Installation of Father Shawn Gould, P.S.S., President-Rector
Mass of the Holy Spirit
Saint Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore
September 2, 2026
A House of Formation
We have gathered with great joy and thanksgiving to offer this Mass of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of a new year of formation and at the outset of Father Shawn Gould’s service as President-Rector of Saint Mary’s Seminary and University. We ask God the Father, through Christ his Son, to pour forth upon the Father Gould the graces of the Holy Spirit as he leads, guides, and serves this institution in the years ahead – the first seminary in the United States, founded in 1791, a seminary founded upon the vision and charism of Fr. Jean-Jacques Olier, a seminary that has formed generations of priests who served here in Baltimore and in dioceses across the nation and beyond. And for nearly 60 years, it has sponsored its Ecumenical Institute, prepared men and women for lay ecclesial ministry, and dedicated itself to the ongoing formation of the priests.
St. Mary’s is committed to academic excellence – as its pontifical degree program and its graduate programs attest. It is blessed with an excellent faculty – Sulpicians, diocesan priests, religious, lay faculty members, a dedicated Board, benefactors, and a long list of distinguished alumni. But this seminary is not content with academic excellence alone. It is dedicated to formation: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. It offers a journey that leads from a preparatory stage to a growth in discipleship and a configuration to Christ, that converges in readiness to engage in the Church’s pastoral mission, with integrity, generosity, intelligence, and love.
By any and all accounts, this is a stupendous undertaking. How blessed we are that Father Shawn Gould has taken up the challenge of building on what those who went before him accomplished, and leading St. Mary’s Seminary and University into “a future full of hope.” This afternoon, as we invoke the Holy Spirit upon him, the Spirit arrives, not emptyhanded, but bearing the Word of God, the Word of God that prophetically describes the work of formation to which he must dedicate the great majority of his waking hours.
1 Cor 3: 1-9: The Struggle of Formation
Let us, then, open our hearts to the Spirit as we take a second look at today’s reading from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians, a passage that lays bare the gritty reality of Christian formation. Paul doesn’t mince words. He calls out the Corinthians as a people not living in the spirit, but as a people still living in the flesh. When he uses the term sarx, or flesh, he’s not talking about the human body. He’s talking about a life lived completely apart from God, ruled by self-reliance, driven by passions like envy and lust, marked by indifference to others and quiet rebellion against God.
Paul and his co-workers are on a mission to reshape them into spiritual people. Not disembodied spirits, nor angels, and certainly not naïve innocents, but flesh and blood human beings who – with eyes wide open – perceive the world in the light of the Holy Spirit. They are called to recognize what is true, good, beautiful, coherent & honorable – standing firm until the Lord returns. This is not a minor adjustment but an entirely new way of living, a way of life energized by the Holy Spirit, liberated by faith in Jesus Christ, and rooted deeply in the Kingdom of the Beatitudes.
This is not to say that every newly arrived student is living in the flesh! It does mean that those aspire to be priests and to serve the People of God must undergo a lengthy journey of conversion and transformation – a journey that St. Paul describes by contrasting two ways of life and which we describe by four dimensions of formation and three stages of growth and development. We are, after all, treading the path once trodden by the Corinthians.
1 Cor 3:1-9 cont’d: Teamwork Among Formators
St. Paul accounts himself a formator, along with Apollos and other co-workers. They are ministers through whom the Corinthians became believers, each bearing a task assigned by the Spirit of the Lord. Thus, one plants, another waters, but it is God who gives the growth. Notice, Paul does not claim preëminence for himself or anyone else. Paul is not to be preferred over Apollo nor vice-versa. Rather, “the one who plants and the one who waters are equal.”
Paul surely didn’t intend to describe faculty meetings in the 21st century, but I think his words capture well the spirit of teamwork that the President-Rector will seek to foster in his leadership of St. Mary’s. After all, the journey of formation is best made together, with formators in the lead but working together, and open to ongoing conversion in the Holy Spirit – the better to lead those entrusted to their care along the paths of formation.
Luke 4:38-44: Formed for Mission
The work of formation coalesces outside the house of Simon Peter where Jesus bears witness his Father’s glory in the power of the Spirit by curing various maladies, both physical and spiritual, among the crowd. Yes, we are forming to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus: the mission of preaching the Word of God; the mission of imparting the new life Christ won for us; the mission of reconciliation and healing, the ministry of liberating from the downward pressure of the flesh, the ministry of liberating from the powers of sin and death.
The view from the Rector’s window cannot simply be the front lawn. It has to be the crowd gathered outside Simon Peter’s house, those to whom future priests and their co-workers will minister. They are looking for Jesus. They are hungry for the Word of God. They are anxious, lonely, wounded, standing in need of love and healing, as are we all, if we are honest with ourselves. It is this mission field – vast, challenging, and promising – always to be kept in view with a clarity that only the Holy Sprit imparts.
Jesus Living in Mary Come and Live in Us!
Having contemplated the height and depth, length and breadth of the responsibilities that Father Gould has assumed, we beseech for him and the entire community of St. Mary’s the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that the Lord Jesus, living in Mary, may live in him and live in the heart of this venerable seminary, for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls, ad multos annos! Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!