(Nov. 6-12, 2022 marks National Vocation Awareness Week for the Catholic Church in the United States, a special time to promote and pray for vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life. In this and two other articles, three new priests with Southern Maryland roots share their vocation stories.)
The Mass of Thanksgiving that Father Ryan Braam, Father Alexander Wyvill and Father Kyle Vance celebrated together in June at St. John Francis Regis Church in Hollywood, Maryland, three days after their ordination as new priests of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, was also a homecoming. All three of the young men had grown up in St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland, and they had all served as counselors at St. John’s Summer Program, which they credited with deepening their faith as they eventually followed the call to become priests.
And for all three priests, that Mass provided them with an opportunity to thank and pray with the Southern Maryland Catholics who had supported them along the way.
“For me, it was beautiful, it was just a chance for all of us to have this opportunity to celebrate with the whole community,” Father Braam said. He added, “There are just so many beautiful things going on in the life of the Church here, (and) the three of us being ordained is a fruition and manifestation of that.”
Father Braam, who is now 27, moved with his family to Leonardtown in 2008, when his father Richard Braam became the chief financial officer of Medstar St. Mary’s Hospital there. The future priest was born in Clinton and lived in Bel Air, Maryland, from when he was 3 to 12 years old. After moving to Leonardtown with his parents and sister, he attended Mass with his family at St. Aloysius Gonzaga, which became his home parish.
‘Convicted in my faith’
His faith took a turning point when he was a sophomore at St. Mary’s Ryken High School in Leonardtown. He said his theology teachers there “answered moral and spiritual questions with such clarity and conviction.” Ryan Braam began meeting regularly with Father Scott Woods, the chaplain there who now serves as the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in La Plata. Father Braam said he began to understand that “I need to live this, (and) having a relationship with the Lord Jesus has concrete demands on my life and affects my entire life.”
While at St. Mary’s Ryken, Ryan Braam ran cross country and participated in the school’s musical theater program, including in a production of “Beauty and the Beast.” After graduating from that high school in 2014, he served as a camp counselor at St. John’s Summer Program, before he began studying computer science at The Catholic University of America that fall.
“I had finished my time at Ryken. I had become really convicted in my faith, and working here for the summer put me in an environment where I could really live that, and have peers around me who were doing the same thing,” Father Braam said. “Going to Mass and Adoration every day, doing those things at camp prepared me for doing those things on my own initiative, once I got to Catholic.”
At Catholic University, he was an altar server at campus Masses, and also served as a an editor of a student pro-life magazine. He remembers that during his first semester, he had been praying the rosary, when the thought came to him that he had never considered being a priest. “I realized that could be a possibility for me (and was) not just for other people,” he said, and after coming to that realization, “that was the door that opened.”
That December, Ryan Braam joined a pilgrimage to Italy with other St. John’s Summer Program participants, and while there, he spoke in a hotel lobby with Father Raymond Schmidt, the longtime pastor of St. John Francis Regis Parish, and told him that he was thinking about becoming a priest.
“He was the first priest I talked to about the priesthood… By the time I talked to him, I was probably 50/50 (about) marriage or priesthood. It was definitely that conversation that kept the momentum going, so a few months later, I was able to say, it’s definitely priesthood,” Father Braam remembered.
He entered the seminary for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2015, studying at Saint John Paul II Seminary and Theological College before his ordination to the priesthood in June 2022. After that initial conversation with Father Schmidt, Father Braam said that priest remained very supportive whenever he saw him in the years that followed, and so it was natural for him to ask St. John’s pastor to vest him at his ordination.
When the newly ordained priest received his assignment letter, he learned that he was being assigned as a parochial vicar to St. John Francis Regis Parish in Hollywood, where he would serve with his friend and mentor, Father Schmidt. And it was the parish where he had served as a counselor in St. John’s Summer Program that had been instrumental in his faith journey.
“I was completely floored,” Father Braam said. “In a lot of ways, it just seemed too good to be true.”
During his years in the seminary, the future priest’s family had moved away from the area, when his father became the chief financial officer for the Archdiocese of Hartford in Connecticut. “Especially in my later years in the seminary, I had a desire to reconnect with the roots of my vocation here in Southern Maryland, in St. Mary’s County,” Father Braam said. “There’s this overwhelming gratitude in being able to come home for the beginning of life as a priest.”
For his part, Father Schmidt said he was shocked and happy to learn that Father Braam would be serving with him at St. John Francis Regis Parish. “He rolled in here, knowing me already through and through. We were close friends,” the pastor said.
Camp and vocations
In August at a closing Mass for this year’s St. John’s Summer Program, Father Schmidt was the main celebrant, and Father Braam, instead of being a counselor as he had in years past, was now a priest at the parish, assisting at the Mass and giving Communion to campers.
In his homily, Father Schmidt noted that earlier that summer, “three counselors from back in the olden days” – Father Braam, Father Wyvill and Father Vance – had been ordained as priests for the archdiocese. “The Holy Spirit touched their hearts…Now the priesthood is a gift given to them,” he said, adding that three camp counselors from the parish would be entering the seminary that fall.
The pastor encouraged the camp participants to pray for vocations, and to pray for Christ to be the center of their lives.
The St. John’s Summer Program, which recently completed its 12th year, wasn’t formed as a vocations program, Father Schmidt said, explaining that a key goal was for it to help college-aged Catholics to keep the faith. That point was echoed by Rich Olon, the parish’s director of religious education and its youth minister, who leads the program.
“They (the counselors) are all at that age where they have to make that decision to make their family’s faith their own,” Olon said. “Hopefully, this is a catalyst for doing that, and at the end of the summer, after daily Mass and Adoration, they’ve decided, ‘This is my faith, this is my Church.’”
The parish website lists four men connected to the parish and its summer program who are in the seminary, and two young women who are in religious life. St. John’s pastor noted that marriage vocations have also blossomed there between some former counselors. That Sunday, he would be baptizing the child of a couple who had been camp counselors together.
“There’s something about the right balance of prayer, peer ministry and serving young people… In that context, God seems to be calling vocations,” Father Schmidt said, adding, “I’m blown away, the graces keep coming.”
St. John’s pastor said he was honored to vest Father Braam at the priest’s ordination, and it was moving to see him along with Father Wyvill and Father Vance ordained that day, knowing that they had previously served as counselors at St. John’s Summer Program, and having watched them mature over the years.
“There was a spark here,” he said.
At home at St. John’s
In an interview, Father Braam spoke about being friends and fellow camp counselors with his two fellow priests, and how special it was for them to be seminarians and then to be ordained together, all sharing that bond of being from Southern Maryland.
He expressed appreciation for the priestly example of Father Schmidt, saying, “I think the biggest thing that speaks to me is the beautiful witness he gives of the humanity of the priesthood. At the end of the day, you just have to be yourself, and the Lord works through that.”
And Father Braam said he is at home serving as a parish priest at St. John Francis Regis, in St. Mary’s County and Southern Maryland where his faith deepened and the seeds for his vocation were planted.
“I’ve loved it… It’s been so beautiful, especially being back here now, being a priest where I was first dreaming and thinking of being a priest. It kind of goes beyond words to see it in fruition,” he said.
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