Opening Retreat – Faculty of St. Mary’s Seminary and University
August 24 2026
Introduction
First, let me thank Fr. Hy for inviting me to walk with you during this day of prayer and reflection as the new year of formation opens. He first extended the invitation to me in the Louisville airport. I was returning to Baltimore after helping my brother with his house. I pretty much looked like a mess. Fr. Nyguen thought it was me but wasn’t sure until he saw me up close. Then it was that he told me about this day of prayer. I was happy and honored to accept.
I was happy and honored because I admire your ministry of formation, and more than that, I depend upon it – for generations of priests have been formed here at St. Mary’s, and you continue to form priests who will serve this local Church long after I have retired and have gone home to God.
But it’s not just any formation that you render. You aim, not for mere professional competence, nor for simple compliance with requirements, whether civil or ecclesial. St. Mary’s has in its the DNA of the French School of Spirituality and, in particular, the charism of Fr. Jean Jacques Olier – a spirituality and a charism that remains tried and true even after the upheavals of the centuries since his passing into eternal life.
The Object of the Priesthood Is the Glory of God
So, you won’t be surprised if I begin with a quote from Father Olier: “There is nothing greater in the world than the priesthood, because it has for its object the glory of God and the salvation of souls.” Let us reflect on his words for but a moment. His words are not a prescription for clericalism, which, at base, is illusory. He didn’t say priests are the greatest people in the world or that priests are blameless or self-sufficient, or smarter than everyone else. He said that nothing is greater than the priesthood because of its object – that is to say, its raison d’etre, the intention of the Lord in establishing it, and the goal or aim of everything priestly is the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
At the heart of priestly formation, then, is love for the priesthood. Does this mean that every theological problem and every controversy surrounding the priesthood is solved? Hardly. We love the priesthood because it is not a human concoction. The Lord created it in the Upper Room and gave it to his Church, not to glorify a class of people within his Church, but rather to glorify his heavenly Father and in giving glory to the Father to bring about human salvation. The priesthood is, therefore, a gift to be loved and cherished. We are to love it not as an abstraction or merely as a means to a noble end. We love it because is itself a gift of love, given to the apostles & to the Church ‘on the night before he died’ – as Jesus prepared to lay down his life for us. This recalls the beautiful words of St. John Vianney: “The priesthood is the love in the heart of Jesus Christ.”
It was, and is, the love in the heart of Jesus Christ that glorifies the Father and brings about the salvation of souls. The object of the priesthood flows naturally, so to speak, from its reality: a sharing in the priesthood of Christ that is too deep for words: a sharing in his gift of self to the Father and to us in his Paschal Mystery: the laying down of his life with love beyond all telling. Such pure and selfless love reflects perfectly the love of the Father. And by pouring out such love for us in the Holy Spirit, Jesus defeats sin and death, thereby making it possible for us to give glory to God by reflecting his glory in minds made pure by grace.
All this you know and you know it well and deeply. I recount a speck of priestly theology at this moment only to suggest that, at the beginning of a new year of formation, we should spend time in prayerful contemplation of this gift and mystery. In quiet moments of prayer, we should let this mystery wash over us. In moments of reflection, we should allow the Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts and to kindle ever more brightly in us a love for the priesthood. And as we celebrate the Eucharist today, and in days to come, let us ask for an ever-deeper appreciation of the gift of priesthood, a gift that links us to the great events of our salvation, in all their freshness & power.
Love of Seminarians and Priests
But only in the new and heavenly Jerusalem will we encounter the priesthood in its purest form, in a completely unadulterated form. While we are in this world, all creation groans and we along with it. For those of us who preach about the priesthood and for those of you who are engaged in priestly formation, the temptation is so to idealize the priesthood that we end up dwelling in a state of perpetual disappointment. No priest measures up. We have feet of clay. Our gift of self is partial. After 49 years of priesthood, I am very much a work-in-progress, though when the psalmist says that 70 is the sum of our years, I realize it’s time to giddyap!
So, if we are truly going to love the priesthood, we must love priests, even when we priests don’t measure up, and we must love those who aspire to be priests, even as we become aware of their needs and frailties. We who are priests understand all too well that we truly share in the priesthood of Christ, ontologically, if you will – but we do so asymmetrically or asymptotically. I love those big words because they mask how unworthy I am. I suspect that when I encounter the Just Judge, he won’t use them!
We are formators, you and I. I don’t teach or do spiritual direction or oversee pastoral assignments. But I am keenly aware that my seminarians expect me to be Christ-like, expect me to virtuous, expect me to be pastorally generous. Every day I pray to be a clearer reflection of the love in the heart of Jesus. Every day I pray to live the Beatitudes, Christ’s self-portrait. I’m sure you do the same. Even if we’re not in the same chapel every morning, let our minds, hearts, and wills be united in this same prayer.
Praying that prayer enables us to look on the men in formation with new eyes. Not rose-colored glasses but with the eyes of love that recognize the hurdles so many of these good men have jumped over to answer a call to priesthood: challenges in their families, challenges that arise from the culture, challenges that arise from the technology that threatens to rule our lives. Somehow, somewhere, someone encouraged them to be a priest. The someone may be an aunt or a cousin or a classmate. But it is the Lord who calls. Discerning between human encouragement and a divine call is, as you know so well, the daily stuff of seminary formation.
That discernment goes better when it is done in an atmosphere of love, not sentimental love, not a love that countenances evil, but a love that is anchored in “the truth that sets us free.” Nothing undermines formation more than when seminarians see it as a ping pong game, or when they see themselves as ships on hostile seas avoiding U-boats! Or to switch the analogy, seminarians are less likely to “submarine” when a culture of loving honesty is created. As you know so well, the creation of that culture requires all hands-on deck. It is a project fostered by prayer and listening, by speaking the truth in love, and by making it clear that we have “skin in the game”, flesh and blood human beings journeying towards holiness with them, not disembodied voices uttering oracles from atop Mount Athos!
Exemplars
This might a good point at which to turn to another saying of Father Olier: “To speak of Jesus Christ, to live for Jesus Christ… to make Jesus Christ loved and served everywhere.”
Let me reach way back to the antediluvian days of my own priestly formation. I am a product of the 1970’s – and when definitive history is someday written, the 1970’s will not be seen as the pinnacle of priestly formation. It was a time of excitement, controversy, and confusion. But there were also shining lights in the darkness, here and everywhere. Some of them were among my own formators. Now, I’d like to tell you that I remember every lecture with Cartesian clarity, but what I most remember is the example of my formators. In rector’s conferences and the spiritual director’s conferences we were told of the importance of developing a life of daily, sustained prayer. But it was seeing Fr. Tony Manochio make his holy hour, daily, from 6 to 7 a.m. and Fr. Harry Flynn before the Blessed Sacrament every day from 4 to 5 p.m. that made an indelible impression on me. It was the passion of a liturgy professor, Fr. Tom Carroll, that opened my eyes to the writings of resourcement theologians – De Lubac, Bouyer, Danielou, Congar, Ratzinger, and Balthasar. It was the readiness of my vocation director, then-Msgr. William Curlin, to drop everything to minister to the sick and dying, and his generosity and love for the poor in his inner-city parish that concretized for me what pastoral charity might look like.
Sorry to be so autobiographical – but each of us has a story. In this day of prayer, we might reflect gratefully on those God sent in our lives to show us in real time what it means ‘to speak of Jesus Christ, to act for Jesus Christ, and to make him known and loved everywhere.’ Every day, especially in my advancing years, I find myself praying for my mentors and praying to them, not because they were ideal but because they were sincere, truthful, & loving. At the beginning of a new formation year, let us reflect on those whom God has sent into our lives as mentors, including those we thought of as severe or difficult, including those with whom we did not see eye-to-eye. For as we know, God sends people into our lives, to confirm what is good in us and to uproot our illusions.
For Others
Continuing with our second quote from Fr. Olier; it focuses on mission: “to make Jesus Christ loved and served everywhere.” Father Olier wrote long before the word evangelization entered our lexicon. But in fact, he is speaking about the Church’s mission of evangelization. To illustrate the point I’m going to make, let me share a little history.
Well over ninety years ago, when radio was the prime means of communication, the President of the United States communicated with the American people by broadcasting periodic “fireside chats”. The president was the charismatic Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He once said that when sat behind the microphones of CBS, NBC, & Mutual, he envisioned his audience: a factory worker, a housewife, a clerk. He broadcast from the rarified air of the White House and spoke with a decidedly patrician accent – but there was an immediacy, indeed, an intimacy in his communications with millions of Americans in every state of the Union. Well, it strikes me that you are in a similar situation. A seminary is a privileged place. It is a rarified atmosphere, not perhaps in the Donnelly Lounge at all times, but it is a house of uncommon prayer and learning. You, like FDR, sit behind microphones. Not those of CBS or NBC or a Podcaster. Instead, you disseminate the Gospel by the men you form, men who will preach, teach, & hopefully exemplify what they preach & teach. They are your microphones – and mine as well! Forming men for the priesthood is like writing a Fireside Chat. You will help shape what they will say, how they will say it, and most of all you will help shape the depths of spirit from which they’ll speak and act. You have the opportunity to help them become truthful and loving proponents of the Gospel priests whose one, overarching goal in life is – “to speak of Christ Jesus, to live for Christ Jesus… to make Christ Jesus loved and served everywhere.”
So, as you are form seminarians for the priesthood – and as I participate in this process of formation – let us not think only of the seminarians’ progress or regress – important, indeed, indispensable as that is! But let us think also of young parents trying to rear their children in the faith, a person from the Gen Z generation searching for something more, a Catholic who no longer practices because of ennui or scandal, a perplexed and conflicted Catholic who is searching, a homeless veteran, an abandoned child, a person who is all alone. That is the mission field into which these young men are being sent. We cannot afford to take our eyes off of it.
Where It All Comes Together
Where does all this come together? For me, it is the daily Holy Hour. Fulton Sheen called it, “The hour that makes my day.” It is that precious hour when we unplug and stand before God. It is that precious hour when, in the grace of the Spirit, we open our hearts to God in praise, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, and contrition, allowing Christ, in the Holy Spirit, ‘to reveal us to ourselves.’ It is that moment when we refrain from rumination & strive for contemplation. when we shake off the noonday devil, our daily cares, when we absorb the grace of the Holy Spirit who forms Christ in us. The Holy Hour helps us achieve balance in our lives: prayer and work, work and leisure. It opens us to God’s mercy and leads us to genuine repentance and reparation. It is a moment when we are given the grace to be spared from seeking unworthy releases from our worries. The Holy Hour deepens our love for the Church, for we pray, not only for ourselves but for those others whom are seeking to reach through the men we form.
The Blessed Virgin Mary & Father Olier
I would be remiss, if here at Mary’s seminary, I did not offer a word about Mary. Scripture tells us that as Mary witnessed the great events of salvation, she stored them in her heart and she pondered them. That is the perfect stance for us as formators. Pondering is not overthinking. Pondering is allowing Christ’s truth and love to resonate in us, to penetrate us and to transform us from sin to grace & from grace to glory. As this mystery unfolds daily in our depths, we do not become infallible, but we find ourselves wiser, more discerning, more thoughtful, more loving, in the myriad prudential judgments that are part and parcel of formation. Let us ask Mary’s intercession, that we might ponder the mystery of Christ more deeply, more lovingly, more completely.
And so we conclude with a most familiar and beloved prayer: “O Jesus, living in Mary, come and live in your servants, in the spirit of holiness, in the fullness of your power, in the perfection of your ways, in the communion of your mysteries. Rule over every adverse power, in your Spirit, for the glory of the Father. Amen.