Father Kratt excited for sacramental ministry, priestly fraternity

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

Father William “Wil” Kratt had some impressive role models while growing up at Divine Mercy in Faribault.

They included then-Father Andrew Cozzens and then-Father Michael Izen, who both served his home parish. Bishop Donald DeGrood, who grew up in the area, went to school with his mother — a grade or two apart — but Father Kratt said he knew “a lot of his family” and after joining the seminary, got to know him better, which he called “a really big gift.”

Father Kratt remembers being in preschool and first grade when Father Cozzens (now Bishop Cozzens of Crookston) would visit all the classrooms. “He’d come and play with kids at recess, and just come and talk to us,” Father Kratt said. “He had a really great way of being able to explain the faith, kind of … simply, and know how to have fun with the kids, and also … lead us to actually want to have a relationship with God.”

He values the time Father Izen, who is now an auxiliary bishop for St. Paul and Minneapolis, served the parish as well. “He was definitely … a good associate to have and … very grounded, very solid, and very intentional with parishioners, families.”

Father Kratt’s own consideration of the priesthood didn’t start until sophomore year of high school when he attended youth retreats and started hearing that “a lot of Catholic young men should be open to the priesthood.” So, he thought, “maybe I should be.”

Father Kratt, 27, met “a lot of really good priests” who were “definitely very fulfilled in life,” who had a mission, and “they’re just on fire” and “definitely living for something, very satisfied with their life, and … (I thought) maybe I could be, too.”

Father Kratt began praying about it more, asking questions of priests and other parish leaders, youth group members, close friends and family members. “It just became a lot more real and something of ‘Oh, there really is something here.’”

Around the summer after his sophomore year, he recalls praying to the Lord about whether he was being called to the priesthood. His prayers included a plea that, if so, “You just (need) to hit me over the head with a brick,” Father Kratt recalled. “Make it obvious, make it clear.”

And about 10 days later, eight to 10 people “randomly” told him, “You could be a great priest.” “And I remember saying, “OK, Lord. It’s not just me. You’re doing something,” he said with a laugh. “Now I just have to keep praying about this.”

His junior year of high school, he and a couple of friends participated in a three-day visit at St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul. He left feeling “really convicted” that if he was to discern, “this is where the Lord wants me to go … to actually dive deeper into that question of priesthood.”

He recalled hearing messages over that weekend that included, “this place is where we want you to be formed,” “we want you to actually become real disciples of Christ, first — men living for the Church, for the Lord, and then finding it — where is the Lord calling you — is it to marriage, religious life, priesthood? Wherever that is, just being able to really rejoice with you when you discover that,” Father Kratt recalled.

With that freedom, “why wouldn’t I go here?” Father Kratt said. And since he had “this question about priesthood,” “where else am I going to go and ask this question?” he said with a laugh.

During his most recent years in formation at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Father Kratt gained experience at Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul, which served as his teaching parish, and last summer he served as a deacon at Holy Cross in northeast Minneapolis. And as ordination drew near, he said he was ready to “get into a parish and start active ministry.”

Father Kratt looks forward to getting to know parishioners and being there for them in both critical moments in their life and those “more ordinary moments,” he said. And he is excited for sacramental ministry: “just saying Mass, hearing confessions, … anointings, … confirmations …” And having “priestly community” within the rectory and outside of that, too, with priests in the archdiocese, he said.

Before his May 27 ordination, Father Kratt said he felt excitement and awe, but that it also seemed a bit surreal to be on the threshold of becoming a priest.

“I think so much of my life — priesthood, obviously being in seminary, it’s like, that’s planned,” he said. “But at the same time, it still seems like something … so beyond me, something that I don’t feel worthy of.”

Yet the Lord knows him, Father Kratt said. “He knows all my weaknesses, all my flaws, and he still (called) me, and he still wants me to be his priest,” Father Kratt said with a laugh. “That’s pretty amazing.”

By Barb Umberger

The Catholic Spirit

Father Ryan Glaser recalled fall of his senior year at St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul when he brought to prayer where he should enroll for the rest of his seminary studies: The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul or the North American College in Rome.

“After some prayer, I discerned the Lord was calling me to an adventure far from home, to get out of my comfort zone a little bit,” he said, and he believed studying in Rome would offer unique opportunities. Normally “a planner,” Father Glaser said he felt the Lord “tugging at my heart,” urging him to “come to something that you don’t know … that’s what the Lord asks of his disciples … come and follow me. They had no idea what they were getting into.”

No one knew in fall 2019 how hard the COVID-19 pandemic would hit Italy the following spring, Father Glaser said. The NAC board of governors eventually closed the college. Father Glaser returned to Minnesota and, days later, resumed classes online to finish the semester.

He and other seminarians who had been studying in Rome stayed at a rectory in Hopkins and Bishop Andrew Cozzens soon joined them.

Father Glaser, 26, said the experience was a lesson in “being ready for the completely unexpected,” along with the need for patience. “It felt like we can’t go to Mass, we can’t come together any more … but overall, it was never to take for granted the sacraments of the Church because we still had Bishop Cozzens with us, so we could have Mass every day,” he said.

The rectory had a small chapel and tabernacle, Father Glaser said. “We have our Lord there,” he said. “We were incredibly blessed, so I think that’ll affect how I one day minister the sacraments. I’m not going to take that for granted.”

The highlight of his experience studying in Rome was “being ordained (a transitional deacon) at the altar of the chair of St. Peter under the Holy Spirit window.” He was one of about 25 from “all over the United States.”

“How many people have been through that church … and on that hill throughout history, including St. Peter himself,” Father Glaser said. “It’s like, wow, who am I to prostrate myself on that floor, praying for the Holy Spirit to come down? It was an overwhelming experience for all of us.”

Father Glaser’s immediate family and a group of about 25 aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends traveled to Rome to witness his ordination and do some sightseeing.

Growing up, Father Glaser was an altar server at St. Michael in Prior Lake and then a lector “from the time I could stand on my tippy toes behind the ambo,” he said. Faith was always part of his life, but in high school he participated in theater, robotics, golf, student government, and focused on academics, too. “Every once in a while, I’d perhaps feel a little twinge toward the priesthood, and … some people in my life would throw that out there from time to time,” he said.

His grandmother would sometimes tell him, “I think you should be a priest like your uncle,” who serves in the Dubuque, Iowa, archdiocese. But he’d reply, “No, I just don’t think that’s in the cards. I have my life planned out,” including studying computer science at the University of Wisconsin in

Madison. “But God also has plans, I guess, and his were different than what I had come up with on my own,” he said.

Father Glaser attended an autumn retreat sponsored by the campus Catholic Newman Center, where he “fell in love with the Lord and realized, perhaps for the first time, Jesus Christ is a real person … and he wants to have a relationship with us.” He began attending daily Mass as often as he could, reconciliation more often and became more involved with the youth center. And he later started a parttime job as website manager for the Catholic student organization.

Yet the following summer, he had an internship at an aerospace company in Burnsville and he thought, “my life is set.” But returning to start his sophomore year at college, he clearly recalled the priest’s homily Sept. 21, the feast of St. Matthew, and that the saint’s story “tells us that God does not call us because of who we are, but because he knows who we can become.” “That was a dagger to the heart, and any doubts I had, there’s always someone holier (who) can be a priest, someone more gifted can be a priest, that just pierced me straight to the heart,” Father Glaser said. “No, the Lord knows what kind of priest you can be. And I began a very quick process of discernment,” calling an uncle, who had heard that same conversation more than once, and talking with priests on campus.

Slowly, Father Glaser realized “I think the Lord is calling me to go to seminary and see if this is really what he wants for me.” He talked with Father David Blume, director of the Office of Vocations for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He entered St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul the following January.

Reflecting on his time studying in Rome, Father Glaser said he was able to meet Pope Francis twice and participate in Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral, sitting in the second row and assisting with Communion as a deacon. That meant a lot to him “since he was elected pope about two weeks before my first Communion in 2005.”

“Being able to experience these things, the Lord has just been so good to me and generous … through no merit of my own,” Father Glaser said. “My desire is to help people come to realize that themselves, too. The Lord is really generous and loving, and we just need to be listening.”