Year of Mercy
Prioritizing Healing to Form Healthy Priest
Each fall semester, the Formation Staff facilitates the “Holy and Life-Giving Seminar” for all new seminarians (men in the Propaedeutic Stage) culminating in the spring with a Healing Retreat for the entire student body. The purpose of the seminar is to form new seminarians with foundations of Christian spirituality for a life of prayer. Fr.…
Discipleship Stage Key For Priests of Tomorrow
The publication of the sixth edition of the Program for Priestly Formation (PPF) occasioned a tectonic shift for seminaries. We now have four stages: Propaedeutic and Discipleship (college), Configuration (graduate school), and Vocational Synthesis. For us at Conception Seminary College, it meant a lot of work to begin the Propaedeutic Stage. It seems to be…
Conception Seminary College releases Fall 2023 Dean’s List
CONCEPTION, Mo. – The Office of the Registrar at Conception Seminary College, in Conception, Missouri, announced the students named to the Dean’s List for the 2023 fall semester. To be included on the Dean’s List, a student must be enrolled as a full-time student and earn a 3.70 GPA or higher on at least…
Modeling “fiat” in priestly formation
Fiat is Latin for “let it be done” according to Your will. In other words, “Yes, Lord.” Seminarians arrive at Conception Seminary College because they have intentionally chosen to give God their fiat, to say yes to His call. To say “Yes, Lord, I will follow your call to discern the priesthood and to…
Blessed by his Pastoral Presence
I was looking for a diocesan priest to serve at Conception Seminary College as a spiritual director to the seminarians. Several priests from my home diocese of Tulsa had recommended Msgr. Patrick Gaalaas. A few weeks later, when I was visiting my family on vacation, my mother handed me a copy of the Eastern Oklahoma…
Conception Fall Production inspired by “dumb ideas”
Conception Seminary College will present The Dummest Play Ever by Brian D. Taylor as its annual fall theater production this year. The production is scheduled for October 27-29, 2023. In a series of silly scenes that will have you laughing at the “dumbness” in everything, the real question in the end is about what matters…
Journey to the Priesthood
Thank you to the monks for being true witnesses of what it looks like to fall in love with God the Father and His Holy Church. The total surrender and the Benedictine vow of constant conversion is something that serves as an inspiration to all of us. If we all become priests in our dioceses,…
Compete Well & Keep the Faith
St. Paul wrote, “Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one” (1 Cor 9:25). When young men visit the seminary, they often ask what the seminarians do for fun. The discipline of waking up early each morning and arriving to the chapel to…
Rising to the Challenge for the Church
An unfortunate reality in the worldwide Church is that many young men leave the priesthood after being ordained, typically within the first five years. Additionally, the culture the men are being asked to serve in or from which they are entering seminary is becoming increasingly hostile to traditional Christian values. Something needs to change to…
Leading Them to Christ
St. Paul explains to the Corinthians the role of the ministers who are preaching and teaching the Gospel to them. He writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth” (1 Cor 3:6-7). Seminary…