Photo of Fr. Ken Molinaro, C.S.C., provided by Fr. David Smith, C.S.C.
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
Posted in conjunction with Fr. Ken’s Funeral Mass on February 16, 2026
Fr. Ken is man you will never meet. Who simply loved the lord. He was a teacher and then the principal of an all boy’s high school in Chicago, as rowdy and rough as something with that description can be. And in the middle of the gym, during something like an all school assembly, when every student was there before a big game or winter break, when joy and testosterone meet in that chaotic mosh pit we call an all-boys assembly, Fr. Ken could bring the entire room to perfect, profound silence simply by standing up from his chair.
Silence didn’t fall because he was a fierce disciplinarian. No, it was because of a respect those students had for him that is difficult to describe. They would grow silent because the one truth that everyone who entered that school knew was that he loved them. They knew this because their older brothers told them, or the upper classmen on the team either said it, or they showed it by how they talked about him. It might have been how he was there late at night when their uncle died, administering last rites. Or that look from his eyes when they were called to his office that showed in an instant he wanted nothing less than the best, most joyful, truly happiest version of themselves. Or something he said in the confessional that only the penitent heard. He, in his person, was a font of God’s love, of God’s redemption. Everyone knew that Fr. Ken brought with him something more than himself. He pointed to something else, someone else, just by being there.
Fr. Ken had many roles: at one point, he was the provincial vicar, the one who was tasked with telling priests and brothers their obedience, asking them to take on a role they might not expect, or might not feel prepared for. Fr. Ken, in that role, was sent to tell the high school he was principle of for so many years, that Holy Cross was leaving.
A friend once asked his advice because he was asked to take on an assignment he never considered, one that would be incredibly challenging, and that he was hesitant to say yes to. Fr. Ken’s response was: you, you already gave your answer years ago when you were kneeling in the basilica and made your vows. Now the question is only: how you will be faithful to that promise?
Fr. Ken was my novice master. He’s the one who ended every conference with the prayer we end every conference with. He would constantly reference the suscipe: Take, Lord, receive, all that I am. Everything you gave me, I give it back, and hold nothing back. Your love and grace is enough for me. I can hear it so clearly, his own voice saying “Gentlemen, after some forty years of life in Holy Cross, I can tell you this: it is enough. His love and grace is enough.”
Often we novices would find our way into his office, usually at night after compline, to talk through a crisis about discernment, or challenges in prayer, or just to talk through the difficultly of living with our other classmates, who were probably saying the same thing to him about us, just minutes before. And he would listen. So quietly, with such calm and understanding. But when he would speak, it would be with amazingly soft eyes and with a simple, clear, gentle comment, that would cut through any darkness or doubt or gloom. He spoke from a place that knew Christ, and wanted only for us to know how we were being asked to follow Him as well.
You will not meet Fr. Ken. He has become what he prayed so often. A few years ago his mind started slipping. He forgot little things, who was in charge of prayer that day, who was assigned to cook. Then big things, if he had already given the novices this lesson or not. His body started to break down as well. My parents got to know Fr. Ken from their visits to the novitiate, and of course from my own stories. So when they heard about Fr. Ken’s decline they were touched by how humbly he admitted that his time as novice master had to come to an end. Near the time of when Fr. Ken could no longer stay at the novitiate, my parents wrote to him to share prayers, gratitude, and how his witness helped them as they also navigated diagnoses. A few years later, when I was back on Notre Dame’s campus, Fr. Ken pulled me aside after a social. He described how much he appreciated that note and he wanted to reply. But each time he tried, either his hands shook so much that he couldn’t put his thoughts on the page, or when his hands stopped shaking his mind couldn’t form the sentence. But he wanted to let them know how much that letter they wrote him that letter meant to him.
He doesn’t really speak much anymore. He rarely even opens his eyes. Its hard to tell if he knows who is next to him. His mind, his plans, even his memories have slipped away. But if I know one thing, it is that even now he loves the Lord with everything he is, with his whole self. And now he has become a different font of God’s love, now he is a way for us to love the Lord, in our caring for him, him: he who was baptized into Christ’s Body, he, who vowed himself into conformity with Jesus, he, who bears in himself the very image and likeness of God. We in Holy Cross now have the chance to attend to him and his needs, just as he did for so many of us.
The vows orient us to mission. But our mission is not measured according to the world. Success is real success, glory is real glory, and greatness matters. But our mission is the Lords, and success and greatness will only matter if it looks like the Lords, which looks like giving yourself away.
It remains for us to show how even what is the cross can bear fruit, how even weakness can reveal God’s glory, how His love is more than enough.
Fr. Gil Story, C.S.C.
Provided by the Vocations Office, February 2026.
