Program of Priestly Formation (Ascension)

PPF 239

Spiritual Dimension

Spiritual benchmarks related to prayer and the spiritual life that the seminarian should achieve by the end of the discipleship stage include consistent participation in communal spiritual exercises and liturgies, including prayerful participation in the Mass and Divine Office (or the Divine Praises, in the Eastern Catholic Churches); a demonstrated habit of regular spiritual reading; the ability to speak with facility about God’s work in his life; and a habit of personal prayer, spiritual direction, and participation in the Sacrament of Penance. By the end of the discipleship stage, the seminarian is able to articulate his understanding and awareness of God’s call to him of a lifelong commitment to celibate chastity. 307 He continues to grow in the virtue of chastity. He has the ability to articulate and demonstrate appropriate boundaries with others, relating to all persons as beloved children of the Father, and possesses a solid understanding and desire of a habit of healthy solitude. He demonstrates a growing transparency in his relationship with Jesus Christ through his ability to describe this relationship to others in a meaningful way; he nurtures this relationship through a well-established habit of reading and meditating on Sacred Scripture. CONFIGURATION STAGE BENCHMARKS The well-established friendship between the seminarian and Jesus Christ, which is necessarily characteristic of the man by the end of the configuration stage, is reflected in an internalized habit of reading and meditating on Sacred Scripture, as well as the ability to identify and communicate connections between meditation on 307 This includes a growing understanding of the positive reasons for a lifelong commitment to celibate chastity. St. Paul VI articulates these as “a real participation in His [Christ’s] own unique priesthood. . . . Christ remained throughout His whole life in the state of celibacy, which signified His total dedication to the service of God and men.” Sacerdotalis Caelibatus ( On the Celibacy of the Priest , 1967), nos. 19, 21; see also no. 23, www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_ enc_24061967_sacerdotalis.html . In addition to raising matrimony to the dignity of a sacrament, Christ “has also opened a new way, in which the human creature adheres wholly and directly to the Lord, and is concerned only with Him and with His affairs” ( Sacerdotalis Caelibatus , no. 20). The “free choice of sacred celibacy . . . stimulates to a charity which is open to all” and “manifests the virginal love of Christ for the Church” ( Sacerdotalis Caelibatus , nos. 24, 26).

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