by Fr. Brian Kane
Rector, St. Gregory the Great Seminary; Director of Seminarians
“The Church needs and deserves healthy priests.”
Every year, several seminaries from across the country participate in a soccer, volleyball, and spikeball tournament at Conception Seminary in Missouri. For the first time, this year St. Gregory the Great seminarians took home the championship trophies for soccer and spikeball. Winning is always fun, but their desire to spend time practicing, conditioning and preparing is part of one of our goals in priestly formation: learning how to develop good habits of healthy living.
The Program of Priestly Formation states “The Church needs and deserves healthy priests” (196). The health of a priest is measured in multiple ways following the four dimensions of formation: human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral.
The seminary tournament at Conception Seminary is one of several times seminarians from across the United States gather for prayer, fraternity, and healthy competition. Watching the games over the weekend, one may be surprised that every man on the field is studying to be a Catholic priest.
While seminarians have varying levels of athletic gifts that enable some to compete at a higher level, seminary formation programs include physical exercise and healthy living opportunities for everyone. At St. Gregory the Great Seminary, every Monday afternoon is dedicated to community recreation. All the seminarians are out on our soccer field playing a variety of sports, or, during the winter, are in our gym playing basketball, volleyball or, our newest addition, pickleball.
Some of our seminarians also participate in intramural sports at Concordia University in Seward, competing against their peers from the community.
I noticed last week that as everyone returned from the soccer tournament, there was a deeper sense of community and connection that is a natural effect of a group of people doing something difficult together. I’m reminded of the quote I heard along the Camino de Santiago “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
By “going together” now, seminarians build good habits that will serve them well as parish priests. The daily schedule and demands of life for a priest can make it easy to let some basic things like a healthy diet and physical exercise go by the wayside.
Our formation program helps men reach this benchmark set by the Program of Priestly Formation (155): “With an eye toward the exercise of future pastoral responsibilities, seminarians should give evidence of an ability to follow a schedule with community prayer at its heart, allowing time for a healthy balance of personal prayer, study, enjoyment of the arts, physical exercise, leisure, and social interaction; seminarians should develop discerning habits in reading, the use of various media, the internet, and entertainment in general.”
