Father Kelly became Catholic as an adult National Vocation Awareness Week 2009 is Jan. 11-17. Fr. Darrell Kelly, SVD, pastor of Holy Ghost Parish in Jackson, talks about a journey which began by his “being baptized as a part of a very devoted Baptist family in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.”
By Fr. Kent Bowlds
Those who knew him as a soldier during Operation Desert Storm or later as a guard at Parchman penitentiary would have been surprised to know what the future held for Darrell Kelly, but “God writes straight with crooked lines,” as the saying goes.
In fourth grade he started attending St. Gabriel Catholic School in Mound Bayou, taught by Oblate Sisters of Providence and priests of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), where weekday Mass was mandatory even for faithful Baptists like young Father Kelly. It was a couple of years later that he first felt the desire to become a religious brother — “not as a priest, because I thought they had to work too hard!”
The SVD priests listened to and encouraged him. “Back then, I think it was possible for priests to have a closer relationship with students and I enjoyed that and trusted them.”
Even his mother gave the young Father Kelly a freedom she did not have as a child – to choose his denomination, but because of the questions and concerns of his large and close extended family, a priest advised him to postpone becoming Catholic, which Father Kelly did until he was in his 30s.
“As a child I was drawn to the role that priests and nuns played, the structure of the Mass, and most of all that reverence and mystique surrounding the Mass. It was a gut feeling; don’t ask me how I knew it was right for me, I just knew,” says Fr. Kelly. “It was like my grandmother used to tell me – ‘if God wants you to know something, then you will know it, but how you know it you won’t be able to explain.’”
As an adult Father Kelly served in the military and was involved in Operation Desert Storm. “They would laugh at me, because even though I was still Baptist, during stressful times they would catch me making the sign of the cross, hear me praying a Hail Mary, or see me using my fingers to say the Rosary; it’s amazing what you remember from your childhood.”
When he returned to Mound Bayou and while working at Parchman, Father Kelly felt restless. “It’s like I tell teenagers now – that some people always have to have the latest car or cell phone, which can be a sign that they have a void in their lives and are thinking the newest and latest toys will fill that void – which is really the desire to be closer to God. Acting on that deep desire is the only way to find peace.”
On impulse one weekend, though he was still regularly attending the Baptist church, Father Kelly went to Mass and was surprised to find that “nothing had changed, except when I first knelt I thought they had shortened the backs of the pews!” It felt like coming home. After Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) instructions and through leadership of St. Gabriel’s lay ecclesial minister, Brother Pius Kamphefner, FSC, Father Kelly was confirmed a Catholic on Easter 1996.
He was surprised his decision brought about misunderstanding and even animosity from some of his coworkers at Parchman, and was equally surprised by the support and protection he received from the Catholic inmates. “My Catholic faith was really being tested, but, to show how God works, it was those inmates who watched my back . . . humorous, but serious at the same time.”
And then a familiar call from his childhood came back, after a tragedy from which he miraculously bears few scars. He was cooking for his family – celebrating completion of the kitchen in the house he was renovating – when a grease fire explosion burned him. “When I walked into the emergency room, people stopped talking; I didn’t realize how bad I looked.”
“Looking back I think it was God’s way of slowing me down to spend some time with him.” It was during recuperation that Father Kelly reflected and realized that God had been molding him, through all of his experiences, for the priesthood.
“I asked Brother Pius, ‘Do you think God could really want a self-centered, quick-tempered person like me to be a priest?’ Brother Pius jokingly responded, ‘You just described half the priests in the world, so one more won’t make any difference!”’
And when the rest of the obstacles he had constructed in his mind started to crumble, Father Kelly knew he was headed in the right direction. An important catalyst was a cherished cousin who told him, “I have seen positive changes in you since you became Catholic, and I think God is calling you to be a priest, so don’t look back.”
Father Kelly, now 47, was ordained in 2005, and has served in two other parishes before being named pastor at Holy Ghost. “I’m happy here, and apparently the people here are happy, too; they are always willing to get involved and are very encouraging.”
He advises others to look not so much for a voice from God to speak to them, but to take time for prayer, and to trust, knowing that God will use other people to give good advice, and to pay attention to an inner peace that remains when one is headed in the right direction.
“With me, it was a happiness that I wanted to share, to help others feel the same joy . . . . What can I say? I’m blessed.” (“Hearing the Call” is a monthly series of interviews with people who “have welcomed Christ’s call . . . to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world” (Catechism, par. #3). To submit ideas or comments contact Fr. Kent Bowlds, Vocation Director, 601-944-9844.)
