new life at the seminary!

What does it look like to be a disciple and missionary in seminary? For 15 discipleship stage seminarians, it looked like learning to use a rototiller to create a 2,000 sq. ft. vegetable garden out of the Florida sand (almost ex nihilo!). It also looked like hand-shoveling 2 metric tons of pea gravel to resurrect a vine-covered racquetball court and create a new community fire pit and outdoor movie theater. What is the reward? It isn’t the fact that the seminary kitchen now regularly receives fresh tomatoes, squash, broccoli, green beans, eggplant, kale, and romaine lettuce. It isn’t the fact that the seminary community can now watch NCAA March Madness or TopGun: Maverick under the stars, while enjoying the glow of a small fire. The greatest reward is becoming disciples and missionaries who believe in the power of the Resurrection because we have seen it with our own eyes.

The abandoned racquetball court and infertile land were both presented as signs of the mission that the Lord sends us on in each of our dioceses, and even in the seminary. What was needed for this mission? No money, Bobcat tractor, nor degree was required. What was needed for the mission was each man saying yes to co-create and co-redeem with each other and with God the little portion of God’s Kingdom assigned to us. As each man reflected on his experience of following Christ in his life and in these “missions,” a new joy emerged from the way we could integrate these “first parish assignments” as signs of Jesus’s promise: “Behold, I make all things new.” We now see that an abandoned or infertile land, or parish, can be the very place where Jesus wishes to show forth the very power of his Resurrection.

~ Fr. Dominic Buckley, Associate Dean for Discipleship and Propaedeutic Formation