For the first time in my life I feel like I’m doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, exactly where I’m supposed to be doing it. And that’s kind of magical.”

Canon Michael Horvath

Talk about hitting the ground running.

The Reverend Canon Michael Horvath, the new Rector at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, will be making his debut this Sunday, Palm Sunday.

“It’s Holy week; I’m diving right in,” he said. “It’s great, because it’s a week that most people will come to church, even if they haven’t been in a while. It’s going to be pretty amazing, because that’s what we’ll be doing as a congregation over the next week: praying together and getting to know each other.”

Born to a Philippine mother and an American father serving in the Philippines with the U.S. Navy, Canon Michael’s childhood was spent moving around from station to station every two or three years. The family ended up in Virginia where his father retired. His father passed away in 2009, but his mother still lives in Virginia, as do two younger sisters. “My parents always encouraged us to follow our hearts. They told me they always thought I would either be a lawyer or a monk,” he said, with a laugh. “They weren’t too far off.”

He chose both.

After attending high school and Virginia Commonwealth University, he went to law school at the University of Richmond. He took his first job in Boston, with a firm that specialized in mergers and acquisitions. Then he got into private equity work and moved to New York. That was in 2006.

“In 2012, I essentially took a sabbatical and never went back,” he said. “It felt like it was time for me to stop practicing law, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.

“I really enjoyed legal practice; I was doing interesting work, but  honestly, it felt like the Holy Spirit was working through me, that there was other work I needed to do …it was a need to hit the pause button, and figure out what was stirring within me, and see where that was going to go.”

He thought about going back to school to become a landscape architect — as a New Yorker, he was fascinated with the idea of developing green space in urban environments. “But then I started getting really involved with my church, St. Luke in the Fields, in Greenwich Village. It felt really right, and I just started exploring what it means to do ordained ministry.”

In 2017, he graduated from General Seminary, which is the oldest Episcopal Seminary in the United States, sited on land donated to the Church by Clement C. Moore, author of “T’was the Night Before Christmas” more than 200 years ago. From there he drove to Austin, Texas, to his first placement as a Curate (an assistant priest.) His title here, Canon, is reflective of his role as well as St. Michael’s seniority as a pre-Revolutionary church, one of four in the diocese.

Through his career changes and relocations to New York, Austin, and now Bristol, one constant in Canon Michael’s life has been his husband, Charles Calhoun. A historian, Rhodes scholar and former journalist, he’s now an educational consultant. They met 16 years ago, and were married in 2017. “He’s been a wonderful partner in these adventures,” said Canon Michael, who is looking forward to reaching out and getting to know not only St. Michael’s, but the wider community. “I want people to know that St. Michael’s is a resource for them in whatever way they need to be supported; it’s having a place of community within the walls of St. Michael’s but also being part of the community beyond. That’s going to give folks a sense of what St. Michael’s is, and what it can be.”

“I intend to be out in the community a lot … we don’t exist as a church to just be contained within these four walls … I want people to see St. Michael’s as a resource, even if they aren’t Episcopalian, or Christian.”

“Ever since I decided — or God decided — that I was going to be an ordained priest, it just felt effortless. For the first time in my life I feel like I’m doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, exactly where I’m supposed to be doing it. And that’s kind of magical.”