Finding Home in the Church

A few years ago, if you had come to one of our Wednesday or Sunday Masses on campus, you would have seen a young man at the front of the chapel in bright blue choir robes, singing his heart out with our sacred music choir, Cappella. 

He sang with them every week, not just at Masses, but also for evening prayer in that same chapel, every single day. 

You probably would have been surprised to find out that he wasn’t Catholic. 

A few months ago, though, if you had come to our Easter Vigil, you would have seen that same young man making a profession of faith, and receiving the sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Communion for the very first time. 

If you knew this young man’s story, you’d be equally surprised that he ever found himself standing there. 

This young man’s name is Kalen. 

When he talks about his story and his time here, he starts with a kind of shrug: he didn’t come here expecting to be at the foot of the altar like that last April. He’ d come just to get a music education degree. To prepare for his career. To get in, get out, and think very little of his college years afterward. Cappella provided a huge scholarship benefit to him, and he respected sacred music and thought it was beautiful. But none of it was supposed to mean more to him than that. But God had other plans. That scholarship, that tiny bit of openness Kalen had to beauty and liturgy and prayer, God used to completely upend his life, in the best of ways. Let me share with you Kalen’s story – a heartwarming one for these cold winter months. Kalen’s originally from Minot, a town just over a hundred miles away from Bismarck. 

The University of Mary was the first to get back to him, and we were able to offer him the most generous financial package. So, for Kalen, the pragmatic side of it sold him: “Ok, ” he thought, “then that’s where I want to go. ” Kalen will tell you – with the clarity that hindsight allows – that his was an awfully small way to think about college. But it’s also an incredibly common one. He didn’t expect to be formed here. He didn’t expect to be challenged. He certainly didn’t expect to be changed. And yet, one of the most surprising parts of Kalen’s experience, right from the beginning, is that because of Cappella, his daily rhythm at Mary was happening squarely inside the heart of the Church. Between rehearsals in the Chapel and singing for Masses and evening prayer, liturgical prayer simply became part of his life. 

It planted a seed that would shortly come to fruition. Kalen’s sophomore year, he realized he wanted to pursue some other opportunities in instrumental music, and so he transitioned out of Cappella to focus on jazz and guitar. He dove into his music education major and the broader life of the music department and helped to coordinate music for the “Late Show” on campus, a weekly University Ministry event hosted by our chaplain, Father Bouck. By most measures, his college experience was playing out exactly as planned: classes, rehearsals, friendships, activities to make the days go by. And then, after his sophomore year, everything shifted. Kalen went through a season of significant personal upheaval, leaving him disoriented and struggling. 

He returned to campus without a clear sense of direction and without the community he thought he needed. But despite what he may have thought, Kalen wasn’t alone – he never had been. He’ll tell you plainly that if it had not been for the people who surrounded him during that time, he wouldn’t have stayed. Friends he’d met while in Cappella – and friends of those friends – gathered around him, checking in and showing up and refusing to let Kalen drift away. Among them was a group of young men who did something rare and precious: they offered both support and accountability, assuring Kalen he was going to be okay, and also caring enough to call him higher. They gave him something solid to stand on. 

And then, that September, Kalen received an invitation from Father Bouck to attend OCIA, or faith formation for those who are interested in or curious about entering the Church. The invitation was a little out of the blue, Kalen thought, but it also wasn’t dramatic or pushy. Just an open door. And at the time, he was serving in student government. He figured it would be helpful to understand what Catholics believed if he was going to represent them well. So learning, not conversion, could be his goal. So with another kind of shrug, he went. And then he kept going. Week after week. And the gears started shifting. Kalen and his roommates, in the meantime, made a decision: every week, they’d do something together. His roommates suggested: why don’t we go to Mass? Kalen agreed, and so started going to Mass, again, week after week. 

Because he’d been in Cappella, he knew how to blend in. But the experience was also starting to reach something deeper in him. “There was definitely grace that was working on me, ” he says. This is the community where Kalen’s story first unfolded — week after week, joining in creating beauty he didn’t yet understand was shaping him. Cappella became more than a scholarship or a choir for him; it was the place where God quietly planted the first seeds of faith. 

And then he started to have some regular conversations with Father Bouck. While answering questions and counseling him through some difficulties in his personal life, he told Kalen, “Just go be in front of the Eucharist. You don’t believe in it yet, and maybe you won’t ever. But just go be in the presence of the Eucharist. You’ll get something out of it. ” So Kalen did. And the first time, he remembers feeling a little overwhelmed, like he was “doing it wrong. ” But then, after he’d settled down and gotten out of his head, there was an immediate experience of peace. And slowly but surely the realization dawned on him: he actually wanted to join the Church. “It was a big flip, ” Kalen said. “I’d just been praying, going to adoration, not quite understanding the complexities of it, but just being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. 

And I suddenly thought: this is something I w a n t.” So that spring, Kalen did come into the Church. He says that he was nervous the whole time – until the profession of faith. At that moment, there was peace. Kalen was no longer shaking, his heart no longer beating out of his chest. And then he remembers receiving the Eucharist – being given the Body of Christ, and then turning around and seeing this community who were also all connected in the Body of Christ. Feeling – finally – fully in communion with them, with those who had so supported him, in all the ups and downs of his years here. “I felt complete, ” Kalen said, “and home. ” A few weeks later, Kalen went to Rome with a few dozen other students for the “Maymester, ” and while there, got to see the election of Pope Leo. 

It was a profound experience of the immensity and generosity of the Church for him, one that reassured him of something we try to form our students in all the time: that they’re meant to give everything they are and have away; that their life isn’t just for them. So as Kalen has returned for his senior year, he’s looking for ways to foster what happened for him in the life of our whole community. “I remember looking at the freshmen that were coming in this year, ” Kalen said, “and realizing that they’re not even aware of all the things that the University can give them. But if they allow it to, it can transform them. The University of Mary is structured in a way that being Catholic really forms its identity. And that identity extends into its students’ lives, whether or not they know it. I didn’t know it at first; I wasn’t aware of it. “But then,” he said, “it changed me.” 

When he arrived at Mary, he didn’t realize that these simple moments were weaving him into the community that would eventually lead him to the Church and to a sense of home he had never known before. What began as a simple desire to study music led Kalen, step by step, to this sanctuary, surrounded by the community that had supported him through every season of college life. On this night, as he received the Eucharist for the first time, he felt that peaceful sense of belonging, knowing that he was finally home. 

The experience was a powerful reminder that his life and his story are part of something much larger than himself, something ancient and alive. 

Continue exploring: Discover more stories of lives shaped by faith, learning, and service at www.umary.edu/about/student-stories.