Friday, 18 May 2012 03:58

By Christopher M. Riggs
When Father Dwight Birket was lying in front of the altar during the Litany of the Saints at his ordination on May 27, 1972, he said his thoughts were “Holy Spirit you’re going to have to get me through this because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The Holy Spirit did so, he added. “Those 40 years went fast!”
Fr. Birket, a native of Wichita and a graduate of Chaplain Kapaun Memorial High School, will retire from active priestly ministry on June 11.
His path to the seminary started in his high school cafeteria when the principal passed around a questionnaire about what the senior boys were going to do the next year.
“I had thought about a lot of things. I had thought about being a history teacher and I had thought about the priesthood, too, so I put that down,” he said in an interview last week.
After a visit from the director of vocations, Father Ed Steinberger, he met with Bishop Leo C. Byrne and agreed to begin seminary study. “I went without any clear idea what seminary was going to be like and what priesthood was going to be like,” he said.
Father Birket attended seminaries in Wisconsin and finished his studies at St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. “I just met great people, had great teachers, just a really positive experience,” he said.
After his ordination he met with the bishop again and told him he would do anything but teach high school.
The newly-ordained Fr. Birket was assigned to teach part-time at Bishop Carroll High School and live at St. Francis of Assisi Parish. He was later assigned to diocesan youth ministry and work at the Chancery.
“They were great experiences, things that I had never thought of doing – except the history teaching – that I wanted to do,” he said. “I ended up teaching church history for nine years at Bishop Carroll High School so the Lord let that happen too. Those were great years.”

Father Birket’s next adventure was an assignment as a pastor at a mission in Barquisimeto, Venezuela.
“When I went I had no idea what the mission was like,” he said, adding that he could have been dropped off in the jungle to a shack and said this is it, “because that’s all I knew about the mission.”
He found himself with other priests of the diocese, however, in a city much larger than Wichita.
“You kind of go with the idea that I’m going to go and help these people,” he said. “The learning curve was for me, not for them.”
He said he learned to appreciate the Hispanic culture and recalled a story when he became perturbed after being repeatedly interrupted by youth who came late to a Saturday afternoon meeting.
“I finally said. ‘When you come late, sit in the back. You know you’re disturbing the meeting and we’ve got to get through this material,’” he said. “They were incensed at me and came up later and said Father, ‘What’s more important, what’s on your piece of paper or us getting together and having a good time and appreciating one another.’”
After three years he was recalled to Kansas to pastor the two parishes at Wellington and later served at several other parishes, including some in the Diocese of Dodge City.
“To me that’s what the heart of the priesthood is all about, pastor work. That’s where I really found, probably, the most fulfillment in the priesthood.”
Despite the blessing of many vocations in the Diocese of Wichita, Father Birket said it surprises him that there aren’t even more young men in the seminary.
“I suppose from their perspective they see the priest on Sunday preaching,” he said, “but there’s so much more to being a priest than just those things – the things you do out of necessity. There are so many other things that really are the heart of what it means to be a priest.
“It’s like a blank sheet, you don’t know what’s coming, but the Lord accompanies you the whole way.”