Deacon Will Nyce was born March 14, 1990, in Washington, to Chris
and Carol Nyce, the oldest of their six children. He graduated from Bishop
O’Connell High School in Arlington in 2008. Deacon Nyce earned a bachelor’s in
economics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2011. After
college, he taught English at a seminary in Bethlehem, Israel (2011-12).
He entered the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio,
in 2013. Two years later, he was sent to the Pontifical North America College
in Rome.
He is a parishioner of St. Veronica Church in Chantilly, where he
worked with a parish maintenance crew (2013) while applying to the seminary.
“It was a wonderful boost for my vocation,” he said.
Deacon Nyce spent the summer of 2018 at All Saints Church in
Manassas where he was able to preach and baptize for the first time. He then
returned to Rome for his last year of seminary formation. While in Rome, he has
accompanied students from Christendom College on their “Rome Semester” and worked
with the Missionaries of Charity at their home for at-risk women, where there
is a daily meal for homeless men.
“Both experiences have been a great joy — preaching to some
students who are ‘on fire’ for the faith and fiercely in love with the church
as the bride of Christ — and serving some of the tough men who find themselves
on the streets of Rome, but who I have discovered can have hearts that are wide
open to receiving the Gospel,” said Deacon Nyce.
“If deacons are meant to conform their life to their service of
Christ’s members in charity, I think the priesthood is the conformity to the
cross of Jesus in love,” he said. “I’ll be able to say more after hopefully
many years of priestly ministry, but from what I have gleaned from experienced
priests, priestly ordination is laying down one’s life in the same love story
of self-sacrifice that Our Lord first perfected for us.”
Other summer assignments have included St. Catherine of Siena
Church in Great Falls (2014); Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Winchester (2015);
a parish abroad in Belluno, Italy (2016); and St. Lawrence Church in Alexandria
(2017).
“All of these assignments have a special place in my heart. I was
warmly welcomed at each church to which I was assigned, and it was awesome to
see God at work in his people — families, youth, the elderly, in so many
different contexts but all animated by the same faith and love that has been
poured into our hearts,” said Deacon Nyce.
