Welcome
Dear friends of Saint Vincent Seminary,

Very recently, the Seminary finished a self-study report and the theme of our approach to this work was “listening with the ear of the heart.” Interestingly, as members of our faculty and administration adapted this concept to the task of evaluating our program, they found that what could be a tedious labor actually became spiritually enriching. In light of our experience, I would like to share something of this idea of listening with the heart with you.

What do we mean by focusing on the concept of “listening with the ear of the heart”? The phrase itself comes directly from the opening verse of the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict: “Listen carefully my son to the master’s instruction and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” What Saint Benedict urges here, and throughout his Rule, is not just good advice for monks; it is a spirit of openness to the Lord in every aspect of life and, most importantly, in every person that we meet. Essentially, if we calm down the pace of our hectic lives and attentively appreciate the wonders that surround us, we will find that Christ is intimately present to us, and that he is speaking through every situation and person we know.

Moreover, in his most recent encyclical, Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI discusses another facet of listening with the heart, one from which we can derive immeasurable comfort: “When no one listens to me anymore, God listens to me.”

According to the Holy Father, confidence in God’s attentiveness to our needs and concerns is the very basis of hope. In other words, even before we know to listen to Him in our day-to-day lives, our Lord is already attentive to us; He knows our needs before we are able to articulate them.

Essentially, our seminary formation program seeks to engender an ongoing awareness of this dialogical disposition of listening with the ear of the heart. It is our desire to instill in each priesthood candidate, indeed in all of our students, an ever-deepening awareness of the God who hears and comprehends even the most subtle murmurs of our hearts. By the same token, we would like to cultivate an attentive stance of listening to the Lord’s presence in every aspect of life, but particularly through those to whom He sends us in our ministry. Therefore, while perusing this 2008-2010 Bulletin and examining our program, we hope that you, the reader, might also enter into the spirit of our program and become a more attentive participant in the dialogue of love to which we are all called in Jesus Christ.
May the peace and joy of the Lord be with you and all those who share your lives!

Very Rev. Justin Matro, O.S.B., Rector