Father Jeremy Kucera grew up in Silver Lake, Minn., on a small dairy farm. It was here that his parents laid the foundation of his Catholic faith — simply by living it.

“I remember being at the tail end of the Forty Hours devotion and kneeling down with my dad,” Father Kucera recalls. “I thought to myself: If what’s on that altar is so important that my dad will kneel down, it must be pretty important.”

Being sent to Catholic schools gave Father Kucera the gift of learning about his faith on a daily basis. It helped strengthen the faith his parents had passed on and, although he never really questioned his belief in God, God seemed to want to take him deeper.

As a freshman in high school, he developed an infectious condition that grew so rapidly that doctors later told him he came within an hour of losing his life.

“I started to ask myself the hard questions,” he says, thinking back. “Why am I here? Why do I matter? I knew in my head what the answers were, but I didn’t really know yet in my heart.”

During his junior year of high school, a friend invited him to go on a Teens Encounter Christ retreat, promising him that he’d escape farm work for a weekend and could “scope out” some girls. However, Father Kucera found something a little more important than an enhanced social life.

“I saw that our relationship with the Lord starts now,” he said. “It’s not something that can wait. And encountering Christ is so crucial. It is where that relationship is really nurtured.”

After the retreat, he became more involved with Teens Encounter Christ and with his youth group. As his heart began to take in the close walk with God that Christ offers, it started to dawn on him that God might be calling him to the priesthood. Finally, one day, as he took a walk late at night, a feeling came over him.

“It must have been the Holy Spirit,” he says. “I was walking one minute, and the next minute I was crying like a baby, because I just knew in my heart God was calling me to be a priest.”

After high-school graduation, Father Kucera entered the St. John Vianney Minor Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., continuing to grow in his discernment of a vocational call.

For the final six months in the minor seminary, he studied in Rome. It was here, becoming friends with dedicated priests from around the world, that Father Kucera began to understand the sacrifice God requires of us in our Christian life.

“The priests I met showed me that our relationship with the Lord develops and grows. Really, by following Christ, we embark on what Father Robert Barron describes as ‘the strangest way.’ In order to live, we must die.”

 By the time he entered the major seminary that fall, he was jittery with excitement, anxious to embark on his own “strangest way.”

When the day of his ordination came — June 12, 2004 — Father Kucera didn’t even get a case of cold feet. “I was so excited to be a priest, to follow and persevere to where the Lord was calling me. It was so wonderful and overwhelming, to want to preach and celebrate the sacraments day after day, and to do it all for him.”

Since that day, Father Kucera has been busy with his first assignment: associate pastor at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Marshall, Minn.

Barb Verly, a parishioner at Holy Redeemer, appreciates Father Kucera’s love for and devotion to the sacraments — particularly the Eucharist.

“When he consecrates the bread and wine,” Verly says, “he holds the holy Eucharist and Precious Blood up for a really long time so we can all look and say, ‘Yes, Jesus, that’s really you; I believe it’s you.’

“During one Mass, Father Kucera gave a homily on the sacrament of reconciliation,” adds Verly. “He said: ‘You guys aren’t giving me much business in the confessional,’ and he quoted Scripture showing that he has apostolic authority to forgive sins.”

In an effort to find God’s will for Holy Redeemer, Father Kucera is initiating a few new groups this year. He regularly meets with college students from nearby Southwest Minnesota State University for dinner, he is looking into starting a Theology on Tap series for young adults and, later this year, he is leading a mission trip for the parish youth to Guatemala.

“It is obvious to everybody how much he enjoys being a priest,” says Father Robert Wyffels, a priest and friend of Father Kucera who taught him when he was a high-school student.

Father Kucera enjoys ministering to people, to be sure, but he has no illusions about his role in their lives.

“When I am present for people, it doesn’t need to be Father Jeremy present,” he says. “They are just happy that a priest is there. And it’s that humbling reminder that it’s not about me.”

Joy Wambeke writes from

St. Paul, Minnesota.