‘No two days are alike’
STATESVILLE — According to Father Thomas Kessler, pastor of St. Philip the Apostle Church, “no two days are alike” in the priesthood. Father Kessler, a native of Allentown, Pa., celebrated 35 years of priestly ministry May 12.
He recently shared some insights about his life and his ministry with the Catholic News Herald.
“I am a cradle Catholic,” he says. “My deceased parents were devout Catholics. By God’s grace, my 10 siblings and I have followed their example and have kept the faith.”
Father Kessler remembers that he thought about the priesthood during the second grade and again around the ninth grade.
“When I was 19 to 21 years old, I worked as a structural steel salesman in Philadelphia. I went to daily Mass and felt that I was called to the priesthood,” he recalls.
He studied for four years at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, where he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. “I then studied four years of theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., where I received a Master of Divinity.”
Father Kessler was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Allentown on May 12, 1984, by then-Bishop Thomas Welsh of Allentown.
Upon his ordination, Father Kessler served as a parochial vicar of a parish in West Reading, Pa. He then spent five years as a missionary in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
When he returned to the U.S., he served as an administrator at Notre Dame High School in Easton, Pa. He was then named director of pastor formation at the Major Seminary of St. Paul in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis in St. Paul, Minn.
Father Kessler’s assignments in the Diocese of Charlotte over the years include serving as administrator of St. Dorothy Church in Lincolnton; parochial vicar of St. Matthew Church in Charlotte; pastor of St. Leo the Great Church in Winston-Salem; and pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Monroe.
Father Kessler says what he loves most about his priestly ministry is “the diversity of the vocation. No two days are alike.”
What has he learned over the course of the past 35 years ministering as a priest? “A lesson that I have learned is that one never stops learning. Each day is a new adventure and a gift from God.”
— SueAnn Howell, Senior reporter
