Today’s Seminarians: Following the Right Path to the Priesthood

Today’s Seminarians:  Following the Right Path to the Priesthood

With the consistent increase of men entering the seminary, we find that today’s seminarians are following the right path of the priesthood.  

These are now men in many cases that have advanced degrees and established sound careers who give all that up in a calling to their vocation to the priesthood.  

They are the constant success story of young men who faithfully follow the right path of studies, prayer and formation, to become good and holy priests.  

These men have a long journey on this path as the process can take six to eight years before they are ordained.   

Yet, they know this is the right path.

During their studies and their formation, is also consent discernment. In this process, these men seek to listen to God.  

Seminarian Bret Meltzler stated, “It takes some discipline to sit down and listen to God, event if it starts 5 minutes a day. God can work with that.”   

Thus, today’s seminarians believe that God is working with them on their path.  They seek God in much of what they do.  

These men of God will be formed in the intellectual and doctrinal tradition of the Catholic Church, and they will be men of great prayer who embrace the service to the Church and their community as new priests.

It was in The Tidings that Archbishop Jose H. Gomez reflected on the priesthood as follows, “The priesthood is a gift and a mystery in God’s plan for the salvation of the world.  

Every priest receives a special calling from God.  This calling is an invitation to a great adventure of self-surrender and service to God’s plan.”  

On reflecting on his words, today’s seminarians hear this holy call and bravely enter their journey on the holy path to the priesthood and all that is expected of them. 

In an age of self-promotion through the Social Networks, Blogs, Tweets, etc., they find for themselves a better and more self-fulling path of self-surrender to God’s plan. 

Today’s seminarians will find that it is not always an easy path towards the priesthood, but it is a sacramental path that will bring so much to their lives and the lives of others.  

Newly ordained Fr. John Adrian Palmer states on becoming a priest, “As a priest, I hope to share in Jesus’s mission by helping people to know and experience God’s merciful love so that they, in turn, can help others to know and experience His love, and ‘so that they may all be one’ (John 17:21) with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

In the years to come, may many other good men find this holy path to the priesthood and shine the bright light of Christ so needed in today’s world! 

For further reference see www.lavocations.org  or www.Facebook.com/la.vocations.