Seminarian Blog

Congrats to Curtis Hecker, Andrew Bina, and Alex Gorges! Yesterday evening, they were received as Candidates for priesthood. This is one of the essential steps in seminary as you progress through the years of of major seminary. As our rector here explained, this step is akin to an "engagement" to the Church. This means that both the seminarian and the Church view the discernment process as more serious and the prospect of ordination more immediate. As Bishop Rice (pictured to the left) explained in his homily during the Mass, Holy Mother Church now receives the candidate's desire to seek ordination without making a definitive judgment as of yet.

As an interesting side note, some say that this step among others allows a seminarian to speak more definitively about ordination - as in saying now, "When I am ordained" instead of "If I am ordained." My experience was the Bishop Jackels still likes us to use the "if I am ordained" phrase for a little longer. The night before my ordination to the Diaconate, I used the more definitive phrase in a speech, and I was told Bishop in the back made an aside to one of my friends, "He only thinks he's getting ordained tomorrow ..."

Again, congrats to our three new candidates and keep them in your prayers. Enjoy the short interview with Curtis.

Pictured: Curtis Hecker, Andrew Bina, Bishop Rice (Auxiliary for Saint Louis), and Alex Gorges.

I thought this was very well done project by the vocation office here in St. Louis. It's an interview about a race between the current vocation director here - Fr. Chris Martin - and the newest auxiliary bishop, Bishop Rice.

It is interesting first of all because I personally think exercise and healthy competition is very important in the seminary. Second, this interview is a great example of priestly fraternity - another important aspect of what they teach us here.

I obviously will not be running for a while, but I did have my first race this summer. I ran in the river run for the second time in my life. The first was when I was a baby in a stroller. Keep praying for my toe and our soccer team here. Our first game is this Sunday and we are about to get ready for it on this rainy day by doing a P90X workout with another Chris Martin - this time the new seminarian from Wichita, not the vocation director of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Running on Faith from Fr. Chris Martin on Vimeo.

Yes, I did get back to writing (or filming) again as it may be. I actually tried writing this on the weekend, but the internet connection I was using at the parish blocked the sites I needed....

This weekend, all of the transitional deacons, not from St. Louis, began serving at our new parishes on the weekends. We stay Friday and Saturday evenings at the parish, so we can be there for the entire weekend.

I was assigned to Mary Queen of Peace in Webster Grove. I included a map below of the location.

It was a great weekend. I met lots of new people (again). Notably, there was another Voss family, to which I am not related as far as I know. There was also the pastor and the associate, whom I know from seminary. Oddly enough, there was also the uncle of Christopher West. I just report.

Looking forward to being able to preach there next weekend!

View Larger Map

We're all back to our respective seminaries now. That is both sad and joyful at the same time. It is sad because the summers are for the most part a great time for all of the seminarians to be together, share stories and, most importantly, not have any papers to write.

The beginning of the year was a bit more complex for me this year because I just had surgery on my right foot. Maybe if enough people pray, my foot will heal faster and I can still play half of the soccer season here .... The surgery involved a cheilectomy to remove a bone spur on top of my right big toe. From my understanding of it, the procedure is akin to taking a dremel and reshaping my bone so it's smooth again. In any case, it seems to be healing normally and only minimally inconveniences seminary life here.

Speaking of inconvenience, I came across a great reflection for seminarians and those contemplating any vocation from St. John of Avila, whom Benedict just recently announced his coming additional title of Doctor of the Church. St. John of Avila lived during the time of the Council of Trent which sought great reforms to the life of the clergy and seminarians. One of his ways of making of forming seminarians was to make seminary life purposefully challenging so that those who continued would not because of the worldly attractions of the life. (See this great article: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6038)

In other words, if seminary life is difficult, that is a good thing. Not that one should simply grin and bare it, so to speak, but to use the opportunity to look at our own motivations for being here, to look at our own desires, and to ask God to form those in line with what He desires for all of us. By the way, this is also a great reflection for entrance into any vocation. Vocation is God's beautiful plan to help get over ourselves and truly enter into His life.

We did something a bit different this year for the Serra Club Steak fry that we have every year at the end of the summer. Andrew Bina, a seminarian entering Kenrick this year as a 1st Theologian, asked me about a week before the event to play guitar and fiddle with him for the evening.

I rarely pass up an opportunity to play music, so I of course agreed. I think I confounded Fr. Weldon at St. Margaret Mary a few times when I would sit practicing in the rectory, but it was good for me to brush the dust off of my instruments again to get ready for the school year.

We do have a bluegrass/country/Irish/cowboy group at Kenrick. We played at a nursing home last year, but mainly we play to relieve stress and enjoy an evening. Andrew's banjo will be a great addition to our evenings - I just do not know how the Irish will feel about banjo playing in their songs.

Lots of Catholic blogs like to highlight crazy things that have happened in their liturgies. This is actually a common conversational topic at seminary that I try hard to avoid.

So, in order to do something different, I thought I would blog about liturgical wonders instead!

We had a quinceañera this past weekend at St. Margaret Mary. Sometimes, there can be many problems with the ceremonies and Masses for quinceañeras, but this one was quite nice. The family was on time, the damas and chambelanes showed up, and everything was ready for Mass.

There is a part of the ceremony where the quinceañera takes flowers to the Virgin Mary while a marian song is played. There was something very beautiful about the devotion of the young lady and her parents, the big dress, the flowers, and the tears that made that Mass very special. My hope is that this young lady and her family remember the devotion of that day and that they prayers of the Blessed Virgin protect and guide her as she grows up. Alabado sea Dios!

Happy Feast of Saint James! I have been fascinated for a while with the pilgrimage tradition to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. This could be partly do to my love of hiking from my Boy Scout days, but that is also mixed in with a long history of Christian tradition in Europe. In preparation for hiking and camping as a priests, myself and some of friends at seminary are on a quest  to find the lightest Mass kit to use on the trail.

Here below is the homily I wrote for Mass today. St. James, Pray for us!

Homily for 25 July 2011: Feast of Santiago de Compostela

Some of you may have heard of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela before. It’s usually called simply, the camino. Not the car, el camino, but the pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James the greater, which lies on the coast of the Iberian peninsula. That is where St. James is said to have become the first Apostle to martyred for the Faith after preaching Christ to the Iberian peninsula.

This is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites of all of Europe. Not only because of the beautiful scenery, but because of the over 1000 year history of people making spiritual journeys in order to try and discover what the radical change of life Jesus is asking of each individual person. This is a good question to keep in mind for all of us – many go on the camino today, not for spiritual reasons and not expecting some life changing experience; some do it just for a nice trip or vacation. Jesus, however, is constantly asking us to follow him in a radical way, as he asked St. James to do in the Gospel – to give up his life as a fisherman, and follow me.

Let us all contemplate and think about how we approach the sacred mysteries of the Mass. Do we come out of habit, tradition, guilt, or company – like some of the supposed pilgrims to compestello? Or do we come truly open to Jesus’ life changing call- to be open – if he desires – to following him no matter what the cost?

Yes, I do like to go sailing. That's my dad's boat to the left. It's a small little boat, but it sure is fun to sail on a big lake. I could not help but to segway this into a discussion of the Holy Spirit however.

My spiritual director at Kenrick is a real sailor. He once told me a story that when he was younger, he and some friends sailed from California to ... I don't know where ... oh yea, Florida. He accidentally ran into Cuba because his navigator had mutineed on him somewhere off the coast of Mexico. Yeah, a bit crazy of a story, but it serves a good point too. My spiritual director is also really focused on the role of the Holy Spirit in our spiritual lives. So, here is the bulletin insert I wrote for Pentecost Sunday that includes my favorite analogy from John of St. Thomas in regards to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit:

Bulletin for Pentecost Sunday

Do you want to be a row boat or a massive powerful sailing ship going across the seven seas? That is the question, oddly enough, which we need to ask ourselves when we consider the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

About 10 days ago, Bishop Jackels quizzed our Confirmation students on what were the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Think about it … they are Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord. The list comes from the book of Isaiah 11:2-3 and is an essential aspect of living the Christian life.

The best analogy I have ever heard for how the Gifts work is that of boats. The virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity enhance our own faculties, or own nature so we can know, seek and love God as the Trinity. If you are operating only with Faith, Hope, and Charity, you are like a row boat trying to get through a vast ocean one stroke at a time.

As you begin to grow in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, you eventually unfurl sails so as to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit which is like the wind that powers the ship.

One of the best living illustrations of someone who has large “sails” is the martyr, such as St. Maximilen Kolbe who gave his life for another man in a concentration camp in World War II. To give of your own life for Jesus Christ is not a natural or innate response in us. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, sometimes calls people to make radical decisions that give an incredible witness to the power of the love of Jesus Christ in our day.

Let us continue to pray after Pentecost to have an increase of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in our lives so we can be witnesses of the love of Jesus Christ to everyone we meet.

Fr. Weldon this week asked me to start doing Bulletin inserts over the new translations for the English texts of the Roman Missal coming this Advent. One really interesting aspect is that I could not do the same insert for Spanish as well as English - because the Spanish is not changing! There is, nevertheless, still a good opportunity for catechesis in Spanish in this regard. Here's the insert I wrote:

Bulletin Insert for 10 July 2011

Fifteenth Sunday Through the Year

“And with your spirit.”

As many of you have heard, we are going to be having some changes to the English texts of the Mass coming up this Advent. Here is one frequently asked question:

1. We saw the Mass change in the 60’s, is that happening again??? Actually, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has never changed. It is the one sacrifice of Jesus on the cross who gave his very life for us and for the salvation of the world. In the 60’s, as a response to the Second Vatican Council, the rubrics (actions) and the texts of the Mass were updated for the universal Church. This effort had not been taken up since the 16^th century, but it is not unheard of in the history of our Church.

The changes coming this Advent are different though. These changes are occurring only in English. So, if you want to avoid any changes at all for a while, you could go to Mass in Spanish for until people become used to the new English texts :)

The reason for the changes in the English is that in the 60’s, the translations from the Latin text given from Rome were done pretty quickly and with an idea of altering the word-for-word correspondence to attempt to better reflect some people’s understanding. Most scholars agree that these attempts fell short of their goal and ended up obscuring some of the meaning of the texts of the Mass.

One example of this is the repeated phrase: “The Lord be with you … and also with you,” which will be in Advent: “and with your spirit.” If you have ever kept track, only priests and deacons ever use this phrase in any texts of the Church. Why is this? This is because the second half of the phrase, “and with your spirit,” refers to the spirit of ordination, that particular gift of sanctifying grace, which deacons and priests received on the day of their ordination.

This does not mean that the spirit is not with everyone else however. The first phrase, “The Lord be with you,” is both an declaratory statement of the Holy Spirit present in all the baptized because of their gift of sanctifying grace at Baptism, and also a invocation for all of us that the Lord will be with us throughout our day and throughout our lives – especially as we approach the greatest gift of Jesus Christ – receiving His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

Here is the Bulletin insert I made for "Deacon's corner" this weekend:

First of all, happy 4th of July to everyone! Although the celebration of the independence of America is not a Catholic feast per se, the ideals that the day represents - especially the inalienable human rites of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – are strong ideals heavily rooted in Catholic moral theology. Our armed forces continually fight to uphold these truths and many have given their lives for our country and for their fellow men.

Our founding fathers – and our legal system until the 20th century – was based on the sound
Catholic moral doctrine of the natural law. The natural law states that there are certain universal moral principles that are common to every human being. A legal system, because of this, is not allowed to write or enforce laws that are contrary to these principles. When our government sends soldiers across the world to uphold human dignity, natural law should be the standard for which we justify our decisions. If murder is wrong, it is not wrong only because our government says it is wrong, but because everyone knows upon reflection that it is wrong.

This past Friday was also the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. Margaret Mary, whom our parish is named after and whose relic sits next to the tabernacle for public veneration, received revelations that promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart in the 17th century. The feast was subsequently promoted by the Jesuits and made a universal feast for the Friday after Corpus Christi by Blessed Pius IX in 1864.

In the Spirit of the Liturgy, our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI wrote regarding the Sacred Heart: “In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God’s own heart is opened up; here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up. God has stepped out of his hiddenness. That is why St John sums up both the meaning of the Cross and the nature of the new worship of God in the mysterious promise made through the prophet Zechariah (cf. 12:10). ‘They shall look on him whom they have pierced’ (Jn 19.37)”.