PROVIDENCE – A group of young men running around the yard at night, donning glow-in the-dark clothing and playing a competitive game of Ultimate Frisbee may not be your first thought when you envision the Our Lady of Providence Seminary. But Father Michael J. Najim hopes that his efforts this will shake up that traditional image.
“We expect the seminarians to live a holy life, but we also expect them to enjoy their life,” he explained in an interview last week. As he begins his first year as director of vocations for the Diocese — he was the assistant director for three years — Fr. Najim has specific goals, among them: eight new seminarians, an upgraded website and a revamped image of life in the seminary.
His first step is to dispel many of the myths and misconceptions people hold about the lives of seminarians and priests.
“Most people find seminarians and priests intriguing because they don’t realize there’s a humanity there,” he said.
But they are regular people too, and Fr. Najim wants everyone to realize that. “God just calls normal, healthy guys to be seminarians; he doesn’t call men who are already saints.”
Many people unfamiliar with the vocation to priesthood, he says, think of seminarians as being “in the chapel 24 hours a day. ”While the men do participate in daily Mass and prayers, they attend classes and are encouraged to continue their social lives like most students.
And, Father Najim says, they know how to have a good time. “They’re a lot of fun. They’re normal men who have a sense of humor,” he maintains. Currently, 15 men attend the Providence seminary, in various stages of the four-year, pre-theology program, seven from within the Diocese of Providence and eight from various other dioceses.
The seminary is mainly geared to men who have just finished high school or college, and provides them with the additional guidance and training needed before moving on to four more years of education at a major seminary. All take classes at Rhode Island College or Providence College, and will eventually graduate with a degree from PC that includes at least 30 credits of philosophy. There is no major seminary in the Diocese of Providence, so everyone is sent out for at least four more years of
study.
Father Najim, along with the rector of the seminary Father Albert A. Kenney, and the spiritual director Father David F. Gaffney, help these young men who are in residence and also keep in touch with and periodically visit the Men who have been sent to major seminary in places like Maryland, Pennsylvania and even Rome.
Fr. Najim is also in charge of recruitment for the priesthood. This entails traveling to different parishes each weekend to preach about the importance of vocations and ask parishioners to pray for the seminarians.
The Rhode Island Catholic will begin a periodic feature in the coming weeks that highlights a different seminarian each week. Fr. Najim notes that “It’s good for people in the Diocese to get to know their future priests,” and he hopes the series will “introduce people to the larger picture of the call to priesthood.”
They need much encouragement, he said, and he hopes that seeing the fun-loving, normal men who have answered the call will provide an inspiration to other men in the diocese.
Fr. Najim wants to “break down the barriers in a guy’s mind about what the priesthood is all about,” and enumerate the similarities, and important differences, between the college experience of the men in the seminary and men in traditional colleges. “Their call is different,” he said, “but they also enjoy the typical things a college student would enjoy.”
He encourages anyone who may be considering their own vocation or knows a young man who is to visit the vocations website for the Diocese, www.catholicpriest.com.
Editor’s note: A column by Father Najim will introduce the series, which begins next week.
