“MISSION” AND “WISDOM”

Since 1857 the American College of the Immaculate Conception has been offering to seminarians from North America an excellent program of formation for the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Though its contours have changed over the decades, at its heart two special characteristics have remained the same; those two “marks” of Louvain formation for priesthood are captured in two words: Mission and Wisdom.

MISSION

The American College was founded in 1857 under the visionary leadership of the bishops of Detroit and Louisville, Peter Paul Lefevre and Martin J. Spalding respectively, who knew that the Church in North America could not grow without the support of a well-educated clergy. From the very beginning, the priests and seminarians of the American College saw themselves as belonging to the long tradition of Gospel missionaries, bringing the light of Jesus Christ to those in need of its grace. The men sent to North America from the American College were extraordinarily generous and zealous as they took up the work of “church-building” in some very tough circumstances. This same missionary spirit continues to animate us in our own work today, over 150 years later.

WISDOM

The word “wisdom” is taken from the great seal of our alma mater, the Catholic University of Louvain. The image of Our Lady the Sedes Sapientiae, which one finds almost everywhere in Louvain, is a constant reminder that what Louvain gives us is, not just a knowledge measured in grades or pages of class notes, but a special kind of knowledge informed by the deep mysteries of our faith. Louvain’s great gift to the Church is the special wisdom that allows mind and spirit, head and heart, science and faith to marry one another in a covenantal relationship that bears fruit in our world. “Wisdom has built herself a house,” sing the Scriptures. One great room of that house is the Catholic University of Louvain and its faculties of theology, philosophy, and canon law. Mary the Sedes Sapientiae, our academic patroness, daily calls us to be people formed by this Wisdom in all that we do here.
Our formation program is also inspired by Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis and follows the directives and guidelines of the American Bishops in their Program of Priestly Formation.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart.” (Jeremiah 3:15)

With those simple yet powerful words, the beloved Pope John Paul II begins his exhortation on the priestly vocation and formation of priests, Pastores Dabo Vobis. Jeremiah’s words inspire in the Holy Father an extraordinary trust that the Lord will provide to his Church the shepherds it needs, not only in quantity, but in quality as well—“after my own heart.” The pope’s trust in this promise is fundamentally tied to the value he gives to the missionary vocation of the Church and its central sacramental celebration, the Eucharist:

Without priests the Church would not be able to live that fundamental obedience which is at the very heart of her existence and her mission in history, an obedience in response to the command of Christ: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt.28:19) and “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19; cf. 1 Cor 11:24), i.e.: an obedience to the command to announce the Gospel and to renew daily the sacrifice of the giving of his body and the shedding of his blood for the life of the world. (PDV §1)

These two realities, mission and Eucharist, are deeply interwoven, and what is so extraordinarily wonderful about the vocation of the priest is that in many ways this vocation is the very nexus of this mysterious relationship. In his special ministry within the Church community of making manifest Jesus’ shepherding role, the priest becomes the instrument for drawing the faithful together in Christ around the Table of his Word and Sacrament and sending them out to bring the Gospel to the waiting and needy world.

The American College is uniquely placed to provide to seminary formation an aspect that otherwise might not be given the full attention it merits. Every seminary, including our own, obviously treasures the Eucharist as the center of its common life and as the fount of the spiritual life that it hopes will well up in the heart of every future priest. The American College’s foundation and early history as an explicitly missionary seminary have indelibly left their mark on this seminary’s identity and its own sense of its contemporary service to the Church. The missionary vocation continues to be one of the paramount principles animating our formation work. The American College’s location in a land foreign to most of its students heightens the sense that its seminarians are being prepared for a specifically missionary and evangelizing role in the local churches to which they will soon return as priests.
This geographic reality is also a personal and spiritual reality for these young men in at least three ways.

First, the lived experience of a certain austerity regarding material possessions and a simplicity of life that comes with being distant from home and its comforts prepares our seminarians to be sensitive ministers to the poor, allowing them to grow in “a life of gratitude for the material blessings of God’s creation coupled with a sincere and generous lifestyle that cares for and is in solidarity with the poor” (Program of Priestly Formation,§26).

Second, the initial experience of home-sickness and the ongoing frustrations of life in a foreign land, not to mention the expectations of a most demanding academic and formational program, require of our seminarians self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and perseverance in the face of great personal challenges. The growth required prepares our seminarians interiorly for the faithful living throughout their lives of their commitments to obedience, communion with bishop and presbyterate, celibacy and chastity, steady prayer, and a missionary spirit in their pastoral work (see PPF §26).

Third, seminarians studying in a foreign land come to see the world from new perspectives. Because of their broadened horizons, they come to know their own homeland from a more critical stance; but paradoxically they also come to more profoundly love the land and society from which they came. Even more importantly, their circumstance of living in a foreign land allows them to address with unique authority the issues and problems to which they will return as ministers of the Gospel. They can incisively challenge the accepted but unreflective opinion of the day. They can name and uphold what is best in their own society, especially when it is yet unseen by most within that society. This makes them extraordinary pastors, teachers, and, in the end, missionaries to their own world. The singing of the American College hymn, O Sodales, at the end of each academic year reminds our seminarians that, in these postmodern times, they are to be missionaries to their own. That is why they have come away for a while: so that they may return and spend the rest of their lives making disciples of their own nation. In this way, a priest formed at the American College truly becomes the “man of mission and dialogue” that Pope John Paul calls for in Pastores Dabo Vobis (§18).

Our Seminary Model: Jesus and the Twelve

In Chapter V of Pastores Dabo Vobis, entitled “He Appointed Twelve to be with Him,” Pope John Paul II specifies more concretely the character of the seminary and the kind of formation it should provide. He writes that the seminary, “more than a place, a material space, should be a spiritual place, a way of life, an atmosphere that fosters and ensures a process of formation so that the priest who is called by God may become, with the sacrament of orders, a living image of Jesus Christ, head and shepherd of the Church” (§42). Further on, he stresses that the seminary is “an educational community in progress: It is a community established by the bishop to offer to those called by the Lord to serve as apostles the possibility of re-living the experience of formation which our Lord provided for the Twelve. In its deepest identity the seminary is called to be, in its own way, a continuation in the Church of the apostolic community gathered about Jesus, listening to his word, proceeding toward the Easter experience, awaiting the gift of the Spirit for the mission.” The seminary is “a community built on deep friendship and charity so that it can be considered a true family living in joy” (§60). We believe that the American College fulfills this normative ideal for seminary life in a particularly rich way. The modest size of our community, combined with the intensive and personal mentoring offered by our formation faculty, allows our seminarians access to a unique experience of “a specifically ecclesial community, a community that relives the experience of the group of Twelve who were united to Jesus” (§60). Our particular situation as a seminary far from home further provides our seminarians with a more pristine opportunity to experience deeply the “detachment that in some way is demanded of all the disciples, a detachment from their roots, from their usual work, from their nearest and dearest” (§60). This apostolic detachment frees our seminarians to draw closer to their Teacher and Lord in a new and grace-filled manner even as they dedicate themselves to their intellectual, pastoral, and spiritual formation.