YES, it ‘s official. Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has appointed me as a Member of St. John’s Seminary Faculty beginning the 1st of July this year.
As I pray and reflect on this new assignment, I realize how critical it is to prepare future priests. At the same time, I feel privileged to be part of priestly formation and to give significant contribution to the training of seminarians to be good and holy priests and to be effective pastors.
Although I have not started this new assignment yet, I’ve been thinking of appropriate formation for seminarians today. What kind of training should they receive that is relevant to the challenges and needs of the present time?
There is no doubt that we should prepare them to be effective, prayerful, and caring priests and pastors. But should we not also train them to articulate well our Catholic doctrines and values, especially in a society that has continued to question them? Absolutely, we need good administrators, but the signs of times seem also to require priests who can engage people in intellectual conversations about our Catholic faith and who can give compelling and relevant homilies.
I keep thinking of the work of Fr. Robert Barron, the Rector and President of Mundellein Seminary/University of St. Mary of the Lake in the Archdiocese of Chicago, how he is bringing in the best theologians and biblical scholars in the seminary to teach.
Lately, he has brought in Dr. Scott Hahn, a popular Roman Catholic theologian, contemporary author, professor, and Christian apologist to teach at Mundellein Seminary. Is his vision precisely to form priests who can speak about our Catholic faith with intelligence, passion, persuasion, and zeal?
The Scripture Readings on this Third Sunday of Easter seem to relate to this kind of priestly training. We need priests who can stand before a big crowd like Peter who spoke with courage and conviction about the resurrection and the divinity of Jesus Christ. We need priests whose hearts burn like those of the disciples in the Gospel as Jesus spoke to them on the way and opened the Scriptures to them. We need priests who are afire with God’s love and power of the Holy Spirit to preach the truth of the Gospel.
Absolutely, we need to train priests to become good leaders and good shepherds, to have pastoral wisdom and skills. But there should be a balance in their academic, spiritual, human, and pastoral formation. I’m sure that this is a challenging task to do.
I thank God that I will be bringing with me in the seminary twenty years of pastoral experience. I will be happy to share with seminarians this wealth of experience. At the same time, I also feel the current challenges of seminary formation.
Please pray for me as I take on this crucial task of preparing future priests. At the same time, pray also for more vocations to the priesthood and religious life. May the Risen Christ touch the hearts of many young men and women to follow the road of discipleship!
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Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. John Seminary in Camarillo, California and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. For twenty years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities. Since 2002, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].
