From the Cemetery to the Seminary: How Serving the Dead Brought Four Vocations to Life
- Kristine Newkirk
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
Through tending graves, comforting the grieving and witnessing the Church’s prayers for the dead, these seminarians learned what it truly means to shepherd souls.
Zach Welton’s first funeral at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Wheat Ridge was unlike anything he’d experienced before. Assigned to assist with a monthly burial service called “Precious Lives,” he found himself standing in a grave, reaching up to receive tiny caskets for grieving families, each holding the remains of a miscarried or stillborn child.
There were no lowering devices for these burials. The caskets were too small. So Zach, a former truck driver discerning a call to the priesthood, climbed down into the earth himself. One by one, the families passed him tokens of love — teddy bears, matchbox cars, flowers and notes.
“I was ready to cry,” he recalled, “but I didn’t want to take that moment from the families. I just prayed, ‘Lord, let me be a beacon of hope for these families who have gone through the unthinkable.’”
Far more than a job requirement, for Welton, it was a glimpse into the priesthood he was beginning to envision, a life where he would be blessed to accompany others in the mystery of life and death.
“As we would be lowering a casket or placing cremains, there would be the beautiful moment with me and the person who crossed hanging on the cross of Christ,” he explained. “This is what it means to be a priest, being called to shepherd.”
It’s no small thing burying the dead, which is why the line that connects four seminarians now at the Archdiocese of Denver is worth tracing. Zach Welton, Isaac Cunnings, Greg Hitschler and James Hochanadel all spent time tending to the dead before answering the call to serve the living. In deepening discernment, each man followed that line from cemetery work into formation at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver.
$7 and a Sign
For Welton, that whisper of vocation came after a long drive back from Wyoming, when he was feeling disillusioned with the secular grind.
“I was chasing money, and feeling pretty desolate,” he said. “I told the Lord, ‘I don’t think you want me here.’”
He applied for a job at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Arvada, but when nothing opened up, he turned to the diocesan website. The listing for Mount Olivet “jumped off the page.”
It came with a steep pay cut — $13 or $14 less per hour than his trucking job. After doing some quick math while walking through Walmart, Welton realized it would all work out.
“After bills and food, I’d have $7 left over each week. But seven is the number of completion in the Bible. I accepted the job,” he said.
He worked at Mount Olivet for nearly 18 months as he discerned next steps. Encouraged by fellow cemetery worker Isaac Cunnings, Welton began his seminary application.
“Isaac said, ‘I’m going to seminary this year — you should apply,’” he remembered. “He inspired me to get back on the horse.”
Where Stillness Speaks
Cunnings’ own path to seminary was also enriched by a stop at Mount Olivet. A former high school math teacher in St. Louis, he returned to Colorado, having heard the Lord’s call, but needed a summer job before seminary began. Mount Olivet was just blocks from his home in Arvada, and his brother had worked there before, so he applied.
As a seasonal worker, Cunnings spent his summer outdoors, tamping graves, laying sod and watering the earth.
“I’d recognize some of the graves,” he said. “I’d think about those people, pray for them, hope they were in Heaven with the Lord.”
The cemetery became a place of reflection for him.
“I contemplated my own death,” Cunnings admitted. “I wondered if I was ready to meet the Lord.”
He found beauty in the ponds used for irrigation, in the birds that gathered there, in the simple act of making the grounds peaceful for grieving families.
“Hopefully, the beauty of the place reminds them of God,” he said.
A Deeper Understanding
Both men found that working among the dead deepened their understanding of Catholicism — especially the Church’s teachings on eternal life, purgatory and the Communion of Saints.
“Purgatory is a grace we don’t deserve,” Welton said. “We don’t even deserve Heaven, but God’s merciful enough that he wants us to be with him.”
Cunnings echoed that sentiment, often imagining the souls of the departed looking down from Heaven.
“There’s a juxtaposition,” he said, “between the sadness of missing someone and the happiness of the souls in Heaven.”
Their time at Mount Olivet also shaped their vision for priestly ministry. Welton spoke of the reverence he witnessed during burial rites — the priest performing funeral rites, the physicality of placing those we love in their final resting place.
This was especially poignant when his own grandmother passed away.
“She’s the reason I’m Catholic,” he said. “I got to place her in her grave myself. I wasn’t sad; I was sorrowful. But I felt joy knowing she was going home.”
Cunnings, too, began to wonder what it might mean to minister to the dying and their families.
“How do you comfort someone who’s lost a child?” he asked. “Even one who died in the womb? People are really suffering. How would I even begin to console them?”
Essential questions like these are now part of their formation. Cunnings is in Pre-Theology I, studying philosophy to prepare for theology. Welton is in the Propaedeutic Stage, focusing on studies, prayer and community.
Bonds Carried Forward
Welton and Cunnings met at the cemetery, along with fellow seminarian Greg Hitschler, who, like James Hochanadel, is a former cemetery worker now in seminary for the Archdiocese of Denver.
“Greg supported me through my interview, and I was there when he had his interview,” Welton said of their time discerning. “There was a level of brotherhood we developed since we were both interested in the priesthood.”
Cunnings remembered working alongside Hitschler, too.
“We didn’t just check boxes,” he said of their work honoring the dead and comforting the living. “We asked, ‘How can we make this place more beautiful?’”
As November unfolds — the Month of All Souls and End-of-Life Awareness — the stories of these seminarians offer an invitation to reflect and to recognize that the Holy Spirit draws the line that leads us in service to the Lord.
“Everything you do as a priest is out of love for someone else,” Welton said. “It’s never about you. It’s about God, or someone else. Hopefully, both at the same time.”
Editor’s Note: Greg Hitschler and James Hochanadel are in their Spirituality Year for the Archdiocese of Denver and were not available for interview.
