NORTH PROVIDENCE — The Providence Serra Club held its annual seminarian parent celebration dinner on June 22 at the Rev. Jordan J. Dillon Hall in North Providence.
The yearly event was co-sponsored by The Serra Club and the McVinney Foundation, a diocesan organization dedicated to helping seminarians in need of financial assistance in their seminary training, and was dedicated to honoring the role of families in the spiritual formation of seminarians.
Keith Kline, one of the coordinators of the Rhode Island chapter of the Serra Club, noted in his opening remarks for the dinner that the purpose of the priesthood is to imitate Christ and to make Christ present to the people, and that the faithful, for their part, have a duty to support and pray for their priests.
“That is really the mission of the Serra Club,” Kline said. “It has been, and always will be, to pray for, to promote, to affirm, and support vocations in the Diocese of Providence.”
“The priests of this diocese are really extraordinary, and they have been the greatest of blessings to me,” said Bishop Richard G. Henning to those present at the dinner. “I have always been uplifted to be a part of that company, and certainly grateful to God for the goodness, the joyfulness, the integrity, the hard work, the witness that I see around me every day in the priests of Providence.”
Speaking to the seminarians, Bishop Henning added, “You, too, are extraordinary. … I’m grateful to you all for your generous response to the call of the Lord, and I certainly would echo those words of gratitude to your parents, to your families, to all those who have shaped you and formed you and helped you to come to this point and to respond so generously to the Lord.”
This years’ dinner was of particular emotional and spiritual significance, as it immediately preceded two priestly ordinations for the Diocese of Providence.
“I’m so excited for the big day,” said then-Deacon Jairon Olmos Rivera, one of those two men who was ordained days later.
“I’m so thankful to God, the Diocese of Providence, and the faculty formation from St. John’s [Seminary] and Our Lady of Providence Seminary. Everything now is the fruit of all the good work of the faculty, of the priests, and the diocese.”
“I’m thankful for that, and also for God and the community of Rhode Island,” he added.
The importance of community, particularly of family and of the fraternal bonds that exist between priests and seminarians, was emphasized in the speeches given by the two ordinands at the dinner.
Now-Father Jairon noted that the three primary factors that help to foster and deepen vocations are family, an intense prayer life, and friendship.
“Our family is our first domestic Church. It’s the first school of love and prayer. Be with your family…because they will be there to help you…and give you strength to continue in the time of challenges,” Father Olmos Rivera noted.
“Be a man of prayer. … Try to make time in the day to pray, to be with Jesus, to view Jesus as a friend,” now-Father Jairon pointed out, going on to note a relationship with Jesus and with one’s family culminates in close fraternal ties with one’s fellow seminarians and brother priests. “It is important to make bonds of friendship with your brother seminarians, but before that, friendship with Jesus, because we are going to serve Jesus and Jesus is our friend.”
Now-Father Joseph Brodeur, in his address to the seminarians and their families, emphasized how growth in priestly formation is not a matter of being perfect, but of openness to God at work through you. “The days when it feels that I have nothing to offer,” he said, “that’s when the Power of God shines, is when I know my weaknesses and limitations.”
“Your weaknesses and limitations, the places where you feel God is farthest from you, and that you are least capable, are exactly the places where God’s power wants to be manifested,” now-Father Brodeur said, adding that seminarians are motivated to move forward with their priestly formation “with the assurance that our God is Providential, and that He’s providing for us abundantly, and so we can trust in that.”
Founded in 1934, the Serra Club originated in the Diocese of Seattle and takes as its namesake the 18th century Spanish Franciscan priest and missionary St. Junípero Serra, who took part in extensive missionary activity throughout Mexico and the West Coast of the United States. Upon his beatification in 2015, St. Junípero Serra was declared the patron saint of vocations. The Serra Club devotes itself to promoting priestly formations, primarily through organizing prayer meetings for an increase in vocations, giving resources for the support of seminarians and newly ordained priests, and organizing events to raise awareness of the priestly ministry.
