Former chef received some ‘food for thought’ from Archbishop Aymond

By FATHER KENNETH SMITH
Guest columnist

As a child growing up in Natchitoches, Louisiana, I wasn’t very athletically inclined, so my kitchen at home became my comfort zone, the place where I learned how to cook and bake from an early age.

I remember using my mother’s “Betty Crocker Cookbook” to guide my first solo culinary effort: a chocolate-frosted cake, made completely from scratch. It turned out great, and I was hooked!

I graduated from Delgado Community College’s Culinary Arts Program, ultimately rising to the position of executive chef at the Upperline Restaurant in New Orleans. I even had the thrill of having my recipes featured several times in the New York Times.

But in 2010 at age 49, at the “the top of my game” professionally, I gave up my career as a chef to study for the priesthood at Notre Dame Seminary.

Say what?

Here’s the story.

I had felt a tug toward the priesthood since the fifth grade, but had ignored it. When I was well into my 40s, I still felt drawn to the idea of becoming a priest, but I assumed it was too late for me to consider this vocation.

This mindset began to change when one of my customers at the Upperline gave me a prayer card listing a meditation written by St. Ignatius Loyola. The prayer read, in part:

“Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess you have given me. I surrender it all to you to be disposed of according to your will.”

The person who gave me the prayer card was none other than Archbishop Gregory Aymond.

When I first read the prayer, I thought, “This is too hard to even say, because it’s asking me to let everything go!” At the time, I had this very nice apartment and an extraordinarily nice kitchen, and I’m praying to “let things go?” I told myself, “No! I’ve worked too hard for this stuff!” 

But I took the prayer card and tucked it into my Bible.

Around the same time, I started attending daily Mass at my neighborhood parish of Mater Dolorosa Church and found myself riveted by the Masses celebrated by Father Francis Ferrié, one of the resident priests. I began sitting in the front pew and soon realized that the “surrender” prayer that Archbishop Aymond had offered me was getting easier and easier to say!

The next time I saw the archbishop at the restaurant, I marched right up to his table, shook his hand and asked him, “What’s the process to become a priest?” He answered, “Talk to the bishop.”

Of course, I was talking to the bishop – and the rest is history!

During my year as a transitional deacon at St. Rita Church in Harahan, I assisted at Masses, funerals, baptisms and hospital emergency calls. I also took the Blessed Sacrament to the homebound, which gave me the opportunity to comfort people and be part of their lives at times when they weren’t able to attend Mass in person. I had the humble honor of bringing them the Lord.

After being ordained to the priesthood in 2016, I discovered a love for administering the sacrament of the anointing of the sick and ministering to the loved ones of the sick and dying. Priests get to be a part of people’s lives when they’re at their lowest – when they’re scared and unsure if or when they will ever leave the hospital.

A year-and-a-half ago, I was assigned as the Catholic chaplain at East Jefferson Hospital, where listening to the sick, offering them the sacraments and comforting their families is a full-time ministry.

The moments of grace I have experienced in hospital ministry are too numerous to list, but one that sticks out is the time I was asked to remain in the room of a 24-year-old patient whose mother was too grief-stricken to witness her daughter’s disconnection from life support. After the young woman passed away, it was wonderful to be able to tell her mother that she hadn’t suffered, but rather, had drifted away peacefully.

Moments such as these continue to reaffirm my decision to become a priest. All the cooking accolades in the world could never top it!

Father Kenneth Smith, 61, is a priest in residence at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Metairie.