Br. Gabriel Marie O’Neill is from Williston Park, New York. He was baptized in his hometown Church of St. Aidan and attended Mass there with his family. While he was a student at Chaminade, a Marianist high school on Long Island, he first discerned that God was calling him to become a priest. Then while he was in college at the University of Notre Dame, he also came to desire to become a religious. Drawn by the ways of prayer of the Dominicans and the model of St. Dominic, he determined to enter the Order of Preachers. He completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Theology in 2023 and entered the novitiate of the Province of St. Joseph the summer after graduation. “I want to become a preacher of grace like St. Dominic who truly fulfilled the command to preach the word in season and out of season.”