F ORME D BY T H E C I T Y
be ignored when they are writ so large
right before our eyes, and the impetus to
reach out in Christian charity is readily
evoked as a response to such realities.
All that remains, then, is to form the
seminarians in the means of accompani-
ment.
W
HEN THE SEMINARY WAS REFOUNDED
by Cardinal Szoka in 1988, the refounding was
undertaken with a strong commitment to the city of
Detroit and with an awareness of the particular needs
and challenges that come along with life in the city.
At that time, the wounds of the 1967 riots were still
raw, and even today, fifty years later, some of the scars,
visible and invisible, yet remain.
Throughout the intervening years,
though, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
has remained as a stabilizing presence, a
sign of hope, and a place to encounter
Jesus Christ and the Gospel in the neigh-
borhood.
As much as Sacred Heart has been a
blessing to the neighborhood, the neigh-
borhood has been a blessing to the semi-
nary and to its mission of forming heralds
for the New Evangelization. The location
of the seminary provides a fertile ground
for the growth and development of pas-
toral gifts needed for priestly ministry in
any context. As such, priestly formation
at Sacred Heart has benefitted from being
able to unfold in the midst of many who
present the face of the suffering Christ to
the seminarians. appears in the pastoral dimension.
The fifth edition of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops’ Program for Priestly
Formation (PPF) states under the heading
of “Pastoral Formation”:
If seminarians are to be formed after
the model of Jesus, the Good Shep-
herd, who came “to bring glad tidings
to the poor,” then they must have
sustained contact with those who are
privileged in God’s eyes—the poor, the
marginalized, the sick, and the suffer-
ing. In the course of these encounters,
they learn to cultivate a preferential
option for the poor. They also need
to become aware of the social contexts
and structures that can breed injustice
as well as ways of promoting more just
contexts and structures. (PPF 239)
MINISTRY TO THE
MARGINALIZED
To order the work that needs to be
done in seminary formation, the Church
considers priestly formation under four
headings or dimensions: human, spiritu-
al, intellectual, and pastoral. The most ob-
vious advantage of the seminary’s setting The seminary’s location provides the
“sustained contact” with the poor and
marginalized spoken of by the bishops in
the Program for Priestly Formation, as semi-
narians are confronted daily with the ma-
terial poverty that can be seen in so many
areas of the neighborhood. Poverty and
marginalization are realities that cannot
SEEING THE FACE OF CHRIST
Pastoral formation in the undergraduate
seminary program focuses heavily on culti-
vating in the men a love for the poor and
a servant’s heart through the Apostolic
Experience Program (AEP). The program
is not a formation in problem solving but
rather a formation in accompaniment,
and the term “Apostolic Experience” is in-
tentionally chosen.
Just as the Apostles were called from
their lives and livelihoods to follow the
Lord in his poverty, so the seminarians are
invited to see the face of Christ in their
brothers and sisters on the margins, the
peripheries, of society.
Just as the Apostles were not called
into a relationship with the Lord in order
to resolve the difficulties of this earthly
life—the fishermen were not recruited to
use their businesses to put a roof over the
Lord’s head—so the work of the seminar-
ians in their various ministries is more
about encountering Christ than fixing
material problems.
The various classes of the undergradu-
ate program work in various ministries, in-
cluding ministry to the homebound mem-
bers of the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral
parish; teaching basic reading, writing,
and mathematics skills at the Dominican
Literacy Center; caring for the develop-
mentally disabled at Angels’ Place; and
individual counseling at the Crossroads
outreach, among others. The work of Sa-
cred Heart’s seminarians at Crossroads
exemplifies what AEP as a whole seeks to
form in the men.
At Crossroads, the seminarians meet in-
dividually with persons who may be dealing
with any number of challenges: homeless-
ness, unemployment, transportation prob-
lems, hunger, or lack of personal identifi-
cation needed to obtain further assistance,
to name a few. Each person comes with his
or her own story, and the seminarians are
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