Priest Profile

Looking back at his life now, Bill Wiltison says it was God's providence that led him to volunteer about three years ago at St. Jerome Church near Indian Rocks Beach, Fla. Because it was there, he said, that he was “ambushed by God.”

One day Wiltison had to bring some letters to the parish's education building. That was when he met Father Ken Malley. The priest smiled, said hello and made some small talk. The next day Father Malley waved to him from across the parking lot.

“I tried to run back into the office,” Wiltison recalls. “But I couldn't move. It was like I was frozen. I could see him coming across the parking lot. It was like Jesus walking on water. He was floating along.”

Not long after, Father Malley had occasion to visit the Wiltison home. Soon enough began a discussion between the two men that would go on for several hours. That was the beginning of their friendship — and of Wiltison's unplanned interior journey.

“He had something I wanted,” Wiltison says, “but I didn't have any idea what it was.”

Later, after asking many questions about God and going to confession, Bible studies and daily Mass, Wiltison realized he finally understood what Father Malley had that he wanted.

“Jesus was shining through him,” Wiltison says. “He was always so happy, and he was always smiling. He was full of love. It just came out of him. He was like that with everybody. It was not just with me. What it was, was the love of Jesus.”

God's Instrument

Father Malley, 37, is grateful to be the instrument Jesus used to reach out to Wiltison.

“Fortunately, he was able to see something that was something more than I was able to give,” Father Malley says, “and it wasn't me. It was Christ shining through me, and in such an ordinary way. Sometimes we can underestimate those moments — the impact you can have on people.”

Father Malley recounts how, when he was studying to become a priest, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity were huge influences. He worked with the order in Moscow and in Warsaw, Poland, during mission trips after his first and third year of studies in Rome. He saw how they cared for the homeless and for orphans with great joy and simplicity. And he noticed how their prayer life was the fuel that made “the light of Christ” grow stronger in them.

His meeting with Mother Teresa in Rome, for about 10 minutes, also had a profound impact, he says. He was part of a small group of seminarians to whom she said: “If you don't want to be a holy priest, you should leave now.” Those words reverberate in his ears even now.

Father Malley and his two brothers grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., where his parents were active in their parish. After four years of active duty in the Navy, he went to the University of South Florida and studied Russian; he said it was there, after meeting several “on-fire Catholics” who invited him to their rosary group, that his faith began to grow. As did thoughts of a priestly vocation.

At first he tried to run away from the call. But this only led to a strong sense of being restless and unsettled. One day, after much prayer, he listened to what God was asking him to do. And at age 25, he entered St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boyton Beach. He later went to Rome, to the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, where he got a master's degree in spirituality, and the Gregorian University for his doctorate in sacred theology.

“Even now, growing in the vocation and trying to discover and uncover the call, it's all about trying to listen to God,” he says. “Trying to slow down the busyness and saying, ‘God, what are you calling me to do here?’ Just growing in that union and coming to know God's love and his desire for me. How can you get better than that?”

Fragrance of Christ

At St. Vincent de Paul Seminary, Malley met Father John Cippel, now the pastor of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Spring Hill, Fla., who was then Malley's spiritual director.

“His energy flows in his commitment to serve the Lord and people,” Father Cippel says of Father Malley. “It's an energy that's focused and channeled in his dedication to the Lord. He has a fidelity to the Lord in his personal prayer life and his personal sense of relationship to God. He has a strong sense of hearing his call; he heard both his call as a priest and his call to serve.”

After his ordination in 1997, Father Malley served at St. Raphael's Parish in St. Petersburg until 2000. Then he went to St. Jerome until the end of 2001. Now he's dean of students and vice rector at St. John Vianney Seminary in Miami.

“Working with young adults to discover or to uncover their vocation is a very big part for the future of our Church,” he says, “because in discovering it and living out what God wants them to be there's going to be great happiness and great fruit within families and within our Church.”

In all he does, he says he tries to remember the lessons he learned from Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity. It can be summed up in a prayer by Cardinal John Henry Newman that the order recites after every Mass. The prayer can be found on the back of Father Malley's ordination card, and it is what Bill Wiltison says he's striving for now that he knows Jesus:

“Dear Jesus, help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that all our lives may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through us and be so in us that every person we should come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul … Let us preach you without preaching: not by words, but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear for you. Amen.”

Carlos Briceño writes from Seminole, Florida.