Member Log InLandry Weber and I caught up at Black Dog Coffeehouse in Lenexa on a warm late July 2025 morning. After an initial prayer, we jumped right into conversation and, in a few minutes so it seemed, more than an hour had lapsed. This is a pattern for the conversations I am privileged to have with the men discerning priestly vocations in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.
“The very initial one was in 3rd grade,” Landry began in response to the question about when God first tapped him on the shoulder about the possibility of becoming a priest. “I remember a few things from third grade, the most significant of which was that I knew I was going to have to be a priest.” He laughed as he continued.
“My life’s over,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I never want to do this,” was the conclusion he drew as a child. “I shoved it to the back of my mind and hoped it might go away,” he declared.
It never did.
Landry grew up in Overland Park. The family attended Church of the Nativity and he completed grade school there.
Fast forward to college years when, Landry recalls, the matter about being called to the priesthood again surfaced.
“During my freshman year of college, I met a girl of whom I thought very highly. As I began to pursue her, the question of becoming a priest came up once again,” he related, adding his immediate internal response was, “No, not now!”
Feeling like he needed to put the matter to rest, he recalled asking God: “Do you want me to be with this girl or do you want me to be with you?” And Weber quickly followed by acknowledging that, very clearly, he heard God say, “I want you to be with Me.”
“So I ignored Him and dated the girl,” he said with a wry smile.
After a few months of the relationship, just as things seemed to be going well, Landry related that his girlfriend went to a Christian conference (non-denominational) over a weekend, “and she came back and dumped me.” He admitted being thrown off, caught by surprise. In his effort to understand, he found himself lying in bed a few nights later, thinking of the girl when, he related, he heard a voice within say, “It doesn’t matter. You’re supposed to be a priest.”
Weber acknowledged his astonishment at the occurrence.
“That was not me. It was the first time I heard God’s voice. I remember laughing. And I remember feeling peace at the same time.”
Deciding that it was time, in fact, to look into this priesthood thing, he confessed that he waited another five months before reaching out to his priest (Fr. Gale Hammerschmidt, Pastor at the St. Isidore Catholic Campus Center at K-State). Weber described meeting with Fr. Hammerschmidt, recalling that he was given some material to read.
“I started praying with this,” he said, confirming that it spoke directly to his heart.
“This was the first time in my life when I had a personal prayer life. I was learning for the first time how to have a relationship with the Lord,” he said and added that the call (to discernment of a priestly vocation) pretty quickly accompanied.
Another checkpoint Weber identified: Quo Vadis during his sophomore year of college.
For those who may be unaware, Weber was played Division-1 football at K-State where he was a wide receiver for the Wildcats, not an insignificant experience in a young man’s life.
“It was a gift that year (his sophomore year) that I got to go to Quo Vadis,” he said. “We’d had a bad year (on the gridiron) and never got a bowl game. I wasn’t previously able to go to Quo Vadis because we’d always had bowl games. So, I had no excuse.”
Weber described Quo Vadis experience as very strong, very impactful. Encountering the Holy Spirit in adoration for the first time, resulted in a distinct “fired up” feeling, yet he was aware of a simultaneous sense of calm and peace.
“I’d never felt this way in my life,” he observed.
I asked him how much of a stretch it might be that the fact that there was no bowl game was by God’s design.
“Not a stretch at all,” he confided, adding his belief that God’s at work in everything. “God was at work in lots of things that year.”
Weber related that it had been a year of self-reliance, admitting that he’d sort of abandoned his prayer life.
“I put more time into football,” he said matter-of-factly.
He related that, the more he dug deep into the sport, the worse things got. He laughed, concluding that it was a very humbling year. No bowl game, while an exclamation point on a bad season, became an opening through which he would walk into something greater. This was December 2018.
I asked him about his combined high school and collegiate football experience.
A talented high school athlete, described in high school sports journalism as a “do-everything player,” Weber said he redshirted first year at K-State. “I switched to wide receiver when I got to college,” he said.
Landry manifests a very modest demeanor when speaking about his career, never mentioning all-state honors as a Miege senior, being an integral part of two high school state championship football teams (not to mention his contribution as a multi-sport athlete in high school in being part of two state championship basketball teams, as well), and his prowess both on and off the gridiron as a Wildcat wide receiver. He was a consistent Big-12 First Team Academic All-Big 12 performer, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. He mentioned none of this.
“I think it was pretty clear after Quo Vadis in 2018 that I was called to seminary,” he said, returning the focus to his vocation story.
“Good discernment or not,” he said, he recalled telling the Lord “(I want) five years,” meaning he’d consider the seminary again after five years.
“I still had a lot I wanted to accomplish in football,” adding that he’d made up his mind that he’d do seminary “in my time.”
“The call never went away,” he related.
I asked about how he managed the vocational discernment process in the face of D-1 collegiate athletics at the level he competed.
“Imperfectly,” came the immediate reply. He elaborated.
“I was surrounded by great resources,” he began, “namely, a strong catholic community at St. Isidore, that made it possible to practice my faith. In addition, a prominent Christian presence existed on the football team which and the virtuous aspects of sports were great resources for me. It was still a battle to stay faithful and resist worldly temptations. Ultimately, the God’s grace was also paramount in helping me navigate life during those years.”
“Sports done well are compatible with a faith life,” he acknowledged while adding that sports, not done well, can become self-centered and self-serving, the result of a prideful ego.
“It’s a problem,” he observed. He spoke further about the experience of the Christian presence in the Wildcat locker room, observing that Coach Kleinmann came the year after his Quo Vadis experience. Weber related that Coach Kleinmann is Catholic and supported the integration of sport and faith.
“I definitely struggled with pride,” he confessed. “I didn’t realize until I got to seminary how much I’d made an idol of football.” He identified this a difficult cross since starting seminary.
Then there was THE BOWL GAME. It was the Texas Bowl in January 2022, a game that K-State won, beating LSU, 42-20. On air, ESPN announcer, Tom Hart, said, in reference to Landry, “He’ll be entering the priesthood when his college career is finished.”
“That, too, was a God-thing,” Landry said, “because I hadn’t told many people about my decision. Coach Kleinmann knew. I don’t know who told the broadcaster.”
“In fact, I’d made that deal with God, that five-year deal I mentioned earlier. I said I’d go (to the seminary) in five years. That year (2022), I had the opportunity to return for a sixth year of eligibility, because of COVID, and I wanted to explore it.”
Landry found himself praying with Luke 9. Specifically, Luke 9:57 – 62:
As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “[Lord,] let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” [To him] Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
“As I prayed and tried to determine whether I’d return for that sixth year, this passage became significant,” he shared.
I acknowledged to Landry the problem with attempting to make a deal with God, an exercise that I, too, have known intimately in my life.
I asked him if he was familiar with the game show, Let’s Make a Deal, a question to which he responded in the affirmative.
“God doesn’t play Let’s Make a Deal very well,” I said. We both laughed. Out loud. Right there in the coffee shop.
“That’s super funny!” Weber said with another laugh. I thank him for the compliment. My own children my describe me as among the least humorous men on the planet.
He quickly returned to the focus of the conversation, and making that five-year deal with God.
“What’s one more year?” he considered.
“At some point,” Landry recalled, “God puts His foot down.”
He recalled God’s voice, speaking once again to his heart: “I’m asking you to follow Me now.”
“That’s the reason why I didn’t return for a 6th year. Hearing God’s voice again, and the earnestness in it, I mostly made that decision before the (fateful) bowl game. Then that thing happened with the ESPN announcer.”
The irony of Landry’s hearing God’s earnest plea and the subsequent ESPN announcement to the entire world about Landry’s intention was not acknowledged during our conversation, though it is not lost as I write this story.
“What resulted from that publicity was,” according to Landry, “a floodgate of interviews and articles.”
“I felt like I was just along for the ride,” he said, considering it another opportunity to address the internal conflict between public notoriety and staying humble.
There was a plan. And he (Weber) knew what He (God) had in store.
All of this said, Landry began his seminary experience in the Spirituality Year at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary (SJV) in Denver in the fall of 2022.
“What a gift!” Weber exclaimed about that first year. “That year was like ripping the Band-Aid off of the football experience I carried into it,” he remarked. “The first six months was very difficult but very much needed.”
Landry is entering year #4 of seminary life, the Configuration Stage, as he begins Theology studies.
I asked him what he is most looking forward to.
“I’ve enjoyed seminary. I thoroughly enjoyed philosophy studies. I’m really excited about our seminary (SJV). We have a new rector, Fr. Angel Lopez, to whom we refer as the smarted man we’ve ever met,” he continued. Weber is excited about anticipated formal teaching about the virtues and learning about spiritual fatherhood.
“I have to brag about the K-Staters in the seminary for the Archdiocese,” Weber interjected. “There is good stuff happening at the St. Isidore Center at K-State,” he added.
“But of course, I’m biased.”
“I feel very spoiled being in seminary,” he concluded. I inquired about his perception of his parents’ response to his decision to enter seminary.
“They’re very positive, very supportive,” he said. “I don’t remember how I broke it to them, though I’m sure it was back in my sophomore year in college, during that tough time when the Wildcats weren’t playing well.”
He described the most challenging time was that final decision to leave football, foregoing the final year of eligibility.
“I know my dad really enjoyed watching me play. That was hard.”
“I’m very blessed,” he continued, referring to the support he’s received from his parents and family. “I was pretty shocked when I got to seminary and I learned how often it occurs that parents don’t support a man’s decision to enter seminary life,” a reality that other seminarians from the archdiocese have identified, as well. “I’m very blessed,” he said again.
Landry is the son Stan and Nancy Weber, both of whom attended K-State. Stan was a quarterback for the Wildcats from 1980 to 1984, and has served as an analyst on the K-State sports network since 1987. Mom, Nancy, is a 20-year veteran teacher at Bishop Miege High School. When I asked the subject matter she teaches, Landry replied, “Theology. I had her as a teacher!” a fact about which he was obviously proud, as his face beamed.
The youngest of four children, Landry has an older sister, Brittani, is married, has three children, and lives the Kansas City area.
His brother, Stanton, a wide receiver for the Wildcats from 2011 to 2015, is coaching football at Toledo, a Special Teams Coordinator. He is also married. Landry described his brother as “a great coach” and added that he was an assistant coach at K-State during Landry’s time with the Wildcats.
A younger sister, McKenzi, played volleyball at K-State and is now a FOCUS Missionary at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND.
Weber’s summer assignment included oversight of the Benedictine College Youth Camp (BCYC) an experience he shared with fellow seminarian, Zach McGuinness.
“Our position, as full-time staff leaders, put us in charge of twenty-five college missionaries who, in turn, had oversight of the high school campers. It was the college missionaries who were boots-on-the-ground shepherds for the high schoolers,” Landry noted. “We were serving the missionaries,” he said, in a train-the-trainer role, so to speak.
Landry summed up the experience as a glimpse of what it means to be a priest. “It was an opportunity, above all, to experience for the first time what spiritual fatherhood is.”
Landry and his seminary classmates, Andrew Buyle and Zach McGuinness had been, at the time of this interview, informed that they would be recipients of the Rite of Candidacy, which was administered by Archbishop McKnight during Mass at the Seminarian Sendoff on August 7. The event occurred at Church of the Ascension. Landry stated that Fr. Dan Morris had texted the three seminarians a few days prior our conversation, indicating the Archbishop’s decision to include the rite in the sendoff experience, asking if the seminarians “were in.”
“I responded in about 30 seconds,” Weber said, indicating “I’m in.” We agreed that it was a football type of decision. One must be in or one is out. We laughed again.
“Maybe I should have been a bit more reserved,” Weber said in a retrospective moment.
I asked what words of advice and/or wisdom for young folks questioning their vocation.
“It’s pretty simple,” he began.
“Trust that God wants your good and He wants what’s best for you. God wants you to be happy. He has a plan for your life. He’s not a taskmaster who makes you do something you don’t want to do. Discernment doesn’t have to be overcomplicated. Talk to God. Don’t put pressure on yourself. You don’t have to figure it out today. It will come.”
He encouraged development of the habit of spending time in silence, noting that, at a personal level, what the world has to offer is very enticing. He said it’s easy to get caught up in the world, suggesting that the more of the world we take in, the harder it is to hear God. Amidst the noise, it is harder to quiet our soul to be able to hear Him.
“God speaks in the silence. He’s hidden. When He spoke to Elijah, it was in a whisper,” he identified, acknowledging that, “I, too, was bombarded.”
He encouraged young people to form the habit of stepping away from the world from time to time.
As we wrapped up our time together, Landry spoke of his gratitude to Serrans for the prayers and all the support that he and his brother seminarians receive.
“It truly makes a difference,” he said. “Thank you so much for everything.”
The future of the presbyterate in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas is, indeed, bright. Let us continue to pray for Landry and his brother seminarians.
