The Church gives people many things, good things,
holy things. I am sure you could list
many that she has given you, starting with the Good News, or the sacraments, or
the Faith. Those would be fun to discuss
– heck; I discuss them all the time! But
they are pretty much the expected things.
The Church also gives us unexpected things.
Last week, I took our summer seminarian, Chris Seith,
out for a good steak dinner of the kind he cannot hope to get in Rome. Earlier that afternoon, I had been exchanging
email with my own seminary classmate, Fr. Mark Knestout, who was having a bad
day. In an effort (successful, as it
happened) to bolster his humor, I invited him to join us. As Chris and I parked a block from the
restaurant, my cell phone rang and Fr. Knestout began to pepper me with
questions about why we weren’t there yet, and where I wanted to be seated. Ending the call so we could walk the two
minutes to the restaurant, I rolled my eyes in mock frustration.
“Be careful who they stick you with as your
classmate,” I warned him. “You’re pretty
much stuck with him forever.” Since
Chris is heading back to Rome for his third year of theology, he knows what it
is like to be one of two Washington men in a class as it moves through the hurdles
of formation at the North American College.
In addition to the normal experiences of formation, there are even more things
that you wind up doing together. The NAC
has certain expectations of Washington men, and most of them involve little
bonus duties. The Archdiocese also has
expectations of her NAC men, with similar bonus duties, many of them affected
by the Cardinal’s visits to Rome.
After decades of steadily sending
men from our Archdiocese to the NAC, the role and experience of Washington men
there has developed into a culture within the culture, a corps within the
corps. For that reason, this week I will
be hosting our annual send-off dinner for the “New Men.” The priests who are alumni of the College,
and the men studying there now, will come together to encourage, and perhaps
instruct, Stephen Wyble, Robert Boxie III, and Jack Berard, who will set out within
the month to begin five years in Rome.
It will be for them an introduction to a unique fraternity. The experiences and expectations that they encounter
over the coming years will unite them to Christ in the priesthood, please God,
and to us who are already ordained. It is more than likely that it will unite
them also, even especially, to one another.
Sometimes it seems that Father
Knestout and I can hardly handle any problem on our own, though there is
nothing we cannot conquer together. We
gripe, and encourage; advise, and admonish.
We vacation together, and occasionally – rarely -- even get assigned to
work together. One day in 1993, Fr.
Brennan, the vocation director, turned over the phone so I could speak for the
first time to my classmate. Who knew?
A retired Marine friend of mine maintained (and his
wife agreed) that, “If the Marine Corps wanted me to have a wife, it would have
issued me one.” Obviously that is not
something that the Church wants me to have, nor will she issue one to the young
men answering Christ’s call to priesthood in the Latin Rite. But for these men who are following that same
call to the seminary in Rome, it is very likely that she is providing them
friends for life.
Monsignor Smith
