Dear Friends,
You may have heard the story of Orson Wells and Archbishop Fulton Sheen at a banquet together. The host recognized an opportunity to hear two great orators, so he created a contest and had them recite Psalm 23. The crowd would decide the winner. Of course, both were magnificent in their own way, but the host leaned over to his wife and offered a key insight: One knew the psalm, the other knew the Shepherd.
In our apostolic age, the discipleship of God’s holy people will not be sustained by a Fr. Wells. He may competently perform, even appear to be very industrious and thriving, and that may suffice for a time or in a Christendom culture. But when the ecclesial props of affirmation, reputation, status, credibility, or position are stripped away in the caustic winds of shallow prayer and scandals, those who have ears to hear and eyes to see will notice the difference in a Fr. Sheen.
Our men are learning the priority of that difference. Our seminary’s mission statement is emphatic in this: “…we seek each seminarian’s configuration to the Heart of Jesus Christ, High Priest and Shepherd, so that he can shepherd whole heartedly with Christ’s pastoral charity.” Only whole-hearted men who are in love with Jesus Christ will animate the new evangelization. Only a seminarian who understands from his heart, being converted and healed through life-saving faith, will have Good News to proclaim (Matthew 13:15).
Pope Benedict XVI knew the fire of the Gospel and described the kind of formation we seek to provide when he said: “Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 47).
Not everyone wants this encounter. But Jesus is in “anguish until it is accomplished!” These pages reveal how that fire burns in our seminary. May you be warmed and encouraged by them and go deeper in your own encounter with the Lord.
In Christ,
Fr. Paul Hoesing
President-Rector
Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
