I was born in in 1957 in Los Angeles, California then moved around a lot with my family. We lived in Boulder, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Arlington, Virginia and Vienna, Austria before moving to Minneapolis, where I grew up. I also spent a year in Connecticut in my first year of college. I have one brother, Paul, one sister, Talia, and one nephew, Nadav. My mother still lives in Minneapolis and my father in Healdsburg, California.

 

My path to the priesthood has been different than that of many other priests. For one thing, I got a late start. I wasn’t ordained until I was 48 years old. There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that I wasn’t raised in a Catholic home. My dad is Jewish and my mom is from a Quaker background. We celebrated Christmas and Hannukah, Passover and Easter, but in a secular way. Trees and eggs, but never synagogue or church. Then, when I was a teenager, I started checking out different beliefs—Buddhism, Native American religions, Mormonism and Christianity. Being a priest never even occurred to me back then!

 

I finally realized that Christianity had the fullness of the truth, was revealed by God, and has as its core a real and incrediblely fullfilling deep and ever-expanding relationship with a Real Person, Jesus Christ, and through Him with God the Father and the Holy Spirit too. Many things led me to that conclusion, including the peace and joy I saw in Christians I met, all the good things Christians had done in the world and are still doing, the wisdom and beauty of the Bible, the heroic virtues of the saints, and historical evidence. I became a Christian as a Protestant because Protestants were the ones who told me about Jesus. This happened when I asked Jesus Christ to forgive my sins and be my Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit came into me and changed my life, and I got baptized, in 1979. Over the years I attended various evangelical and charismatic churches, including non-denominational, Assemblies of God and Episcopalian.

 

Not long after becoming a Christian, I got married to Jeannie. We were married for 13 years. It was a difficult marriage in many ways and we ended up getting divorced. In God’s providence we had no children together, but I adopted her son, James Minelli, who now lives in Champlin with his family. Jeannie died several years ago from ovarian cancer, may she rest in peace.

 

Peace comes from our relationship with God, and after a while I found a deeper relationship with Him in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has everything good I found in other forms of Christianity, plus a lot more! My interest in Catholicism started when someone invited me to go to Mass. I went, kept going, and was gradually drawn in by the beauty of the liturgy, the Eucharist and other sacraments, the ancient Tradition, writings of converts, the actions of so many Catholics to help the poor, defend life and work for justice and chastity, the saints, the Pope, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the unity and teachings of the Catholic Church. So I became Catholic.

 

I didn’t become a priest right away though. I worked in various jobs, like as a construction laborer, busboy, waiter, cab driver and a letter carrier. Now here I am a priest. And I love it! I’ve never been happier. People often ask me what I like doing best as a priest. That would be celebrating the Eucharist. A close second is celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation—I love giving people God’s beautiful forgiveness! I also like meeting people and visiting with them, meals with parishioners, teaching Religious Education, hanging out with the youth group, and just about everything else in the parish.

 

People sometimes ask me what a typical day is like for me. I get up at 5:20, say a morning offering prayer, wash up, make some coffee, pray the Liturgy of the Hours (Office of Readings and Morning Prayer) while drinking the coffee, and meditate on the readings for the Mass of that day and try with God's help to come up with a homily. Then I hear confessions from 7:30 to 7:50 (some days no one shows up for that though) then celebrate Mass at 8:00. Next is breakfast. In the morning and afternoon what I do varies widely. There is answering email, snail mail and phone calls, bringing Holy Communion to the homebound, hospital visits, meetings with staff members, errands, planning stuff, meetings with other priests about ministry, Archdiocesan and deanery meetings, pastoral counseling, confessions by appointment, helping people with applications for declarations of nullity (commonly called "annulments"), visiting with people who stop by the office for various reasons, and miscellanous other activities. I also try to spend a half an hour in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament each day for mental prayer, and go for a rosary walk inside the church when no one else is in there. In the middle of the day there is Daytime Prayer and sometimes a nap, and then Evening Prayer in the evening. I ususally eat lunch and dinner by myself, but sometimes I am blessed to have meals with other priests or with families from the parish or other lay friends. After dinner there are all kinds of opportunity for ministry. On Wednesdays there is stopping by Religious Education classes or THND ("The House Next Door," the youth house). On other evenings there are committee meetings, meeting with couples for marriage preparation or baptism preparation, penance services during Advent and Lent, and more emails and phone calls. Before I go to sleep I make an examen prayer, which is going over my day with God's help to consider how He has offered his grace to me, try to become aware of how I have responded to Him, thank him, ask forgivenes as needed, and ask for help for the next day. Then I pray Night Prayer and go to sleep, ususally between 9:30 and 10:00.

 

We priests also have some free time, which people seem to be curious about. What do I like to do on my day off (Monday)? Most of the time, I sleep in, celebrate Mass sometime in the morning, pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rosary, go hiking if the weather is not too cold (usually in Crow-Hassan Park Reserve, sometimes Elm Creek Park Reserve), read and nap. Once a month or so I get together with one or more priest friends to hang out and visit Catholic churches we haven’t been to before, have lunch, dinner, or both, and maybe go for a hike if the weather is pleasant. Another enjoyable activity is the dinners my ordination class of priests have once a month. We take turns hosting in our parishes, usually the third Sunday evening of each month. We spent four to six years together in seminary and got pretty close. Usually six to twelve guys show up for these events (I was in a class of seventeen.)

 

People sometimes ask me if I like to cook. The asnwer is "no," but I like to eat and ususally cooking is ususally the best way to achieve that goal.

 

Most of all, I love being a Catholic Christian and a priest. In particular, I love serving you as Pastor here at St. Thomas and would be very happy to be here with you for many years, God willing!

 

With love in Christ,

Fr. Michael Rudolph