Throughout this past academic year, we have been so blessed to welcome 15 seminarians in Mundelein Seminary’s Spirituality Year to help us with our apostolic works each Wednesday. During their Spirituality Year, the seminarians live together with in community near Holy Name Cathedral and spend the year focusing on human formation, growing in their lives of prayer, taking in-house classes on topics like Catholic spirituality and Catholic liturgy, and continue discerning their call to the priesthood. As a part of the Spirituality Year, the men spend one day a week engaged in apostolic activity, and we were so grateful to be selected as this year’s Wednesday apostolate site!
Each week, the seminarians arrived around 9:30 am to help us with behind-the-scenes tasks ranging from making food bags for our grocery delivery program, cleaning up after retreat groups, prepping meals for the week, preparing for or cleaning up after minor construction or maintenance project, tending the gardens, and cleaning up trash off our streets. Sometime between 11 and 11:30 am, the seminarians would join the senior citizens in our weekly Seniors Program for the end of their Bible Study and then help us to serve lunch to them and clean up.
During lunch, the seminarians would split up at different tables and eat with the seniors – which gave rise to some unexpected and beautiful friendships! The seminarians were moved by the wisdom, life experience, and great faith of our seniors, and the seniors in turn were so impressed by the seminarians’ service, zeal, and willingness to give their whole lives for God and for the Church.
The seminarians’ time with us officially ended in mid-May, as they left for their 30-day Spiritual Exercises retreat as the capstone of the Spirituality Year. When the seniors heard that their last day was coming, they unanimously decided that they would do a potluck for the men’s final Wednesday so that the seniors could cook for the seminarians after they had been cooking and serving them all year. A few of our more mobile seniors even insisted on working the serving line of the buffet that day so that the seminarians could experience being served instead of doing the serving themselves!
Our final gathering also included a time for all of the seminarians and all of the seniors present to share a few words about what graces they had received during their time together and to wish one another well. The seniors and the seminarians also both secretly wrote notes of gratitude and blessing for one another as they went their separate ways. It was very beautiful for us to witness first hand how these two seemingly very different groups of people formed a bond and made a difference in each other’s lives over this past year. As they said their final goodbyes, the hugs, words of blessing, and promise of prayers could be seen and heard all around the room. What a gift to have had these seminarians with us!
