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| Institution in the ministries of reader and acolyte, April 21. |
It has been a
year since any sign of activity showed on this blog. That is true. I would like
to say that I have been away and used my time to ponder, and that now is the
time, in true Dominican fashion, “to give to others the fruits of contemplation”
– contemplata aliis tradere. But what
it was, really, (and this is the ‘fruit’ I would like to impart) was a time of
conversion, not that I am already a changed man, but in a way, yes, chipped,
beaten and molded by life’s blacksmithing, sometimes attended by too many a
striker. But, hey, aren’t we all?
Exactly my
point. Our conversion is foremost one of becoming utterly human, a reconfiguring
to a humanity to which we are called to unite ourselves fully and, ultimately,
to redeem in Christ. After all, humanity with a delicate sense of creaturehood
is the real stuff saints were made of! When one senses a call to the
priesthood, he realizes that he is blessed among many – ‘blessed’ because he
could not have merited it and only God’s blessing is all there is that sets him
apart. He who is called knows that he is like all others and that he cannot
allow himself to swoon into a mystic pride, or if he does, he must be brought
back to his senses.
This, I am
convinced, is what proper human formation, considered one of the pillars of seminary
training, is mainly about. When a man increasingly finds himself as he is before
God, gratitude fills his heart and that is when transfiguration comes about, and when he, like Jesus,
is also confirmed in his divine sonship. And that is indispensable because only
a grateful heart would make a humble servant, in other words, an apostle. The
world which God so loves and saves has no need of mere cultic performers and
empire builders; but it needs those sons who are willing to be sent on (their Father’s)
business.
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| A joy that best comes in threes. |
Once, we came under scrutiny by a visiting priest, who had led his religious community as abbot for a number of years before being asked by the bishops’ conference to spearhead its nationwide vocations campaign. (That qualified him as an expert in our eyes.) During our roundtable, he demanded that we show him a catalog of larger-than-life ‘human formation’ activities. We blushed with shame as we have never really cared to dissect and label our lives of intense daily interaction (not just among seminarians but with everyone in our mixed community and beyond) in snazzy terms for a most compelling road show.
Not that it
matters what this high official thought or said, but even a wholesome strategy, as we believe ours to be,
can escape anybody’s notice. We certainly cannot let that happen on our watch, for the strength and
real efficacy of our pursuit lies not in mirroring structures foreign to us (although they may be salutary and extolled elsewhere), but in our commitment to daily, in both good times and bad,
put on Christ.