Transitional Deacon 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 Deacon 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.”
Deacon 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,” Deacon 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.”
The deacon’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.”
Deacon 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.”
Deacon 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 is 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,” Deacon 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. 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,” Kratt recalled.
With that freedom, “why wouldn’t I go here?” 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, Deacon 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 draws near, he said he is ready to “get into a parish and start active ministry.”
Deacon 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.
As his May 27 ordination approaches, Deacon Kratt said he is feeling excitement and awe, but that it also seems a bit surreal that he is 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, Deacon Kratt said. “He knows all my weaknesses, all my flaws, and he still calls me, and he still wants me to be his priest,” Kratt said with a laugh. “That’s pretty amazing.”
