Monday, August 6, 2007
Vocations Mass at St Anne's Church
St Anne's Church is celebrating the 1st Anniversary of their "Eucharistic Adoration for Vocations" programme with a Vocations Mass on:
Date: 20 August 2007 (Monday)
Father Henry Siew will be sharing his vocation story and there will be a mini exhibition on the life of St John Vianney, the Patron Saint of Parish Priests. Please see attached poster for more information.
All "Friends of Serra Club" are invited to join in this Vocations Mass and we have a little gift for all "Friends".
Labels: Events, Liturgy, News, Vocations
Monday, June 25, 2007
Meeting: Spiritual Director
Fr. ended our conversation with a quote from Bl. Mother Theresa, "we are called to be faithful, not successful."
Labels: Personal, Priesthood, Rants/Musings/Thoughts, Vocation, Vocations
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Vocation Testimony
Labels: Catholic Belief, Links, Testimonials, Video, Vocation, Vocations
Friday, June 8, 2007
Sisters of St. Rita
Pray for vocations to the Sisters of St. Rita.
Labels: Links, Nuns, Video, Vocations
Monday, June 4, 2007
'15 Steps' to Becoming a Seminarian
You may like to read: SFX Academic Prospectus 2007-2008.
The information presented below reflects the admission process for St. Fancis Xavier Major Seminary, Diocese of Singapore.
DISCERNMENT
Months 1 to 6
- Step 1: Attend vocation retreats and recollections
- Step 2: Journeying with appointed Vocation Discernment Director
- Step 3: Introduction to Seminary Fathers
Months 7 to 9
- Step 4: First personal interview with Fathers of Admission Board
- Step 5: Invitation to stay in the Seminary (weekend or one week)
April
- Step 6: Aspirant indicates his desire to be admitted
- Step 7: Psychological test
May
- Step 8: Second personal interview with Fathers of Admission Board & Preliminary deliberation of the Admission Board
June
- Step 9: 8-day discernment retreat
APPLICATION
July
- Step 10: Formal application to join the Seminary
August
- Step 11: Request confidential reports from referees
September
- Step 12: Medical examination and report
October
- Step 13: Final Deliberation of the Admission Board
November
- Step 14: Official interview with Bishop
December
- Step 15: Tender resignation to employer (if the candidate is working)
Janaury
- CANDIDATE IS ADMITTED
Prayer for Seminarians
O Jesus, Eternal High Priest,I offer You through Your Immaculate Mother Mary, Your Own Precious Blood, in all the Masses throughout the world, as petition for graces for all seminarians, Your future priests.
Give them humility, meekness, prudence, and a burning zeal for souls.
Fill their hearts with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to know and love the Church, that they may always and everywhere speak, act, and think with her, the glorious spouse of Christ.
Teach them generosity and detachment from worldly goods; but above all, teach them to know You and to love the One and Only Eternal Priest.
Good Shepherd of Souls, hear this my prayer for saintly priests.v Amen.
(Taken from "Prayers for Today," published by Leaflet Missal Co.)
Labels: Prayer, Priesthood, Seminarian, Seminarians, Seminary, Vocation, Vocations
Thursday, May 31, 2007
SFX Seminary Academic Prospectus (2007-2008)
Here are some pieces of information I've extracted from the local seminary's- St. Francis Xavier Major Seminary- academic prospectus for the year 2007-2008.
Year 1: Initiation Year
A paranomic overview of the Church's teachings complemented with other courses such as language, human and growth development and communication skills.
Year 2-3: Philosophy Year
Understanding Man and the principles of living from a philosophical standpoint. Elementary biblical exegesis of Sacred Scriptures is initiated at this level, including books from the Old and New Testament
Year 3-7: Theology Cycle
Consists of Sacred Scripture and other essential theological subjects such as Dogmatic Theology, Moral Thoelogy, Sacraments, Spirituality and Pastoral Theology.
Admission Criteria
- Clergy Recommendation: Letter of recommendation and sponsorship from parish priest or priest in charge of Diocesan organization.
- Church Involvements: Applicant must be actively involved in diocesan or parish ministry
- Academic Requirements: At least General Cambridge Examination 'A' level or it's equivalent.
Examinations & Assessments
- Oral
- Written
- Assignment
- Class Presentation
Courses for 2008
Initiation Year
- Mystery of Salvation
- Divine Office
- Psalms
- Personal Growth & Relationship
- Introduction to Spirituality
- Speech and Communication I
- Methodology of Studies
- Latin
Philosophy Cycle
- Scripture: Introduction to New Testament, Gospel of Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts
- Biblical Greek
- History of Philosophy: Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Contempory
- Cosmology
- Philosophical Anthropology
- Moral Philosophy
- Logic
- Speech and Communication II
- Psychology and Spirituality
- Non-Christian Religion: Islam, Buddhism
Theology Cycle
- Scripture: Pauline Literature, Catholic Epistles
- Christology
- Marialogy
- Protology
- Eschatology
- Ecclesiology
- Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Matrimony
- Fundamental Morals
- Bioethics
- Sexual Ethics
- Religious Ethics
- History and Theology of the Mass
- Church History: Reformation
- Patristics Fathers
- Mystical Theology
- Theology of Religion
- Theological Research
- Catechetics
- Pastoral Theology
- Speech and Communication III
Let us keep all our Seminarians in our prayers as they continue to discern the Lord's will in their lives. May they be holy and humble priests after the heart of Jesus Christ!
O Lord Jesus Christ, great High Priest, I pray that You call many worthy souls to Your holy priesthood. Enlighten the Bishop in the choice of candidates, the Spiritual Director in molding them, and the professors in instructing them. Lead the seminarians daily in Your unerring footsteps; so that they may become priests who are models of purity, possessors of wisdom and heroes of sacrifice; steeped in humility and aflame with love for God and man; apostles of Your glory and sanctifiers of souls. Amen.
Open to God's call for you? Pray for your own vocation:
God our Father, life is your gift to me. Through baptism, you invite me to share in the gift of my life in service to others. Be with me as I choose each day to show your presence in our world. Give me the courage and generosity to respond to your love, to your call. I pray especially for those who serve you as priests, brothers, sisters, deacons and lay ministers. Keep them close to you. Open the minds and hearts of many other men and women that they may accept your challenge to build the Kingdom. Amen.
Coming up next: What it takes to admitted to the Seminary.
UPDATE: '15 STEPS' to Becoming a Seminarian
Labels: Prayer, Priesthood, Seminarian, Seminary, Vocation, Vocations
Monday, May 14, 2007
Christ's Representative
Because the image of the priest has been thoroughly disparaged in popular culture, many Catholic parents have a distorted opinion of the clergy. We have seen how systematic campaigns, orchestrated by certain groups with the help of the mass media, ridicule religious conviction in general and often strive to portray the Catholic priest as an absurd or irrelevant individual. Perhaps this explains why each year we witness the loss of promising vocations due to the inexplicable resistance of some parents who oppose their sons’ priestly calling.
Therefore, it is important that you promote an appreciation for the priest as Christ’s representative among men. Thankfully, there already exists among numerous families a sincere respect for the priest and an esteem for the priestly vocation. Frequently, I meet young couples who express their hope of having one or more of their sons become priests. Yet this work must continue if we wish to offset the attacks which the priesthood suffers today attacks which damage the Church by tearing down the image of the priest in the eyes of the Catholic faithful.
Labels: Priesthood, Spirituality, Vocations
Pope Answers Seminarians
Gregorpaolo Stano, Diocese of Oria (First-Year Philosophy): Your Holiness, ours is the first of two years dedicated to discernment, during which we are taught to make a profound personal examination. It is a tiring exercise for us, because the language of God is special, and only those who are attentive are able discern it among the thousands of voices clamoring inside us. We are asking you, therefore, to help us to understand how God talks in practice and what clues he gives you in his private pronouncements?
Pope Benedict XVI: As a first word, a "thank you" to Monsignor Rector for his address. I am already curious to read that text you will be writing and also to learn from it. I am not sure whether I can clarify the essential points of life in the seminary, but I shall give it a try.
Now, for the first question: how can we distinguish God's voice from among the thousands of voices we hear each day in our world. I would say: God speaks with us in many different ways. He speaks through others, through friends, parents, pastors, priests. Here, the priests to whom you are entrusted, who are guiding you.
He speaks by means of the events in our life, in which we are able to discern God's touch; he speaks also through nature, creation, and he speaks, naturally and above all, through his Word, in Sacred Scripture, read in the communion of the Church and read personally in conversation with God.
It is important to read Sacred Scripture in a very personal way, and really, as St Paul says, not as a human word or a document from the past as we read Homer or Virgil, but as God's Word which is ever timely and speaks to me. It is important to learn to understand in a historical text, a text from the past, the living Word of God, that is, to enter into prayer and thus read Sacred Scripture as a conversation with God.
St Augustine often says in his homilies: I knocked on various occasions at the door of this Word until I could perceive what God himself was saying to me. It is of paramount importance to combine this very personal reading, this personal talk with God in which I search for what the Lord is saying to me, and in addition to this personal reading, reading it in the community is very important because the living subject of Sacred Scripture is the People of God, it is the Church.
This Scripture was not simply restricted to great writers -- even if the Lord always needs the person and his personal response --, but it developed with people who were traveling together on the journey of the People of God and thus, their words are expressions of this journey, of this reciprocity of God's call and the human response.
Thus, the subject lives today as it lived at that time so that Scripture does not belong to the past, because its subject, the People of God inspired by this same God, is always the same, and therefore the Word is always alive in the living subject.
It is consequently important to read Sacred Scripture and experience Sacred Scripture in the communion of the Church, that is, with all the great witnesses of this Word, beginning with the first Fathers and ending with today's Saints, with today's Magisterium.
Above all, it is a Word that becomes vital and alive in the Liturgy. I would say, therefore, that the Liturgy is the privileged place where every one of us can enter into the "we" of the sons of God, in conversation with God. This is important. The Our Father begins with the words: "Our Father"; only if I am integrated into the "we" of this "Our" can I find the Father; only within this "we", which is the subject of the prayer of the Our Father, do we hear the Word of God clearly.
Thus, this seems to me most important: the Liturgy is the privileged place where the Word is alive, is present, indeed, where the Word, the Logos, the Lord, speaks to us and gives himself into our hands; if we are ready to listen to the Lord in this great communion of the Church of all times, we find him. He opens the door to us little by little.
I would say, therefore, that this is the focus for all the other points: we are personally directed on our journey by the Lord, and at the same time we live in the great "we" of the Church, where the Word of God is alive.
Moreover, other points are associated with it: listening to friends, listening to the priests who guide us, listening to the voice of today's Church; hence, listening to the voice of the events of this time and of creation which become decipherable in this profound context.
To sum up, therefore, I would say that God speaks to us in many ways. It is important to be in the "we" of the Church, in the "we" of the life of the Liturgy. It is important that I personalize this "we" in myself; it is important to be attentive to the other voices of the Lord, also letting ourselves be guided by the people who have experience of God, so to speak, and help us on this journey, so that this "we" becomes my "we", and I become one who truly belongs to this "we".
Thus, discernment grows, and personal friendship with God grows, the capacity to distinguish God's voice among the thousands of voices of today, which is always present and always speaks with us.
Labels: Holy Father, Priesthood, Seminarians, Vocations
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