Father Etzel credits ‘Damascus road moment’ in discerning vocation

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

Father Kyle Etzel, 31, grew up Catholic, prayed with his family every day, but said he “mostly went along with” the way that his fellow middle school, high school and college students were living.

While attending Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, he had a “personal revelation” that his lifestyle was “largely empty” and that many of his friends were friends because they had similar interests or pastimes. That revelation “hit him like a ton of bricks” and when he went to Mass the next day, the Newman Center was promoting its new small groups for that semester.

Father Etzel joined one of the groups and said it felt like he had “rediscovered the wheel.”

“It was people who wanted to know me just because I was interesting to them as a person, and be able to talk about the faith and have in common something as deep as a relationship with Christ, which was new to me,” he said. By the end of that semester, Father Etzel was on the parish committee at the Newman Center, and the next fall, heading campus ministry.

He also had “a profound experience” in the confessional at his home parish, St. Hubert in Chanhassen. Afterward, Father Rolf Tollefson asked to talk with him, and during that spring and summer, the priest provided “a little bit of formation, a little spiritual direction,” Father Etzel said, “helping me to learn about the faith and integrate it in a deeper way.”

When Father Etzel came home from college that Thanksgiving, he and Father Tollefson connected and the priest asked if Father Etzel had ever considered becoming a priest. Father Etzel had a girlfriend at the time and was considering marriage. He told the priest it was nice of him to ask, but no thanks.

As Father Etzel started leaving the parking lot after the conversation with Father Tollefson, he pulled into a spot behind the church near where the tabernacle is located. “It was just a profound moment of peace and joy,” he said. “I would say now that it was an experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence. … I don’t know if I would say I knew for sure that I was called to be a priest, but I knew for sure that I had to check this priesthood thing out because it was big,” he said. In fact, Father Etzel said the experience was like

“the holy two-by-four on the back of the head.” “And once you have the holy two-by-four, you realize there’s all these little moments throughout your life that the Lord’s been doing work and you didn’t even realize it,” he said. The Lord had been preparing him for a long time, “but I just needed to have that Damascus road moment.”

It took a couple months to commit to discerning the priesthood, and a year later, he transferred to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, participating in Catholic studies before entering pre-theology a couple years later.

“I can say that I got to spend six years preparing for the priesthood with 70 to 100 of my best friends,” Father Etzel said. “I don’t think I would have made it without the support of all the guys here, and the way that the seminary has promoted that kind of growth and fraternity.”

Father Etzel loves working with young adults and doing evangelization work with that demographic. Before starting at the seminary, he taught faith formation at church and worked for campus ministry at college for two years. “And I love preaching,” Father Etzel said. “Those are the things, other than celebrating the sacraments, which are the most exciting.”

The late Father Francis Pouliot is a distant cousin by marriage to Father Etzel. He recalled visiting Father Pouliot a few times at the Leo C. Byrne Residence in St. Paul for retired priests before he died in 2022.

The priest provided Father Etzel with good encouragement, he said, telling him to “make sure you maintain your prayer life, keep your holy hour, stay close to the Lord and the Blessed Mother, and say Mass reverently.” The messages are some he also heard at the seminary, but “it never hurts to hear it again, especially from a legend like Father Pouliot,” he said.