“The community forms the seedbed of a priestly vocation…It is the thread that binds together and harmonizes the four dimensions of formation.” The Gift of the Priestly Vocation, Vatican City, 2016, #90.
Dear Friends,
Several years into my service here at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, a friend of mine asked: “Why are you still in St. Louis?” As a fellow priest of the Archdiocese of Omaha, he was leaning into a sense that I was not serving next to him and there were many needs back home. A simple response surprised me: “I want to see the formation happening in this seminary to happen in the parish.” In other words, I believed that I was with him in the work, not removed by serving in the seminary.
My reply was made more explicit in a recent symposium on evangelization, the seminarians received two days of encouragement in imagining the ways to reach everyone at any stage of life. They were to consider a “clear path” to discipleship in various parishes. The presentations and workshops made it clear that the discipleship experienced in the seminary is meant to go out to all the world. Making disciples and equipping disciple-makers signals this: our seminary formation is being integrated – that interior life generates communion for others.
One exercise during the Symposium made sure the communion was real and not conceptual: “Now,” said one of the presenters, “I want you to turn to the man next to you and express a personal need, something you really want of God. That man will receive your need, and he will pray for you with his heart and in his own voice.” She discouraged various forms of self-protection or projection. She challenged them to take five minutes to pray vulnerably with each other. Later, one of the men remarked, “I don’t know if we could have done that as a community, even a few years ago.”
If the signs of the times are telling us anything, we have greater need to be together and enjoy deeper communion, but too many are antagonistic, afraid, or have not been formed in the prayer that unites hearts. Our poverty, our neediness allows us to be closer. It heralds a relationship, which is the meaning of the “kingdom” Jesus imparts:
“’Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:5).’ Who are the “poor in spirit”? They are the ones who know they are not enough for themselves, that they are not self-sufficient, and they live as “beggars for God”. Those who are poor in spirit treasure what they receive.’” (Pope Francis, Angelus Address, 1/23/2023)
I hope you’ll treasure the myriad ways God brings us into relationships through our needs, that poverty which connects us more significantly than skills or success. Our seminary imparts a communal formation that allows our seminarians and alums to be deeply involved in evangelization and not far from the kingdom.
In Christ,
Fr. Paul Hoesing
President-Rector
Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
