Fifth Seminary Reflection
It seemed strange to have the first phase of my seminary days drawing to a close. It was sometimes hard to imagine that I had been here for almost six years and was about ready for new adventures. I had come to the seminary on the verge of adolescence. My decision to enter the seminary had been made as a child. Looking back on it, I realized I did not have the maturity to make an informed decision. However I had made it and had stuck with it for six years. I had four years of high school and two years of college behind me. Despite having received an associate’s degree, I still did not feel much like a college student. I thought I had received a fairly good education but often felt that there were parts of my life missing.
Most of us, myself included, were still rather juvenile in our humor, outlook on life and attitude about girls. Sometimes I thought we were a little stunted by being protected from the outside world and not having to face life on our own terms or to have to rely on our own decisions in order to make it in life. Not having lived on the outside since eighth grade, it was hard to know what I had missed and how I would be different if I had followed a different course in my life.
When I asked my superiors about this, I was told that, in the seminary, everything was taken care of for us so we could concentrate on our spiritual development. I still had some trouble with the need to be protected and sometimes wanted a chance to prove myself on my own terms.
We would be moving from the seminary to the monastery. I had been in the monastery in downtown Dunkirk to help with services and to visit my Uncle Bob when he was Rector of St. Mary’s Monastery. This was before he was selected to be a Provincial Consultor in Union City, New Jersey. The monastery always seemed to me very dark and quiet, the corridors smelling of paste wax and gleaming slightly from light reflected through stained glass windows.
I was usually there early in the morning and did not see much activity other than Mass being said in various small chapels. It seemed odd not to have a congregation, but to serve at my uncle’s Mass alone in a side chapel. We did not talk much about life in the monastery, although it would have been a good chance for me to do so.
I imagined the monastery was probably not too different from the seminary except that visitors were seldom allowed and we would not be allowed to go home for Christmas or summer vacation until we were ordained seven years later. It was a mysterious but somehow also a romantic adventure awaiting us. We would finally be experiencing the true religious life we had signed up for six years ago. I felt as ready as I could be to move on to the next phase of my life.