Fr. Samuel Philip Hakeem, O.P. ’05 remembers a conversation his senior year at St. Pius X High School with the campus chaplain, the late Fr. Sam Falbo. 

“My senior year, he met with every single one of us just to check in,” Hakeem says in a 2020 interview. “I remember talking with him and — he was the first person ever to ask me this — he said have you ever thought of being a priest? I said, no way, I wanted to go to space and have a family. He smiled and said just be open to it. It was nowhere near my mind.”

Foremost in Hakeem’s mind was his dream of becoming an astronaut. He focused on math and science at SPX and, while he joined the campus ministry team, he didn’t pay much attention to the priest and religious guest speakers Sr. Rena Romero invited to theology class. He sees now the impact many teachers had on his formation and development, including Scott Howard ’85 in 9th grade theology and Coach Ron Tybor, who Hakeem remembers saying things like, if he could give you a love for the Eucharist he’d feel like his job was complete. Those words impact Hakeem still today. 

Focused on space, Hakeem graduated from St. Pius X and began his degree in space physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. Throughout his  rigorous four years of study, the priesthood found a way to enter his thoughts each year. 

Freshman year, reading the popular novel “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown, he was struck by a character who is a Jesuit priest and a particle physicist. Sophomore year, a priest from the Vatican Observatory — which happens to be in Tucson, Ariz. — gave an astronomy presentation at Embry-Riddle and further opened to Hakeem the world of priest physicists. 

“But I wasn’t ready,” he says. “Thinking of my dream of going to space and my love of my big family, I pushed these aside as silly thoughts.”

Junior year is a make or break year in the Embry-Riddle physics program. Hakeem’s first semester was extremely difficult and he nearly failed. In the midst of finals week, thoughts of the priesthood came back. “It was perfect timing, an existential crisis during finals week,” he laughs. “I put the thoughts aside as a way of looking for an escape from the difficulties of my semester.” His junior year second semester was his best ever and confirmation for him that physics and space were the right path.

Hakeem spent the summer before his senior year in Prescott conducting astronomy research and studying for the Graduate Records Exam. “I had a lot of time alone to sit and think,” he says. “I started asking some bigger questions. What is success and what is happiness in my life? Was I putting too much emphasis on this astronaut dream? Could I still see myself as happy if it didn’t happen? It was a tiny crack in the solid plans I had set for myself, but I wasn’t yet ready to let go and abandon myself to this other thing.”

That same summer, a close friend and fraternity brother died in a car accident. As president of the fraternity, Hakeem had a role to play in attending his funeral. His friend’s family was Catholic and he found it easy to make that point of connection in the faith. “I was in a ministerial role for the first time, and while it was very difficult, there was something that felt very natural about it,” he says. “I returned from the funeral with a new experience of ministry.”

Although still on the path of desiring to be an astronaut, he had opened himself to the idea of ministry.

Fall 2008, Hakeem began his senior year. That October, the recession hit. During a meeting with fellow fraternity presidents, he watched the stock market drop on a computer screen as they realized the future for them looked uncertain if not bleak.

“Here I was asking these existential questions while the whole world was facing the reality that everything we had been promised had faded away,” he says. “It was interesting to see how God used that moment of crisis to open me up to an idea of vocation.”

Hakeem pressed on with grad school applications despite cuts in academic funding and economic recession. He was very surprised to get into the optics program at the University of New Mexico. During his senior year, he also truly opened himself up to the idea of a religious vocation. He learned about religious orders and their way of life, being a priest in community rather than alone in a parish. From a tight-knit extended family and with close bonds to friends at St. Pius and in his fraternity, he found that a communal experience was true to who he was. 

“This realization was very important to my discernment; I realized I could do this,” he says. “But God wasn’t going to leave me with no options other than religious life. I got into grad school and a great research position. I had job security, everything I could have wanted. God was going to leave the decision up to me.”

He graduated from Embry-Riddle and began his master’s at UNM. Upon his return to Albuquerque, he sought the counsel of Fr. Bob Campbell of the Norbertines at Santa Maria del Vid Abbey in the South Valley, who he had met while at SPX, and the Dominicans at UNM’s Newman Center.

“As the year went by it became clear that I could do this religious life thing; and I couldn’t see myself not doing it,” he says. “I made the most difficult decision of my life and the most freeing decision of my life. I decided to embrace religious life as a Dominican.”

Hakeem says he was initially very quiet and personal with his discernment. “My family and friends were pretty surprised given how significant my dream of being an astronaut was,” he says. “I was shifting in a radical way. They were surprised but they were supportive from the beginning.”

When he told his close friend Mike Mares ’05 at lunch one day, “he was just elated,” he says. “To see such an excited reaction from a friend was important and encouraging to me, it gave me the courage to continue forward on this path.”

Hakeem joined the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, and entered the novitiate in Fall of 2010 in Denver. “It’s a single year of spiritual formation and communal formation,” he says. “You make that transition into religious life. You get used to praying the Psalms with your brothers, wearing a habit, living in community with people chosen not by me but by God.”

After a year he moved to the St. Dominic Priory in St. Louis, Mo., and studied philosophy and theology for six years, earning a dual Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Theology degree with honors at the Aquinas Institute of Theology. 

Hakeem says the style of learning philosophy was radically different from learning physics:  “Lecture is everything in physics, and you go to the textbook for deeper understanding of materials. Philosophy and theology, you go home, read hundreds of pages and come back and discuss it in the classroom. I had to learn how to learn in this new format.”

At same time, he was surprised and impressed with how often his physics background helped. “A good physicist knows when has reached the limits and has no more to say. A good theologian knows when he has reached the limits, and he can sit in silence. Being comfortable with mystery and with the unknowable — that’s used in physics and in theology.”

Hakeem was ordained May 20, 2017, at St. Pius V Catholic Church in St. Louis, Mo., by Archbishop Robert Carlson and he celebrated his first Mass on May 21 at St. Pius V.  He celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving on June 4 at his home parish, Prince of Peace Catholic Church, in Albuquerque.

“All of these stages of my life, from my family to my 3rd grade teacher who was at my First Communion, friends from high school, friends from college, Dominican brothers, were all there at the Mass of Thanksgiving — it was a wonderful snapshot of where I’ve been,” he says.

Hakeem’s first assignment was as associate pastor at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison, Wis., a smaller parish with an elementary school. He also was an adjunct professor of theology at Edgewood College for a year. 

“I loved parish ministry more than I expected to,” he says. “Given my intellectual background and passion for learning, I was looking forward to being in an academic setting, teaching someday. But being there in big moments and small moments in people’s lives was a blessing. Celebrating Mass and preaching, hearing confessions, it is a beautiful experience of God’s grace and mercy. And being in the grade school and getting to give these students an example and interaction with a young religious so that they might someday look back and then reach out as I did with Fr.  Bob Campbell. I fell in love with the ministry.”

In July 2020, Hakeem began a new assignment as vocations director for the Dominican Friars Province of St. Albert the Great and moved to Chicago. His region covers much of the central U.S. and includes New Mexico. He is tasked now with helping men who are interested in becoming Dominicans discern their own vocation and lead them through the process. 

After God used a time of serious economic crisis to open him to the idea of vocation, Hakeem now finds himself in vocation work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest crisis many people have ever faced. “Interest is up right now, I’ve been busy,” he says. “Many young men and women have had the past seven months to sit and think, and the Lord has had the opportunity to set the religious life upon their hearts.”

Hakeem’s challenge now is to connect with those men interested in the Dominican order in new ways. Typically he would host discernment weekends and invite them to visit a priory for an extended period of time, but priories are home to priests who are older and at a high risk during the pandemic. So he is spending half his time on the road to create opportunities to meet and share.

Although physicist priests were the first to inspire him, Hakeem doesn’t expect physics to return to his path. “It would be difficult to get back into physics in an academic way after being out for so long,” he says. “But if they ever need a space chaplain, I’m first in line.”

For Hakeem, a robust communal life, appreciation of intellectual approaches to faith and a well-formed life of prayer were his priorities when exploring which order he would join. Setting the Dominicans apart from other orders that met these interests were the charism of preaching and the itinerant life, with priests moving from house to house about every six years. “Discernment is a matter of finding a natural fit,” he says. “At the end of the day, I felt at home with the Dominicans in a special way.”

Hakeem visited SPX soon after entering the Dominicans. Fr. Falbo was also at the school that day. “We were thrilled to see each other,” Hakeem remembers. “In religious life, receiving a new name when you enter the order signifies, as in scripture, a new beginning, a pivotal moment. I was Philip and now here I was Samuel talking with Fr. Sam Falbo, who shared his name and his path with me. And so many years ago he had said, just be open to the idea.”