We pray that religious women and men, and seminarians, grow in their own vocations through their human, pastoral, spiritual and community formation, leading them to be credible witnesses to the Gospel.

For the Formation of Religious and Seminarians

A religious vocation, whether to the priesthood or consecrated life, is not a career, just as marriage is not a career.  It’s a call, the response to an inspiration from God.  Yet, like a career, it involves education.

In 1990, Bishops from around the world met in a Synod to discuss the formation of priests. Afterwards, Pope St. John Paul II wrote the Apostolic Exhortation “Pastores Dabo Vobis,” referring to Jeremiah 3: 15: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart.” 

In addition to academic and pastoral formation, priests and consecrated persons especially need spiritual and human formation.  Their hearts, their deepest interiors from which flow their thoughts, words, and actions, must be conformed to be more like the Heart of Jesus which Pope Francis called “the greatest human expression of divine love.”  The way God chose to reveal his infinite love was through the human love of Jesus and the same will be true for today’s priests and religious.

As Jesus called apostles and disciples to follow him and to form a community of love around him, so the spiritual and human formation of seminarians and religious is accomplished best in a community where individuals act against the individualism by learning to live in harmony, sacrificing personal interests for the common good.  

This human, spiritual, and communitarian formation is so important that the United States Bishops have mandated an extra period of formation that precedes the academic and pastoral formation of seminarians.

Future Church leaders will be convincing witnesses to the extraordinarily Good News of God’s love revealed in Jesus only in so far as their hearts become more like the Heart of Jesus, broken and pierced out of love for all God’s children.  

Fr. James Kubicki SJ

Fr. James Kubicki, SJ, serves as a spiritual director at St. Francis de Sales Seminary in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He is a popular conference and parish mission speaker, retreat director, and the author of A Heart on Fire and A Year of Daily Offerings. Kubicki previously served as the national director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.