By Fr. John Adamski

The Atlanta-St. Meinrad trip is getting a lot easier as more sections of interstate highway are completed. Two weeks ago I was driving home along the Green River Parkway between Owensboro and Bowling Green, Kentucky with two high school seniors from one of our local schools. We had just spent a day and a half at St. Meinrad visiting the college seminary since these young men were thinking of beginning their college studies there next September.

Being on campus helped give them a much clearer idea of what seminary life was all about and they seemed quite pleased at what they found. I asked what they found most surprising about the college or what their most significant impression was as a result of the visit. One of them volunteered, “It’s so human!”

Although I may have been a bit startled by that response, I was also quite relieved. In effect the message was that this young man didn’t find the seminary to be such a strange or unusual place. The people he met and the things he saw helped him to realize that seminarians were basically “just plain folks” and he was glad about that.

I guess that I was startled at first by the response because a seminary has always been a very human place for me – since I first started in Buffalo in 1958.

Today it’s still a very human place even in terms of Atlanta because of the men who are studying there. At St. Meinrad we visited John Henley and Jim Atkins of St. Bernadette’s parish in Cedartown – both are students in the school of theology.

The Atlanta college men at St. Meinrad are Tony Stephens of St. Philip Benizi parish in Jonesboro, John Prevost of St. John Vianney, Austell, Jim Zmyslo, Steve Naas, Tony Green and Ed Thein.

Last week I continued my seminary visitation in Washington and Baltimore. Deacon Gerald McBrearity is at Theological College in Washington, Pat Bishop of St. John’s in Hapeville and Jack Druding are studying theology at St. Mary’s, Baltimore while Chris Mussell of St. Peter and Paul, Decatur, Chris Starr from the Cathedral, Ron Bono, Basil Congro and Mike McElwee are students at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore.

The seminary for me is a very human and real place because it means 16 men are making a serious effort to try and find out what the Lord’s call for their lives might really mean.

These recent visits reminded me of the uniqueness of each person’s search and effort to understand more of what God wants from him. Each of our Atlanta students is at a slightly different stage of vocational awareness.

Some are quite confident that the Lord is in fact calling them to be priests and therefore are trying to improve many personal skills and talents so that they might be the best possible priest. Others are not completely sure that this is what God wants of them and so they continue to struggle with questions of meaning in their lives.

A seminary is a good place to try and sort through all that because the seminary program is designed to help men really reach some awareness of their personal vocation.

Today’s seminary gives a lot of individual attention to the particular needs of every student in a genuine effort to help each one realize what his true vocation amounts to in life. Lots of seminarians are still searching. The seminary seeks to make available the personal, Church and academic resources to help insure that the search process will be a true and honest one.

Most people notice easily the mistakes and human limitations of the priests around them. For some reason though, a great many young people still have the idea that a seminary is a strange place that certainly wouldn’t accept any ordinary folks. Somehow they frequently feel that it must be only for those who have really accomplished the call to holiness in their lives with a great deal of ease and not too much effort.

Fortunately none of that is true. Seminarians and priests are very human people who trust in the Lord’s call for them and in his ability to use them as a means and a channel for his work in our world.

The Christian call for any person is not one that asks him or her to become anything other than human. Rather it’s a call to look beyond the human into the loving care of a God whom we call Father.

Our seminarians are among those making a serious effort to do that today. They deserve the support and encouragement of our prayers.