Four men ordained priests May 27 seek G

But the idea of priestly ordination was still “surreal” to him, right up until the archbishop said the prayer of ordination, Father Etzel said.

Just before that prayer, during the Litany of Supplication, when the candidates prostrated themselves in front of the altar while the congregation sang the Litany of the Saints, Father Etzel said he experienced profound peace and grace that made him forget his earlier nervousness.

“It was happy, it was joyful and peaceful and (I’m) just very grateful for the Holy Spirit’s work, especially in the sacrament,” Father Etzel said.

One of the saints the ordinands included in the Litany was the 12th century anchorite hermit, St. Drogo of Sebourg. Injecting a bit of humor into his homily, Archbishop Hebda related how his curiosity at the inclusion of the relatively unknown saint led him to discover that, as the patron of coffee and baristas, St. Drogo is especially popular with millennials and Gen Z.

The archbishop said he questioned why the ordinands overlooked St. Augustine of Canterbury, whose feast day was the May 27 ordination day and who evangelized thousands in England in the sixth century.

Encouraging the candidates to emulate St. Augustine of Canterbury a little more than St. Drogo in the context of implementing the Archdiocesan Synod, the archbishop said: “We need you to be willing to go wherever you are sent to plant and to grow our Church.”

But with a nod toward St. Drogo, he added, “Your beachheads might not be the white cliffs of Dover, but the counters and tables of (coffee shops) Caribou, Spyhouse and Nina’s.”

Father Kratt, 27, said before his ordination he looks forward to getting to know parishioners in both the critical and “more ordinary” moments of their lives when he starts his first assignment at St. Hubert in Chanhassen.

While excited and in awe of becoming a priest, he said it seemed like something beyond him and he didn’t feel worthy. But, Father Kratt added that God “knows all my weaknesses, all my flaws, and he still calls me, and he still wants me to be his priest. That’s pretty amazing.”

Father Kratt’s mother, Barbara Kratt, was thrilled to see her son become a priest. “It was a beautiful experience to stand behind my son on that and just love on him,” said Barbara, a parishioner of St. Mark in St. Paul, who along with the other mothers of the new priests brought up the gifts during the liturgy. “I just stood behind him, loving him and praying for him. It was beautiful.”

Hannah Hilgendorf, 32, a mother of five young children, including her unborn child, said she traveled from Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, Father Stephen Hilgendorf, to support Father Etzel and the other new priests. A former Anglican priest, Father Hilgendorf is now a priest in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. According to the Ordinariate’s website, it is equivalent to a diocese, created by the Vatican in 2012 for those nurtured in the Anglican tradition who wish to become Catholic.

The family was “very, very excited” that the four men, whom they have gotten to know, were being ordained, Hannah said. “We are so grateful that God has blessed the Catholic Church by giving her more faithful priests and we are eager to see an increase in vocations and a continued improvement in formation.”