Smile! Here's the team official photograph, pictured above, of the Diocese of Lansing’s 32 seminarians who met up this weekend for their summer gathering, hosted this year at Saint Francis Retreat Center in DeWitt.
“I’m overjoyed with the number of seminarians but, more importantly, with the quality of men who are becoming seminarians,” said Father Michael Cassar, Director of Seminarians for the Diocese of Lansing, on August 18.
“I’m also grateful for the formation they are receiving in seminary that is really forming them into grounded, spiritually mature, and humanly developed men.”
The gathering at DeWitt included seven new recruits to seminary life. The Diocese of Lansing currently sends men to three locations for priestly formation: the Pontifical North American College in Rome; Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit; and Saint John Vianney College Seminary in Minnesota.
The weekend in DeWitt also included a Discernment Dinner hosted by Bishop Earl Boyea, pictured below, which allowed young men from across the diocese who feel they may be called to the priesthood to meet the current seminarians and ask them questions about the process of discernment, application, and formation. In total, over 30 such inquirers were in attendance from parishes across the diocese — that’s more than double the number who were present last year.
Please do keep all these young men in your prayers in the days and months to come. Saint Charles Borromeo, patron of seminarians, pray for them!
* If you have any questions regarding vocation discernment of the priesthood or seminary formation, please contact Father Cassar by email at mcassar@dioceseoflansing.org, or call 517-342-2507 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
