THE KYLE FILE

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of profiles on the three newly ordained priests in the Albany Diocese. Father Michael Melanson, Father Samuel Bellafiore and Father Kyle Eads were ordained on June 15 in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany.

Father Kyle Eads always seemed destined for the priesthood.

Around the age of 12, Father Eads, then an altar server at Immaculate Conception in Glenville, first thought about the vocation.

“I remember being inspired by … when Father (Thomas) Connery would talk about his vocation. I remember him saying that clergy tended to be among the people who were happiest with their job,” Father Eads said. “And you looked at him and said, ‘He seems happy. You can’t argue with that.’”

The feeling continued when his sister — Father Eads has nine siblings, but more on that later — started volunteering with the Little Sisters of the Poor in Latham and he and his brother would help serve Mass. 

“The sisters were constantly asking what are you going to do with your life. (They would ask:) ‘You are going to be a priest, right?’ ” he said. “So for a long time, that was kind of the easy answer, ‘Yes sister, I am going to be a priest.’ ”

Even his mother, Laura, hoped that one of her sons or daughters would enter religious life.

“We would say the Rosary together all the time and my mom would always throw in something about vocations to the priesthood or religious life while giving us the side eye,” he said.

But when he went to Ave Maria University in Florida, he started to have second thoughts, and turned to another possible vocation: marriage.
“I ended up dating this one girl for a couple of years and it got to the point where this either has to get serious and (we) get engaged … (or) if I think the priesthood is still out there, I need to spend some time thinking about that. I just spent a long time wrestling with God. It was driving me crazy. 

“And I was wondering, ‘Why doesn’t God give me some kind of sign and show me that this is his will.’ Looking back, maybe I wasn’t asking what his will was as I was asking God to make my will what he wanted. Deep down I didn’t have peace where I was.”

So between the summer of his sophomore and junior year, he and his girlfriend didn’t talk to one another as they both discerned religious life. While working at Hannaford that summer, Father Eads connected with Father Jim Walsh to talk about the priesthood while Father Jim Clark at Corpus Christi gave him the key to their chapel so he could pray over his decision.  

“Slowly over the summer, I came to feel like I had more peace about the priesthood and going to seminary and where I was at the time,” Father Eads said. 

The peace only continued to grow as Father Eads, 26, entered seminary and received a Bachelor of Sacred Theology and Master of Divinity at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie. He was ordained on June 15 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany alongside Father Michael Melanson and Father Samuel Bellafiore and is now Parochial Vicar at the Parish of Mater Christi in Albany. 

Father Eads is not the only member of his large family in religious life, however. His sister, Elizabeth, is entering the sisterhood of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Miami. Father Eads is the oldest child of a family that includes siblings: Katie, Andrew, Elizabeth, Kim, Maureen, Bridget, Colleen, Kevin and Elianne. He added his parents, Laura and Richard, are “pretty close to adopting a little girl from Colombia.” Family and faith have always been intertwined for Father Eads, who along with his brothers and sisters, was home-schooled by his mother. But with the rest of the family now living in and around Ave Maria, Fla., southeast of Fort Myers, Father Eads’ focus is on his new vocation.

He describes his first month at Mater Christi as a “whirlwind” and “humbling.” 

“Now that I am in the parish and see every day the faith of the people around me and the way the people look up to me as a priest already and ask me tough questions; that was something that has to sink in that this is a whole new reality. I try to tell them, first off, I am not very wise yet. Anything I say, take it with a grain of salt,” he said, smiling in his understated manner.

“But it is incredible, the gift of the priesthood. It’s very humbling; hearing confessions and the way that people invite you into their lives. You feel like you are a complete stranger and you have no business being there. It’s just incredible to be a part of people’s families and to be the face of Christ that they come to see.”

At 26, Father Eads is part of the generation that the Church is trying to bring back to God. Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger talks a lot about the “nones” and for good reason; studies show that one out of six millennials in the U.S. are former Catholics, while 50 percent of Catholics 30 years old and younger have left the Church. 

These are sobering stats, but it’s always interesting to talk with someone of this Instagram and Snapchat generation, someone who is going to be a faith leader for decades, and hear their answers. This millennial generation of searchers and anti-joiners doesn’t want people to tell them how to live their lives. But Father Eads believes in this search, they are missing one key element.   

“I was brought up to believe that God has a plan for our happiness and once we figure out what that is, he is not going to let us down,” he said. “I guess people my age are looking for something real and authentic. It seems like a lot of people my age have tried everything else … I know a lot of people are struggling with what is the meaning of their life. They have thoughts of suicide because they don’t have any religion, any sense of why they are here.

“I think people would start to come back from that when they see the faith of the people, when they see Catholics that are happy.”
Personal interactions and publically living out your faith, can bring millennials back to the fold; at least, that is Father Eads’ hope.   

“We just have to look for ways to show people first-hand through our relationships with people around us,” he said. “The faith is something real and I have found that it answers the questions that are in my heart. And it answered the longings that I have had for truth.”