The diocese’s three newest ‘men in black’

“There came a point in high school when I thought that maybe
the Lord wasn’t calling me to it, but I still wanted it,”
Deacon Bergida said in a recent interview from Rome, where he
attends the Pontifical North American College. “I was trying
to release that desire. Then the Lord gave it back to me.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want marriage or a family, Deacon
Bergida said, rather, “I always kind of thought it was a
greater good to be able to serve all families and to be able
to give myself fully to Christ and His bride the Church.

“Seeing the beauty of family life actually strengthened my
desire to be a priest,” he added. “I saw what beautiful
families were like, and I wanted that, yet at the same time I
knew in my heart that God was calling me to be a priest.”

Deacon Bergida, who is scheduled to be ordained to the
priesthood June 9 at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in
Arlington, was born Sept. 28, 1983, in Minneapolis/St. Paul,
Minn., to Michael and Theresa Bergida. The family, which
later would have seven children, of whom Deacon Bergida is
the oldest, moved to Virginia when he was 2. They lived in
both Herndon and Centreville before settling in Front Royal
during the deacon’s high-school years.

Growing up, Deacon Bergida said his family did its best to
get to daily Mass, outings that had a “huge impact” on his
faith.

“The first thing I remember is going home and setting up and
playing Mass,” he said. “That was where the first intuitions
or movements of grace began.”

As he got older, Deacon Bergida joined the Junior Legion of
Mary, an organization that helped him to seek God’s will and
holiness in his life. As the family moved around Northern
Virginia, Deacon Bergida got to know many priests on whom he
began to model his life, he said, including Fathers John H.
Melmer, Matthew H. Zuberbueler, Cornelius O’Brien, Alexander
R. Drummond, Brian G. Bashista and the late William Ruehl.

“Here they were, young men, and they were giving their lives
to the Church, to Christ and they had this great joy about
them,” he said. “They were funny and you could interact with
them … and at the same time they had a great respect
for the Eucharist.”

Deacon Bergida was home-schooled through high school, after
which he attended Franciscan University in Steubenville,
Ohio, from 2002-06, where he participated in a pre-theology
program. After much discernment, he applied to the seminary
his senior year and was accepted, entering St. Charles
Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., in the fall of 2006.

In 2008, Deacon Bergida transferred to Rome, where he has
studied for the last four years.

“It’s been great,” Deacon Bergida said. “You really get an
experience of the Church universal because there are students
from all over, not only Europe, but Asia, Africa. And the
ability to be so close to the Holy Father and the martyrs who
gave their lives for the Faith here in Rome … has been
great.”

As a seminarian, Deacon Bergida served at St. Philip Parish
in Falls Church, St. Teresa Parish in Ashburn and All Saints
Parish in Manassas. After his ordination, Deacon Bergida will
return to Rome to finish up a degree in liturgy, but for the
summer he’ll be home at St. John the Baptist Church in Front
Royal.

Now, almost a priest himself, Deacon Bergida looks back on
the clergy who influenced his life in the hopes of someday
having that same influence on others.

Being a priest “really is bringing people to Christ,” Deacon
Bergida said. And, after all, who would know better than
him?

After a long road back to the Church, Deacon Keith
Cummings is joyfully awaiting his ordination to the
priesthood.

By KATIE BAHR

Catholic Herald
Staff Writer

Deacon Keith Cummings knows the importance of a smile. With
only weeks left until he is ordained to the priesthood, he is
quick to laugh and make jokes – especially about himself –
and he said he feels more fulfilled and satisfied than ever
before.

“The joy I’ve had from the past 10 years, … I’ve come
to understand how much God loves each of us individually and
it’s made me so happy and content and at peace for where I’m
going,” he said.

Of course, he was not always this way. For Deacon Cummings,
the road to ordination has been a long one, with many detours
and U-turns.

Deacon Cummings was born Dec. 9, 1964, in Richmond. The 10th
of 11 children, he grew up in a family that moved around a
lot. He lived in Detroit, Memphis and Pittsburgh before
returning to Virginia, where he graduated from Woodbridge
High School in 1983.

Though his family attended Mass every Sunday while he was
growing up, Deacon Cummings didn’t fully appreciate the
Faith. He began skipping Mass almost as soon as he had his
driver’s license and he didn’t seriously return until he was
a college student in Richmond in his early 20s. At that time,
he learned a lot about Church teaching, but stopped praying
entirely when he began to get an inkling of a vocation.

After that, he took a new approach – “a self-centered,
self-driven approach to my life.” His first job out of
college was working on Wall Street in New York. Within a few
weeks, his father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
Six weeks later, he died.

“During that time, I got a much stronger window into the
depth and breadth of my father’s faith and the peace and
comfort that he received from his relationship with God and
the Faith and the sacraments,” Deacon Cummings said.

“(My brothers and I) always said, our father taught us as we
were growing up how to live as men, and in his last six weeks
he taught us how to die as men, as men who trust in the
Lord.”

Though he was moved, Deacon Cummings still was not practicing
his faith. Instead, he focused on earning money and having
fun, even moving to Denver in 1997 to be close to the ski
slopes.

All that changed in 2002, when Deacon Cummings’ mother died.
Her death left him reeling and resulted in a devastating
downward spiral during which time he lost his job in Denver
and was forced to bounce from one menial job to another.
Eventually, Deacon Cummings moved back to Virginia, where he
could stay with his siblings while he got on his feet.

In 2004, at his lowest point, Deacon Cummings gave in to what
he had been avoiding since college. One late night, he found
himself in St. Bridget Church in Richmond – which, for some
reason, had been left unlocked. There he prayed for the first
time since his mother had died.

“I went and I said, basically, ‘I made a mess of my life. If
you help me, I’ll do whatever you want,'” Deacon Cummings
said. “And that started the slow process of me returning to
the Faith. I started going to Mass every Sunday, I went to
confession for the first time in 20 years and it was the
greatest experience of my life. I felt three inches taller,
like I was floating on a cloud.”

Soon Deacon Cummings enrolled in adult confirmation classes.
He was confirmed in June 2005 and joined the church choir. He
began attending Mass several times a week and doing weekly
Holy Hours.

“My friends and family noticed a real change in me,” he said.
“I was not grumpy, not selfish, I tended to be happy a lot
more, and, of course I had gotten my life back.”

Then, things intensified. On Easter Sunday 2006, Deacon
Cummings was singing in the choir during Mass at St. Joseph
Parish in Richmond when he had a deep sense in his heart that
God was telling him something.

“I had a very real sense that I was being told, ‘You said you
would do anything I asked,'” Deacon Cummings said.

For months following that Mass, Deacon Cummings waffled back
and forth with a possible vocation. He got a spiritual
adviser and attended a discernment retreat before finally
applying to the seminary. In July 2007, he was accepted.

Flash forward nearly five years and Deacon Cummings has just
finished his diaconate year- an experience that took some
time getting used to.

“The first couple of weeks were surreal,” he said. “People
were calling me ‘Deacon’ and, it was like, ‘Who are you
talking to? Wow, I really am a deacon. That is so …
weird.'”

For his diaconate year, Deacon Cummings was assigned to St.
Francis of Assisi Parish in Braintree, Mass. While there, he
served in more ways than he could have hoped for and enjoyed
tremendous amounts of support from the parishioners. 

“People love their priests and their deacons and they have
been so fantastic here, so supportive,” he said.

Now, Deacon Cummings is excited to take all the experience he
has gained and put it to work as a priest. He is most excited
about celebrating the sacraments, especially hearing
confession, and discovering how God will use him.

“God uses us broken human beings to work amazing wonders,” he
said. “I’m hoping to bring that love and mercy and tenderness
to those people. To be an instrument of that is what I am
looking forward to.”

Looking back, he said he is grateful for the many positive
role models he has had – from his father to the many priests
he has worked with, to Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. In
his time in the Church, he has come to admire the joy and
peace he has seen in many of those men.

“Being under their tutelage, I’ve seen that they’ve got
something and I want it,” he said. “I want the same message
to go out from me – ‘I don’t know what he’s got, but I want
it.’ What I’ve got is the only thing worth having. It’s all
grace, a gift from God, but it is a wonderful gift that has
made me one of the happiest men I know.”

Deacon Thomas Yehl followed a path from youth
ministry to the priesthood.

By DAVE
BOROWSKI

Catholic Herald Staff Writer

“It’s thrilling and scary all at once,” Deacon Thomas Yehl
said about his impending ordination June 9 at the Cathedral
of St. Thomas More in Arlington. “It’s overwhelming what this
great gift means.”

Deacon Yehl’s journey to priestly ordination started with a
love of youth ministry.
He was born Jan. 8, 1978, to Carolyn and Thomas Yehl. His
father was a cradle Catholic, his mother a convert.

They were a military family. He and his sisters traveled
extensively through Europe with their parents until Deacon
Yehl was 10 years old and the family returned to the United
States.

They settled in Chantilly and became parishioners of St.
Timothy Parish where Deacon Yehl attended the parish school,
was active in the Boy Scouts and served as an altar server.

He graduated from Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax in
1996 and enrolled at the College of William & Mary in
Williamsburg to study government. While at William &
Mary, he was active in the school’s campus ministry.

He also became involved with Youth Apostles. In fact, he was
introduced to the group by a girl he was dating.

“(Youth Apostles) was eye-opening,” he said. “(They were)
young men living their faith in a radical way.” He liked the
interaction between clerics and married and single members.

This was the seed of his discernment.

“They challenged me to live my faith in a more radical way,”
he said.

In 1998, as a junior, he attended an “Encounter with Christ”
retreat for the Richmond Diocese in Troutsville. He met the
diocesan vocations director, Father Michael Renninger.

“Have you ever thought of becoming a priest?” Father
Renninger asked Deacon Yehl.

“I never thought of myself as a priest,” he said.

Deacon Yehl described his feelings toward the priesthood as a
“rollercoaster.”

There was resistance, a pushing forward and then a retreat.
He was still not ready to commit.

He abandoned any plans for a career in government and after
graduating from William & Mary, he took a job as youth
minister at St. Mark Parish in Vienna, still staying
connected to Youth Apostles.

In 2002, he led a contingent of students from St. Mark to
World Youth Day in Toronto and heard Pope John Paul II tell
the pilgrims about vocations and to follow Christ. It was a
defining moment.

A year later, Deacon Yehl left his job as youth minister and
became a consecrated Youth Apostle, committing himself to
poverty, chastity and obedience for one year.

He started taking pre-theology classes at the Dominican House
of Studies in Washington, D.C. At the end of that year, he
committed to a three-year consecration.

He entered Catholic University’s Theological College in
Washington.
Deacon Yehl said that most people think discernment ends at
seminary.

“Seminary is where you discern,” he said. “We go to seminary
to find out.”

He said discernment is a process. You dialogue with fellow
seminarians. 

Deacon Yehl was ordained a transitional deacon last June. He
was assigned to St. Ambrose Parish in Annandale.

After his ordination to the priesthood next month, he said he
hopes to serve at a parish for three years before being
assigned by Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde to a Youth
Apostle home.

Youth Apostles and youth ministry, as he put it, were “pretty
elemental in the discernment process for me.”