents and abil­i­ties.”

Fa­ther Tre­strail ad­mits it con­cerned him what laypeo­ple would think of a blind priest min­is­ter­ing to them. But even in the midst of his cross ex­am­i­na­tion, he finds joy in his job. “There are peo­ple who say they are hap­py about a blind priest be­cause they know that I’ll nev­er see them in con­fes­sion,” Fa­ther Tre­strail laugh­ing­ly said. “With time, the church will ac­cept and learn.”

He’s one of the youngest priests in the arch­dio­cese, based at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port-of-Spain, but the next few decades will de­fine his life. “I don’t want any­body to say I lived my priest­hood, it’s re­al­ly the priest­hood of Christ so when I re­tire, I hope that peo­ple would be able to look at my life and say he was re­al­ly a priest that tried to be like Christ,” he said.