To Be, Or Not To Be: A Seminarian

Several weeks ago, the men here at the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, Long Island began a campaign of speaking at local parishes.

Formerly on the weekends, we were free from activities at the Seminary from Friday afternoon into Saturday night. Now we’re away from the seminary from Friday afternoon into Sunday afternoon. Instead we spend our Sunday mornings in various parishes. Our rector, Fr. Peter Vaccari, asked us to go out two by two (and sometimes three) into the local churches of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre as an opportunity in the Year for Priests to encourage vocations. Today my brother, Jason Espinal, and I went to my fourth parish: Ss. Peter and Paul/Epiphany parish in Williamsburg.

The people of God are great. This latest journey into the deep confirms that even more. Every time I speak to a parish and am greeted with thanks and prayers by well-wishing families, teens and seniors, my vocation grows stronger.

What’s odd is that, their accolades do not encourage me in the way that might typically be assumed. Their praise and joy at seeing Jason and me aren’t really meant for Jason and me. Rather their praise is meant for Jesus. Jason and I happen to be receptors of that sacrifice of praise.

You see, the people of God in the parishes we have all visited would be content with seeing, greeting and listening to any seminarian. They are excited (many times even more than we are) at the amazing fact that in only a few short years, (and in some cases, only a few short months), the bishop will lay his hands on us and by power of the Holy Spirit change the essential nature of our soul and conform it to Jesus Christ’s. The people of God are overjoyed to see us young men who are, in effect, living sonograms of the Christ. We are Christs in gestation being formed by prayer and study in the womb of Virgin Mother, preparing to help Him take over the world.

My brothers and sisters, this is no small event. It reminds me of the Visitation of our Lady, Mother Mary, to her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist were filled with joy at the sound of Mary’s voice and at the approach of her and her Son. So too we fill the hearts of the parishioners with hope: Christ has come and Christ is coming again in us who pray and study to be a part of His holy priesthood.

I pray that what we all had to say this weekend to encourage prayers for vocations and work for vocations will have some effect in every heart prepared to receive it. But I do believe our prayerful presence, like Christ’s in utero –with only the fertive gestures and soft heartbeat of a prenatal child– spoke more than our lips could dare to try.

We approach the Feast of the Annunciation, on March 25th: the commemoration of the moment when the Angel Gabriel declared to Mary that she might have the privileged of bearing the Son of God. In response, Mary said “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” –let it be done unto me according to thy word.

May more men feel the the desire to be living images of Christ to His people. May they make themselves humble and vulnerable and respond “Fiat” to His request. May they be nurtured by prayer and study to grow into new Christs to serve the people of God, to bring hope into the deep.

     Recently, I was heading out of the building on the elevator when a classmate of mine, out of nowhere, said, “So, we’ve got four months.” The comment took me off guard, and I immediately began to mentally calculate how many months remained before June 26. Sure enough…it was four months.
     These last few months before ordination are filled with preparations and things to do. It seems that each member of my family has been assigned a particular duty. Lists are made, items checked off, and new lists are formed. Errands are being run, e-mails sent back and forth, and phone calls often run long into the night. Yet, in the midst of all this activity and preparation there remains one central calming and stabilizing element: encountering Christ Jesus. Increasingly, over these last few months we who with God’s help will be ordained this summer cannot help but feel ever more intensely that desire to be conformed to Jesus Christ, and with him at the center all the other activities fall into a secondary place.
     As I go through all of my applications, essays, and paperwork that I completed when I began this journey of formation, I am repeatedly struck by the Lord’s providence at work. Even in times of trial and difficulty one can see the invitation of the Lord to grow and become more like Him, and it is in those often unexpected encounters that one’s faith grows, one’s heart is softened, and one’s relationship with the Lord is strengthened. In my breviary, there is a card with a passage written by St. Theresa of Avila (which is addressed to each Christian), but which as ordination approaches I have been reflecting upon in light of the call to priesthood:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassionately on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Have a Blessed Lent, and keep us in your prayers!