Summertime is No Time for Slackers at Sacred Heart

Seminarians spend valuable summer months gaining hands-on experience and developing maturity of spirit

The winter term at Sacred Heart is over in late April. Do you think a Sacred Heart seminarian sits back and takes it easy all summer? Do you imagine he lounges around all day in the sun sipping lemonade with his feet propped up and a Jerome Biblical Commentary on his lap for show?

This image could not be further from the truth.

Instead, each Sacred Heart seminarian spends the majority of his summer days involved in serious formational activities designed to prepare him to be an effective and spiritually mature priest. For undergraduate and graduate students alike, summertime is no time for slackers at Sacred Heart.

Institute for Priestly Formation

Beginning in late-May, seminarians entering their first year of theology embark on an intensive ten-week spiritual formation program at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. The program is run by the expert formators of the Institute for Priestly Formation (IPF). This non-profit organization of priests, religious, and lay ministry professionals has a special mission: to assist the U.S. bishops by helping priests and seminarians develop a life of deeper spirituality.

The seminarians spend the first eight days of the program in silent retreat. It is a time of quiet meditation to allow that still small voice of God to penetrate the heart. Spiritual direction, classroom work, and performing works of mercy in the local community are also part of the curriculum. The IPF program is meant to jumpstart a seminarian's entry into the demanding graduate school program in the fall. It helps him, as well, to discern if indeed the Lord is calling him to continue on the path toward priestly ordination.

Preaching Boot Camp

Prior to participating in the IPF program, by the way, these same students spend the spring term attending a Preaching Skills Workshop, better known among the seminarians as preaching boot camp. For five days per week throughout the month of May, in two daily sessions, the workshop accomplishes two goals: to drill the seminarians on the mechanics of effective public speaking and to ensure the homilies of these future priests will be centered on preaching the undiluted Word of God.

To further drive home the objectives of the boot camp, seminarians travel to local parishes to practice their new public speaker skills before a live audience of parish staff members. Detroit priest Fr. James Grau recounts the value of attending the workshop during his time at Sacred Heart as an undergraduate. I became more aware of the particular areas of public speaking I struggled with, and more importantly, how to overcome them, he says. It was a very potent experience.

Desert Formation Experience

Readers of the MOSAIC will be familiar with the Desert Formation Experience (DFE) for seminarians who have just finished their first year of graduate theology. This faith-building experience, unique to Sacred Heart among all U.S. seminaries, is another way that the seminary is training domestic missionaries for our spiritually-needy culture.

At the beginning of May, right after graduation, these seminarians begin a month-long spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land walking in the footsteps of Jesus, or to the holy shrines of Europe seeking the wisdom of the saints. Each day they attend Mass and pray for Sacred Heart's benefactors. Each evening, led by a Sacred Heart priest-formator, they engage in spiritual reflection about insights they experienced at the holy site that day.

Over the course of the strenuous pilgrimage, the men come to understand how the priesthood is essentially a pilgrimage of faith they are called to walk each day with their parishioners. They are encouraged to look deep inside and ask, Am I really being called to choose a life of charity? Am I really being called to be a man for others'?

Patrick Setto is a seminarian for the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle and a member of the 2014 Desert Formation pilgrimage group. At the Sea of Galilee shoreline where Jesus called Peter, James and John to be apostles, Patrick received a deep spiritual insight about his priestly vocation. I began to experience a really profound sense of Jesus calling me to his priesthood. I realized how unworthy I am, and kept thanking Jesus for choosing me to spread the Gospel message.

Thirty-day Ignatian Retreat

Summer is no time for slacking for these DFE seminarians, for sure. After a short breather to visit family and take care of personal business (and yes, perhaps drink a little lemonade), the men embark on a spiritual excursion of a different kinda thirty-day silent retreat to the Broom Tree Retreat Center in Irene, South Dakota.

The retreat is based on the rigorous Spiritual Exercises developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, led by a master in the Ignatian method. The seminarians are taught to discover how to conquer the self, make mature decisions, integrate prayer and action, and find God in all thing—even in the clutter and mess, and in the suffering, of everyday life.

The Sacred Heart formation team wisely has placed this retreat right after the Desert Formation pilgrimage. The men carry into the retreat the sights, sounds and smells of the pilgrimage still vividly alive in their minds. This receptive state allows the Holy Spirit to reveal during the four weeks of silent contemplation even deeper lessons about the life-changing pilgrimage, particularly as the men pray before the Blessed Sacrament.

Summer Work Camp

And what are the seminarians of other grade levels doing during the summer months? Are they making the most of their vacation time?

You can be sure they are. Seminarians finishing their first and second years of college spend two sweaty months doing manual labor at an informal work camp, first at the seminary and later at Camp Sancta Maria, a Catholic youth camp in Gaylord. What kind of work do they do? This past May, the men scraped and painted the wrought iron fencing surrounding the seminary grounds. Two years ago, seminarians got their boots dirty landscaping and tuckpointing the Sacred Heart of Jesus shrine along with repairing and repainting its famous Black Jesus statue.

The physical work gave seminarians a way to come together as a team caring for something important to Sacred Heart and the city of Detroit, Detroit seminarian Craig Marion says of his summer days mixing patching concrete and edging the shrine sidewalks. We quickly discovered our neighbors identify deeply with the statue, too. Craig recalls how local residents would call out from their cars, What are you doing to the shrine? and giving the thumbs-up when the seminarians told them about the repair project.

At Camp Sancta Maria, a typical work assignment would be helping to re-shingle the roofs of the bunkhouses or deep-cleaning the bunkhouse latrines. A Detroit second-year collegian, says he is amazed at the bond his fellow worker-seminarians forged through their hard work this past summer. At the end of our work camp all of us were exhausted, he says, but there was no doubt that each and every seminarian at Camp Sancta Maria had grown.

Cultural Immersion Experience

A cultural immersion pilgrimage to Mexico is how the men entering their second year of philosophy spend the first half of their summers. For seven weeks, they attend class each day learning the Spanish language while living with a Mexican family and speaking only Spanish. In this way, they are preparing to better minister to the spiritual needs of Latino Catholics later on when they become priests. The pilgrimage includes regular spiritual formation and taking time out for apostolic work such as teaching catechism at a local Catholic school.

Parish Internships

What about the men entering their critical third and fourth years of theology; how do they spend their summer vacations? These seminarians are involved in another type of immersion experiencea parish internship.

The men drop their duffle bags down at the rectory of a local parish for the entire summer and, under the guidance of an experienced pastor, learn the practical ins-and-outs of parish management. This experience is particularly important for the seminarians in their final summer before ordination, men who have just been ordained to the diaconate in the spring. Theirs is considered a diaconal internship: they gain valuable practice preaching at the altar, witnessing marriages, baptizing babies, officiating at funerals, and performing other duties appropriate to their new sacramental status. The deacon-seminarians continue to minister at their parishes during the weekends throughout the school year right up until priestly ordination.

The Whole Man

Clearly, a Sacred Heart education includes much more than just term papers and classroom lectures, as important as these things are. Seminary formation is much broader, as well, than simply training men to perform the external duties of a priest, says Fr. Gerard Battersby, Sacred Heart's vice rector and dean of seminarian formation.

It is the whole man who is formed at Sacred Heartmind, body, and spiritFather explains, and it is the whole man who must be refounded in Christ' so the man can assist others in this selfsame transformation. Father Battersby says Sacred Heart's summer experiences are designed to enhance the spiritual and intellectual formation seminarians receive throughout the year, while at the same time allowing the men opportunities to encounter Christ in the most ordinary events of life. The intent is for the men to grow into the identity that Jesus has prepared for them from the beginning.

The ultimate goal of the summer formational programs at Sacred Heart is to ensure that the priest-graduate of the seminary who ministers in your parish is a man of strong character and deep spiritualityand is a man who knows what it's like to get his hands dirty. A man of hard work and wise guidance you can be proud to call your spiritual Father.