In 2022, we implemented our first year of the new Propaedeutic Stage of seminarian formation that the Church has called for in the updated Program for Priestly Formation - the Church's official guiding document on priestly formation.  "Propedeutic" means "preparatory study or instruction".

My time in St. Joseph’s House of Formation was easily the most formative experience of my time as a seminarian. I had such a freedom like I've never experienced before. Regarding the pillars of formation, I experienced such purity of each one in unique ways.

For human formation, I learned to live with men of completely different temperaments and personalities and how to resolve conflicts prudently. I got to encounter people of the diocese and hear the heartbeat of the Church up close and personal.

For the spiritual pillar, we were able to do multiple silent retreats, pilgrimage, and daily growth in prayer both as a community but also individually, making daily prayer a desire that now seems to be like oxygen to my lungs.

For pastoral formation, I was blessed with working with young men and women at EDW High School and got to see how thirsty the young are for genuine renewal of their faith and how eager they are for a relationship with the Church.

And finally for the intellectual pillar, we got to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I’ve never heard mentioned or used in three years in seminary prior.

We were blessed with having Fr. Mitch Semar and Roch Gernon walk with us in a Theology of the Body course which has truly changed the way I view myself as a son of the Father and increased my desire for this celibate vocation.  We were also blessed with having a public speaking course, where we learned how to form speeches on the lives of the saints and various topics for things such as homilies, retreat talks, and conferences we could give in a parish to catechize the lay faithful in our future parishes.

The House of Formation allowed me to truly see who I feel called to give my life for in Christ’s priesthood. Having the support of our beloved Bishop Dorsonville, the guidance of Fr. Mitch, and the support of Roch Gernon, I truly see the renewal of diocesan formation, spirituality, and how the future of our diocese will be better connected to its people through our priests due to this House and the formation it provides.

As I bring to a close my year at St. Joseph the Worker Seminarian House of Formation, I am moved to reflect on the meaning of time and seasons.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (RSVCE Ecc 3:1).   The English word ‘year’ finds its root in the Greek word, hōra, meaning ‘season’.  A year is composed of seasons through which nature continually renews itself—birth in spring, growth in summer, harvest in autumn, and dormancy in winter.  Everything that is natural and living partakes in these seasons.  

In our spiritual life, the same dynamism holds true.  There are new beginnings of grace, followed by times of growth, fruition, and death that give away to a new resurrection.  The time and seasons of the spiritual life are perfectly exemplified in the life of  Jesus Christ.  His birth heralding a new beginning, His ministry symbolizing growth, His crucifixion representing sacrificial death, and His resurrection signifying new life.  As disciples of Christ, we must follow the time and seasons appointed by God so we might walk in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

My year at St. Joseph the Worker has been a time and season appointed for me by God.   However, like so many things God invites us to do, it was not an idea I was initially partial too.  Being an older vocation, and having gone through years of previous formation, I didn’t see the need to spend a year at St. Joseph at this particular stage of my formation.  However, God knows best.  God also knew that St. Joseph the Worker was uniquely positioned to give me the formation I needed in this season of my life.  Through prayer, I was able to fully say yes to God’s invitation to begin something new in my spiritual life while living at St. Joseph.  

The year started out slow and painful.  I had to learn to adjust to new personalities, new environments, new schedules, and new expectations.  I had to insert myself into a community that was foreign to me.  When things got difficult I would think, “why don’t I just go back to Oklahoma where I am already known.”  But I kept praying and I kept showing up.   Half-way through my year at St. Joseph, God brought me to a place of self-surrender.  Through a series of experiences, honest reflection, and conversations, I was able to surrender places in my heart that God wanted to bring healing and growth.  

The specific area of my life God wanted to bring healing and growth in was my capacity for community.  We have been created in the image and likeness of God and therefore are created to live by the bonds of love.  However, because of sin, our capacity to give and receive love has been impaired.  We all have areas in our heart that have been spiritually malnourished and underdeveloped because true love never entered into that space.  By the grace of God, I was able to recognize some of these areas and bring them into the light.  

Through relationship and prayer with Fr. Mitch, what was dead and weak began to breathe with new life.  Then God invited me to grow this new capacity for love and community by leaning into situations where normally I would shrink and hide.  First, I began to forge a deep brotherhood with Roch Gernon.  My brotherhood with Roch gave me further strength to become an older brother and father to many of the students at E.D. White Catholic High School and St. Thomas Catholic Student Center on the campus of Nicholls State University.  By year's end, the community I had been integrated into became a continual source of spiritual vigor and stability for me.  

In further reflection on my season at St. Joseph the Worker, God was teaching me what a properly ordered and integrated community looks like.   God was teaching me how to cultivate the necessary communal dynamics in which I can grow and help others grow.  First, our community life must be rooted in the “Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15).  However, our faith is not individualistic.  God is not calling us to be simply in relationship with Him, but we are called to live in the Body of Christ.  Our relationship with the Mystical Body of Christ must be rich and complex, knitted together in love (Col. 2:2), and follow an intentional framework.   The framework of a loving community corresponds to the seasons of our life: sonship, friendship, and fatherhood.  

If men are to become fathers of a community, they must learn to love and be loved as sons.  A son gives love through his obedience.  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn.15:14).   A son receives love by his trust in the father’s goodness.  My year at St. Joseph allowed me to grow in my identity as a son by being in healthy relationship with Fr. Mitch.  Additionally, by trusting Fr. Mitch with my heart, I was able to receive the healing of God the Father’s Love through his prayers.  

After learning to love as a son, a man must learn to love as a brother and a friend.  The love of friendship is the love between equals.  Friendship love is the daily bread of community life and creates a place of refuge, stability, and growth through which the human person finds his equilibrium.  This year, my friendship with Roch Gernon brought a communal stability that is signified by the homophonous meaning of his name (having the same pronunciation as another word, but a different meaning).

Finally, as a son and a friend, a man now has the capacity to be a father.  A father, because he is secure in his sonship and friendship, can now begin to sacrifice without manipulation and without expectation of return.  This year, as a mentor to several students, I began to experience the first beginnings of what it means to be a father in all its struggles and joys.  

In conclusion, I believe that there is a time and season for everything.  Paralleling the times of birth, growth, and maturity, there is a time to be a son; a time to be a friend; and a time to be a father.  All of these seasons, both natural and supernatural, are ordained by God to help a man to reach “the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).  If the seasons of life are interrupted by what St. John Paul II calls “the structures of sin” then a man’s capacity to become a father becomes systemically compromised.  Furthermore, as the structures of sin increase and begin to further undermine family and community, the Church must become more intentional about creating new structures of life and growth.  I believe that St. Joseph the Worker is uniquely positioned and gifted to partake in a new evangelization for men, helping them to become fathers in God the Father.  I will be forever changed and grateful for my season at St. Joseph the Worker Seminarian House of Formation.

St. Joseph Co-Cathedral, Thibodaux, LA