Catching up with Monsignor Jed Patrick

Tell me about yourself
I grew up in Ironwood in the late 1940s and early 50s when the post-war economy was very healthy and the Gogebic Range iron and White Pine copper mines were still operating. Ironwood was a thriving community of about 11,000, a shopping destination for the Western UP, including nearby Wisconsin resort communities.  It was exciting, wholesome and fun to be a “kid” there in those years.
I was named after my father and his father John and my mom’s dad Edward, but immediately my family nicknamed me “Jed” to avoid any “John confusion” at home! To this day, if someone calls me “John” I have to think twice before I realize they are talking to me!
My mom Katie was a stay-at-home mom in those early years and my dad was involved in a furniture/funeral business with Joe McKevitt, brother of Monsignor Nolan McKevitt, a longtime St. Peter Cathedral pastor. I am the oldest of two brothers, David and Michael, and a sister Mary Ann. Our parents were hard workers and taught us a strong work ethic, but with lots of family fun mixed in. I remember having a paper route in junior high and always had a summer job in high school and college, in the furniture store, the local movie theater and a local supermarket. We always had our home chores too. But lots of weekend family outings were a big part of our family life. It was a good, safe and much simpler time in which to grow up, so playing outdoors year around by the hour with neighborhood friends and riding our bikes all over Ironwood occupied much of my early years. I am so grateful for my good parents and siblings. It was a very happy childhood.
Our family belonged to St. Ambrose Parish. We attended Mass every Sunday and weekly catechism classes before I started to attend St. Ambrose School in 5th grade. The good Manitowoc Franciscan sisters staffed the grade school then. The school day always began with Mass at 8 a.m. We were expected to be in church by 8:30 to be “on time” for school, so the Mass (in Latin) was always filled with much commotion as grade and high school students came noisily down the aisle. We walked 15 minutes to church each school morning. In those years the grade school was located in an abandoned, refurbished wooden court house on the other side of town, so after Mass the entire grade school processed, rain, snow or sunshine, through downtown Ironwood, two by two, with the sisters walking with us. It was quite a sight. There was no school bus service for the Catholic school then. The Catholic junior and senior high school classrooms were housed in a large wooden three story building a block from the church, with an attached drafty convent, housing a large group of sisters who staffed both the grade and high school. All this changed a few years later when a new convent and school were built.

When did you feel the call to the priesthood? 
I am grateful for my parents’ deep faith and the faith of my extended family. With this background, I began thinking vaguely about the priesthood  in seventh and eighth grades. We had a young priest in the parish who spent a lot of time with the youth and I liked what I saw him doing. That attracted me. I was also attracted to the Mass and tried to get to Mass by 8 a.m. every school morning. That attraction to the Mass was enhanced when I began assisting as a Mass Server. I remember Sister Kenneth, a very dynamic nun, asking us to write an essay on “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I wrote about being interested in the priesthood. This got reported immediately to the pastor, Msgr. Joseph Seifert, who called me in to his office and then came to visit my folks. That got the ball rolling and I entered St. Lawrence Minor Seminary, Mt. Calvary, Wis., staffed by the Capuchin Franciscans, in September 1956 as a high school freshman. St. Lawrence was a six-year program, including junior college.This was followed by two years of philosophy at St. Francis Major Seminary, Milwaukee. I studied theology in Rome and was ordained to the priesthood in St. Peter Basilica on Dec. 21, 1967, the Class of 1968. My early somewhat vague attraction to the priesthood grew deeper and stronger throughout those 12 years of seminary formation and through the example and support of my seminary classmates.
I have loved being a priest for almost 55 years. Two things stand out as “favorite aspects” of being a priest: the celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and the privilege of walking and growing in faith with so many good people who have been a part of my years serving in various U.P. parishes in Marquette, Menominee, Escanaba, Trenary, Negaunee, Palmer and Gladstone. Being invited into their lives at significant moments, joyful and sorrowful, has been such a blessing.

What have you been up to during your retirement?
With the assistance of our priest retirement pension through the St. Joseph Association and other personal financial resources, I was able to retire from pastoral ministry at St. Michael Parish, Marquette, and enter Senior Priest Status, in July 2009. My priesthood had come full circle with my pastorate there for 14 years. I had begun as an associate pastor there in July 1968. I am grateful to the good people of the diocese for their generous support of the St. Joseph Association through the Good Shepherd Sunday special collection.
Some years ago, I had a placed a double-wide mobile home on some property on E. Bass Lake in Gwinn as a future retirement home. After open heart surgery for an aortic valve replacement within two months of my retirement, I recovered quickly to retire in earnest! During my senior priest years, I have been available to substitute in parishes in our diocese in the summer and then in a West Palm Beach, Fla., downtown parish in the winter months. 
For several years, between 2012-2021, I also ministered part time on behalf of Cross Catholic Outreach, an organization which raises funds to support the outreach ministry of Catholic priests, brothers, sisters and lay missionaries and their programs and projects that reach out to the poorest of the poor in over 28 mission countries. I loved traveling to parishes on the weekends all over the country, usually taking a pastor’s place, celebrating the weekend Masses and speaking on behalf of the needs of the poor and the missionaries who heroically serve them. Our American Catholics are so generous in responding to the needs of the poor in mission countries. It was a humbling honor for me to be a part of that ministry.
 Retirement has given me time for quiet, prayer, reading, listening to music, traveling to visit family and friends, working in my yard, and walking daily. I suppose I could say these are my “hobbies."

Who is a person in your life that has influenced your Catholic faith?
St. Pope John XXIII and his vision for the Church and the world as articulated in the Second Vatican Council has touched me deeply. It was interesting to live and study in Rome during the last two sessions of the Council and to grow up as a priest in the enthusiasm of those early years after the Council. But, I think, the person who has influenced me and my faith the most, in addition to my good parents, are the “persons in the pews,” to whom and with whom I have been privileged to serve as a priest. I have been deeply inspired by the goodness and enthusiasm of so many children and youth, by the sacrifices and hard work of parents, by the generosity and devotion of our elders. All along, but especially during these recent challenging years for the Church, their faith-filled and loving example has been a profound gift to me and sustained my faith as a priest.

Who is your favorite saint and why?
I would say it is my patron, St. John the Evangelist, also referred to as the “beloved disciple” in the gospels. I never asked them, but I don’t think my parents thought much about which St. John they were naming me after, but I really don’t know that for sure. Anyway, for some time I have been attracted to him because of his closeness to Jesus, as we hear related in the various gospels. He and Peter and James were often with Jesus for special moments in His life and ministry. As I strive to develop a closer friendship with Jesus at this point in my spiritual journey, I look to St. John for his inspiration and intercession. 

What advice do you have for Catholics, young and old?
I would advise focusing on the essentials of our Catholic Faith. We were created to live with God forever. This is our destiny. Jesus is the way to the Father. The daily challenge is to invite the Holy Spirit to teach us Jesus’ loving and serving ways and to help us to make them our own. I find that doing this with the support and example of other people of faith in the community of the church is important to my persevering, knowing that I am not alone in this endeavor. I also find that remaining close to Jesus, present in the Eucharist, is essential to me in this faith journey of loving service. That is what I try to practice myself and what I would say to others.