Robert Ketcham sorts through donated backpacks while volunteering at St. Joseph the Worker Parish, East Patchogue, in the summer of 2004. TLIC photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

After graduation from SUNY Oswego with an education degree, Deacon Robert Ketcham returned to his family home in East Moriches unsure about where his life was going.
“I came home to figure out what I wanted to do,” he said, returning to the part-time jobs he had as a teenager, working in a golf club and a restaurant and playing in a rock band. “I was overwhelmed. I began to pray for guidance with some friends in the Church,” he said.

Mike Clauberg, the youth minister at his parish, St. John the Evangelist, Center Moriches, would often approach Deacon Ketcham and ask if he would like to stay around after Mass with the LifeTeen group. When he finally decided to join the group one evening, “it felt like home,” Deacon Ketcham recalled.

Soon, he was one of six assistant youth ministers invited by Clauberg to take part in the St. Louis de Montfort Way of Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. “We came together for 33 nights and prayed together in front of the tabernacle. By the end of that consecration, I knew I was being called to the priesthood. It became very clear.”
Although he came from a family that placed a great value on religion, Deacon Ketcham said he had never seriously thought about the priesthood. “While the call came out of nowhere, I was always open to doing God’s will, and it was up to Him to choose the time to disclose it,” he said. “My parents had the courage to bring the faith into the home. I grew up in a Catholic household that took Mass very seriously, and the grace of the Sunday celebration overflowed into our lives.”

His father, a convert from the Methodist faith, and his mother are both devoted to the Blessed Mother.

“The rosary was always being prayed in our house. I was praying the rosary, even through college,” he recalled. “To walk through the mysteries of Christ helps me keep things in focus. The mysteries begin and end with Our Lady. She’s had me in her care all along ... She’ll bring me through and lead me to Our Lord.”

His mother had a rosary group that gathered in their home when he was a teenager. “I was a teenager with long greasy hair who used to shuffle in and out while they prayed. Little did they know that greasy guy was going to be a priest someday.”
His parents, Carol and Bob, and older sister, Tamara, have been very supportive of his decision.

In 2002, Deacon Ketcham went on a pilgrimage to the scene of Marian apparitions in Medjugorje. The pilgrimage was led by Father Charles Mangano, for young men discerning a vocation. Deacon Ketcham has returned three times to assist with these pilgrimages.

Deacon Ketcham likes to sing and play the guitar and is grateful to be able to use his talents as part of his ministry. “I was willing to give that up, to give the music up, to do whatever it took to become a priest, and then He gave it back. I now play at Mass. I sing for Jesus, using music to serve Him, to draw people toward Him.”

In his rock band, Deacon Ketcham always felt he was “the essential unnoticed” as the bass player who added to the sound without drawing attention to himself. “That’s one reason I knew this must have been a vocation. It was something I didn’t imagine myself being able to do at all. I could never speak in public. I’d get embarrassed just thinking about it,” he said. “I asked God to give me the grace to do it.

“The more I stepped on the altar, the more I felt comfortable,” he said. He got plenty of practice during his pastoral year at St. Bernard, Levittown and serving at Our Lady of Victory, Floral Park, as a transitional deacon.

“I love to speak to people about God, to talk to people about Jesus, to talk and teach about salvation history,” said Deacon Ketcham, who wants to be part of “re-catechizing my generation.”

When he realized he wanted to be a priest, Deacon Ketcham told his pastor, Father John McCartney, “Seeing you live your priesthood enabled me to recognize my own.”
“He lives his priesthood so beautifully, so profoundly, so humbly and simply and devoutly, that I was blown away by it. He has been a terrific friend and support throughout,” he said.

“The world says, ‘How could you want to be a priest? How could you want to give up marriage?’ As beautiful as these other (vocations) are, so is the priesthood. I don’t feel unhappy. It is a joyful sacrifice,” he said.