Father Michael Ritter's ministry is one of presence, willing to be with others whatever their need

While serving as parochial vicar of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Sacramento from July 2015 to July 2017, Father Michael Ritter visited a grief-stricken mother who had just lost her second son to gang-related gun violence. One son had been killed in March, the second in June.

“I remember driving over to her house and thinking, what am I supposed to say? If a priest is going to be there, you have to have some words. When I got into the house, the whole family of 15 or so was standing in a circle. I said to her, I just drove over here to hold your hands and tell you I am so sorry about your son. That was so powerful. Experiences like this taught me a great deal about ministry and about the willingness to be present. If holy orders is a sacrament, it means Christ is present in that effort. It’s not about me, it’s about being willing.”

Wherever his ministry takes him and whatever he is doing – from pastoral visits to the grieving, the sick or the dying, to working with youth and young adults, or celebrating the sacraments – he describes his ministry as one of presence and being willing to be with others whatever their need.

As a priest “there are moments of great joy and there are very difficult moments, but there’s this deep sense in me of this is the truth about my life,” says Father Michael, 35, reflecting on the past three-and-a-half years since his ordination in 2015. “It’s the truth about one who is trying to be faithful and somehow it’s where I’m supposed to be. The truth of God’s calling in my life embraces both my gifts and my great limitations, and that sense of calling isn’t threatened by either.”

His calling to the priesthood is more of a “story” that took place over time, instead of a single moment when he knew he would become a priest, he says. Many people in his life, especially his grandmother, parents and Father Michael Dillion, pastor emeritus of Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Rocklin, inspired him with their faith and devotion.

When he was eight years old he began serving Mass at his home parish, and eventually became a eucharistic minister, choir member and helped in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. As a teenager he went with his mother to Mount St. Joseph novitiate in Loomis for first Friday adoration. Soon he had the opportunity to know Oblate Father Brian Crawford, attend discernment retreats and meet monthly with Father Brian for spiritual direction. He says these experiences nurtured his desire to become a priest.

By the end of high school, having been part of discernment meetings offered by the diocese’s Office of Vocations, he entered studies for the priesthood at Mount Angel Seminary in St. Benedict, Ore., as a freshman in college. After attending Mount Angel for three years, he took some time off and discerned with the Discalced Carmelites in San Jose for about 10 months. But it became clear to him he felt called to serve as a diocesan priest, so he returned to Mount Angel to complete his last year in college and then spent three years studying theology at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, where he served as a cantor and was part of the seminary choir.

Before making a final commitment to ordination, he took two years off and worked one year at a country club in Southern California and another at a charter school in Sacramento. Later he returned to Mount Angel to complete a master of divinity degree.

“When I look at my discernment over the years, at some point or another, my vocation became true to me – it’s just the truth,” he reflects. “You can look at other experiences, other options, other intentions in your life and competing desires, but the sense of calling, mission and purpose in life never ceases to be the dominant truth to such an extent that if I walked away or dismissed this, it would be a kind of betrayal of the deep sense of truth in my life. That was the predominant sense of calling for me – that priesthood is what is most authentic and most real, and to choose some other path would be an act of dismissal of what’s most resonant with me.”

He spent his pastoral years at St. Joseph Parish in Redding and at St. Anthony Parish in Winters. In Winters, he helped build up the parish’s youth ministry and got involved in campus ministry at the Newman Catholic Centers in Davis and Sacramento, which continued while serving as parochial vicar of St. Charles Borromeo Parish. Campus ministry is a “bright spot” in his first years of ministry, which is continuing in collaboration with Weston Ruiz, director of the Newman Catholic Center in Chico, on Masses, retreats and other activities for college students.

His ministry to young adults is especially a “ministry of presence,” he notes. “Anyone who works with them knows the importance of relationship and evangelization. For this generation, authority is more related to relationship. Young people will follow someone they know, they trust -- somebody they know cares for them. They’ll respond to authenticity in relationship more than they will respond to office or institutional authority.

“Jesus says I know my sheep and they know my voice and they follow me. Young people have taught me that, across the spectrum of ministries. They’ve taught me the importance of relationship whether in parish or campus ministry or another context. I was talking with a college student a few months ago and she made a comment that struck me. She said, ‘Father, I listen to your homilies and it’s not that you are a better preacher than any other priest, but I listen to you because I know you.’ Relationship is not the only important thing for this generation, but it’s such an important pathway to preaching, to ministry, to speaking about Jesus. This reality has helped shape my ministry to young adults.”

He sees “a remarkable openness” in young people because “they haven’t had to organize all their life experience yet as only this and not that. They’re still trying to figure out the way, and that makes them so incredibly open to their faith and to preaching. They come with burning questions and they want those questions to be spoken to. They want reasons for what we believe, they want to be compelled and they want something they can make sense of. Our church has such a rich intellectual tradition, that especially on the campus scene, we can engage their intellect and their fascination. We can preach the faith in terms of relationship on the one hand, and on the other, do it intelligently and compellingly.”

At St. Charles Borromeo Parish, with Father Oscar Gomez-Medina as pastor, Father Michael’s ministry included countless hours hearing confessions and ministering to parishioners in hospitals and home visits, as well as celebrating funerals. “One of the most stunning things for me is after ordination you are at a parish and you are burying people’s dead kids and dealing with people two and three times your age, and they are coming to you for wisdom. That’s such a humbling, deep awareness of the fact that it is not about you. Your life represents something more than you and you approach people with deep reverence.”

The large parish is located in a “tough neighborhood,” he notes, with “a mixture of all kinds of people.” He was overwhelmed by how parishioners loved him. “You have a lot of people who would give you the shirt off their back. I had any number of walks behind the church after Mass because someone just needed to talk. I became aware of just how powerful it is to make oneself available and to do that with tenderness and affection for people. You spend four hours in the confessional and people are hurting, they’re struggling. You wouldn’t guess it looking around the church. I got the sense of the great integrity of people’s faith. It constantly humbled me and made me ask the question as to where my own faith is, because it’s incredible the great effort and integrity by which people seek God.”

One of his greatest pastoral lessons so far has been “learning how important it is to take care of the dying and their families.”

“You can preach a great homily, but what I saw over and over again was that if you take care of people when they’re dying and celebrate a funeral with your whole heart, there was a deep kind of connection. People who were never there were suddenly there because the church was there for their loved one and accompanied them. I take a pastoral cue from that experience: taking care of the dying and their families. I’ve seen the church growing, and I’ve brought far more people into the fold through funerals than I have through many other forms of ministry.”

He doesn’t think of himself specifically as a “millennial.” “I don’t organize myself around that category,” he notes. “I grew up with technology and am comfortable with it and I understand millennials. I’m aware of the fact that college students today, and I’m only 10 to 15 years older, are living in a very different environment than I am, however.

“I was in seminary for most of my 20s and that taught me the importance of being present and how increasingly difficult that is. We’re so connected and yet we feel so unknown, and because of that we feel unloved and alone. The seminary taught us to be together. I bring that sense of value and the challenge involved to my ministry as a core value. We often speak of the Eucharist as a celebration of Jesus’ presence, so that’s a pervasive part of my spiritual life.”

One of the growing comforts of his life “is that I’m conscious I’m a young priest and I’m a work in progress, being formed in God’s grace by way of assignment, mentorships, relationships and involvement with the parish community,” he concludes. “I’ve made my peace with that and I can celebrate that. That’s an important consolation for me too. I know that God is working on me and I hope he’s working through me in that process.”

Catholic Herald Issue