Member Log In
I have discovered that there seems to be a relationship between locations of Catholic churches and locations of First Watch restaurants. This month, I was privileged to have a First Watch breakfast with seminarian, Will Carey, who is in the midst of a Pastoral Year at Blessed Sacrament/Christ the King parishes in Kansas City, KS, an experience that also includes some teaching at Bishop Ward High School. Our meeting took place after 6:45 AM Mass at St. Agnes in Roeland Park.
We launched right into conversation as though we’d known each other for much longer than a first meeting. “These are my old stomping grounds,” Carey acknowledged, adding, “St. Agnes would have been my home parish as a kid, but I wasn’t raised Catholic.” We interrupted our dialogue and ordered our breakfast, a Frittata Rustica for Will, and a Pumpkin Pancake Breakfast for me. We agreed to split an order of Million Dollar Bacon, before jumping right back into things over a first cup of coffee.
“So?” I began.
“So how did it happen?” Will finished my question, returning directly to the point at which we’d stopped our conversation before ordering our food.
A graduate of Shawnee Mission East High School, Carey is the first of three boys. He was about 2 years old when the family moved to Westwood Hills. “I grew up loving running and singing. Singing was my forte - musicals and choir. I played a lot of guitar but singing was great passion of mine,” he smiled.
“I was basically an academic failure,” he followed. “I didn’t like doing homework, and had difficulty applying myself.” After high school, Will said, he spent four years at Johnson County JUCO, acknowledging with humor that it was a course that most students completed in two years. “It doesn’t take most people four years to get their associate degree,” he said wryly.
“I lived with a lot of shame about the academic failure, and sort of went down the wrong path,” he shared, mentioning drugs and alcohol before his voice trailed off. He then added, “It was a couple years into that experience when I passed out behind the wheel of my dad’s car. Totaled it.” He stopped a moment, seemingly in deep thought.
“That was rock bottom. There was a lot of darkness,” he reflected quietly.
It was in the wake of that experience that he heard the Lord say to him, “There will be light.”
“So, how did you encounter Catholicism?” I asked.
“It was still while at Johnson County (JUCO) that I was introduced to St. Paul’s Outreach (SPO), and Joe D’Amato,” he said, his smile returning. “It was there that I had a deep encounter with Jesus and His love for me.” Carey spent a lot of time with that community, meeting others who were alive with faith, “even in the Catholic realm, so to speak,” he concluded. He acknowledged that SPO, “really gave me this mission for evangelization.” In the summer of 2014, he transferred to Emporia State, walked on to the Cross Country Team. He spoke about his curiosity about the Catholic Church.
“That was where I met Fr. Nick Blaha,” he said. Fr. Nick was in his first year as chaplain at Emporia State, Will in his 5th year in college. “I was still kind of church shopping, and I knew that I needed to give the Catholic Church a look, so I started going to RCIA.”
“That is the gateway drug, as you know,” he said, without missing a beat. “I realized that this is Christ’s One True Church.” Carey further observed that, in RCIA, he learned in discussions of the Sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders that “celibacy is a thing.” “It was then that I first heard the call to the priesthood.”
His immediate response?
“Well, I didn’t want to join the Church because there would be a call to mission and a call to the priesthood, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted that!” his emphasis recognized. He laughed. I have become familiar with this laugh. It’s the laugh of a joyful person recognizing in retrospect the futility of arguing with God.
“I joined the Church at the end of my junior year of college,” he said matter of fact, “after having gone through RCIA.”
“Throughout my senior year in college, I really felt the call to be a missionary for the Church,” Carey continued, “despite the fact that I had accepted an internship with a CPA firm the following summer.” He eventually became a missionary with SPO and landed on the campus of Benedictine College the following year. “A very Catholic place,” he said, again with a smile.
He then began to describe his experience of discerning celibacy, “with a group of the male missionaries in the household,” he said. “Living with a group of men I didn’t choose—a gift of SPO household—I found myself invited into the love of Jesus Christ. We were putting everything on the altar. Writing out a blank check. The discernment of celibacy is one of the hardest things for young men,” he concluded thoughtfully. Then, adding with humor, “We called ourselves ‘the fellowship of the ringless!”
I was incredulous. I spoke it. “Wait a minute,” I blurted out, “I thought discernment of the priesthood came first and then celibacy followed. But you’re telling me you experienced the process the other way around. How did that happen?”
I noted that, in his response, he spoke so freely and filled with joy.
“That was the hardest thing, to discern a celibate call,” he continued, “and when I learned that He had given me a heart set aside just for Himself, then the question is, where is that supposed to be?” He said he knew from his time at Benedictine College the potential to become a monk there. “But having met Fr. Nick Blaha and his great image of the priesthood and his example in living the diocesan priesthood, well-read, and a normal guy,” before interjecting, “I got to bow hunt deer with him,” Carey’s smile flashed again, “and the life he was living was really attractive to me.”
“In the fall of my second year as a missionary, I visited Denver, and there was a lot of peace. I knew I could live there.”
God had another plan.
“I was late in the application process and Denver was full. They couldn’t accept me. So I was assigned to St. Louis,” Carey said.
“That old will of God thing,” I commented.
“Exactly,” he replied, his eyes twinkling, “I am the Will of God!” He laughed once again, and I caught the pun he intended.
“Will-i-am?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “I am William, though I go by Will.”
What does he most look forward to in his priesthood? “I look forward to shepherding a flock,” he said, “with this heart that God gave me, that I’ve known for a long time was made for Him. I’ve got a great dad. Without the full, Catholic understanding of fatherhood, however, I couldn’t have known what it meant to shepherd a flock in this way. Not only as family, but to guide and protect. I was the one, outside the 99, I was so far astray, and He came for me in the darkness. The Good Shepherd came for me, and now He’s inviting me to be a shepherd to His people. There’s such excitement for the mission that he’s given to me.”
There were now two sets of eye sockets leaking at that breakfast table. I hoped our server wouldn’t appear, asking if we needed anything.
When we could talk again, I asked Will about his advice for anyone discerning their future. His response was no less eloquent than all that he had shared with me in the preceding hour we had spent together. “Step out of the boat, over what seems like the abyss. Trust in God. Put it all in His hands. Jesus is calling you to cross the water.” To young men, he added, “Become fishers of men. And that doesn’t necessarily mean become a priest,” he clarified.
Men of faith must become fishers of men regardless their vocation. I walked to my car inspired, and grateful for young people like Will who courageously answer God’s call, whether to a priestly or religious vocation, or to marriage.
By the way, we crushed the Million Dollar Bacon.
