{"id":30467,"date":"2014-03-14T07:35:58","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T11:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=30467"},"modified":"2016-09-30T15:57:07","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T19:57:07","slug":"formation-on-steroids-the-life-of-a-seminarian-about-to-be-ordained-a-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2014\/03\/formation-on-steroids-the-life-of-a-seminarian-about-to-be-ordained-a-priest\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Formation on steroids&#8221;: the life of a seminarian about to be ordained a priest"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/56\/2014\/03\/Voc-IMG_8330.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-30468\" title=\"Voc-IMG_8330\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/56\/2014\/03\/Voc-IMG_8330-575x361.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"575\" height=\"361\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A young deacon I know who will be ordained a priest in June sent me an email the other day, describing his life these days as \u201cformation on steroids.\u201d I reprint part of it below with his permission.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know what the life of a seminarian is like, take a look:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0This week I practiced Mass with EP I (the Roman canon) and even had four concelebrants (who were practicing concelebration) around me.<\/p>\n<p>I later heard a practice confession of a case of a teenager who had his mom force him to go to confession and really didn\u2019t care about whether what he did was wrong or not.<\/p>\n<p>I assisted and preached Wednesday Mass (real) at the seminary, and preaching at the seminary on a Lenten weekday is much harder than preaching at the parish Christmas morning.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been working on a 20-30 page paper \u2026and was organist of the day Tuesday and today (that\u2019s everything from 7a.m. Morning Prayer to 9:45p.m. Night Prayer \/ Benediction).<\/p>\n<p>I also wrote my petition to the bishop or the Call to Orders for priesthood Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Today the Cardinal\u2019s here.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow I have a test on a chapter of Jesus of Nazareth (Ratzinger), both questions and answers in Spanish, plus a Stations of the Cross meditation due in Spanish.<\/p>\n<p>(There are 8 other credit-hours of classes in there too).<\/p>\n<p>But the most important thing I\u2019ve learned is that my body is on my side. I felt a dry throat (first signs of a cold for me) on Monday and I told my body not to get sick. It listened. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>But yes, this is an exceptional week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>God bless him. On top of all that, on weekends he\u2019s serving at a local parish, doing deacon-y things like preaching and baptizing and presiding at weddings.<\/p>\n<p>Keep him and all men who are answering the call in your prayers!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;\">A Prayer for Seminarians<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>O Lord Jesus Christ, great High Priest, I pray that You call many worthy souls to Your holy priesthood. Enlighten the Bishop in the choice of candidates, the Spiritual Director in molding them, and the professors in instructing them. Lead the seminarians daily in Your unerring footsteps; so that they may become priests who are models of purity, possessors of wisdom and heroes of sacrifice; steeped in humility and aflame with love for God and man; apostles of Your glory and sanctifiers of souls.<\/p>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Mary, Queen of the Clergy, pray for us.<\/em><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A young deacon I know who will be ordained a priest in June sent me an email the other day, describing his life these days as \u201cformation on steroids.\u201d I reprint part of it below with his permission. If you want to know what the life of a seminarian is like, take a look: \u00a0This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Formation on steroids&quot;: the life of a seminarian about to be ordained a priest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A young deacon I know who will be ordained a priest in June sent me an email the other day, describing his life these days as &quot;formation on steroids.&quot; I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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