Catholic priest celebrates Mass atop Colorado’s highest peaks

Denver, Colo., Oct 13, 2024 / 07:00 am

The state of Colorado is home to 54 “14ers” — mountain peaks that are at least 14,000 feet above sea level. The difficulty of these summits ranges from easy to what many would consider dangerous. Many Coloradoans have completed at least one 14er, but Father John Nepil, the vice rector and a professor of theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in the Archdiocese of Denver, is one of the few who can say he has summited all 54 peaks — not once but twice.

Nepil hiked his first 14er when he was in seventh grade and hated it. However, soon after, “something awoke in me and I fell in love, and I’ve been climbing them ever since,” he told CNA in an interview.

When Nepil was in his 20s he completed all 54 14ers for the first time. Last year, on the feast of the Guardian Angels, atop Mount of the Holy Cross, he completed the 54 for a second time — this time as a priest and with the celebration of Mass at the top of each peak.

The first Mass he celebrated at the top of a 14er was a week after his ordination in May 2011. Now, after 13 years, he can say he has celebrated Mass on every 14er in the state.

“Saying Mass on the summit of 14ers is probably the greatest gift and privilege of my whole life,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything I’ve desired more that’s awoken my interior depths more profoundly. It’s just absolutely truly the summit of my priestly life.”

“Then of course being a priest and being a shepherd and a guide spiritually,” he added, “helping people physically climb to the heights and doing that in such a way as to lead them to the spiritual heights in Christ — that to me is what has made priestly life so deeply meaningful and impactful.”

Another aspect Nepil touched on was how taking individuals on hikes serves as an opportunity for fellowship and evangelization. 

Nepil shared that when he was a newly ordained priest, he was assigned as the chaplain at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He realized very quickly that there were “a lot of great students there but a lot of their friends didn’t feel comfortable coming to Mass and didn’t want anything to do with church.”

He decided to start an outdoor club called Aquinas Alpine and began to take people on “adventures in the mountains, and that’s really where it became a ministerial life,” he said.

“You just hang out with people on the mountains and all the questions start to naturally come and the relationships form. It’s just an amazing atmosphere for facilitating communion but also for conversion.”

In his work now in the seminary, Nepil shared how he constantly encourages the men “to do hard things together.”

“Our world is built right now to eliminate discomfort, and that’s actually bad for our humanity,” he said. “As humans, we need to live with intention. We need to be challenged. Muscles need to be broken down so they can be rebuilt. It’s the same with relationships — that if we just kind of float on the surface and live comfortably we’re actually never growing and relationships aren’t being strengthened.”

“So we have to actively go into the backcountry and embrace a kind of preindustrial, non-technological life in order to recover our humanity, and when we do that together, it authenticates our relationships and deepens them in the reality of who we are as created beings.”

As for what individuals who go on hikes with him are taking away from the experience, he said he hopes it’s that they have a “qualitatively different experience of relationship.”

“As things slow down, things crystallize, perception is heightened, and that awakens spiritual questions and hopefully it begins to form a spiritual vision to interpret reality,” he said. “We’re made to interpret. Things are meaningful … but we only find true happiness and wholeness as persons when we interpret being and the experiences in our life as meaningful, and I think that the conditions of being in creation on a backcountry adventure really facilitates that in a deep way.”