Fourth Annual Vocation Retreat

by | Apr 19, 2015 | Eastern Province

Fr. Astor Rodriquez share this report of the Fourth Annual Vocation Retreat

This was our 4th Annual Vocation Retreat which occurred on Palm Sunday Weekend. It was a good week considering people’s personal schedules and the culmination of the Lenten season before we enter Holy Week. We had a change in venue. We moved from the St Vincent de Paul Youth and Young Adult Center to Saint Vincent’s Seminary. We had six young men, four from St. Vincent’s Parish, one from Niagara University and one a graduate of St. John’s University.

As you know, we try our best to create an environment where these young men can experience an intense moment of prayer, service, and community life. We gathered in the Assembly Room in St. Catherine’s Infirmary and began our retreat. Moments of prayer in the community chapel; visits with the confreres in the Infirmary; interaction with the confreres of the Motherhouse; sharing our stories with the confreres, internal seminarians and people who collaborate with us in Germantown; a guided visit to the archives with Fr. Carven; service and liturgy at St. Vincent’s, made for a very diverse and interesting weekend experience. I really think the men were able to see us in a better perspective, our past, present and future.

Thanks to God for this opportunity. This has been our fourth vocation retreat this school year. Thanks to the Province for the constant support on many levels. Thanks to the Community in Germantown for being so hospitable and participating in sharing your lives. Thanks to the young men: Thomas King, Jimmy Muller, Matthew Carman, Jeremy Puntel, Eddie Rigaler and John Fortune. Thanks to our seminarian for coming along with: Andres Garcia.

Vincent’s vocation prayer sums it up:

“O Lord, send good laborers to your Church, but that they may be good! Send good missionaries to work in your vineyard laborers, O my God, such as they ought to be: utterly detached from themselves, their own comfort and worldly goods. Let them even be few in number, provided that they are good. O Lord, grant this grace to your Church. Amen”