Diocese of Covington - Messenger at 402 E. 21st Street, Covington, KY 41015 US - Human Formation
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Human Formation |
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| Seminarian Ryan Stenger checks for mail |
Father David Brzoska is director of human formation and pastoral formation for St. Vincent Seminary. He is also the vice-rector. Father Brzoska knows the seminarians very well – he lives with them, eats with them, prays with them, as well as teaches and counsels them. He said that of the four pillars of seminary formation, human formation is perhaps the toughest — for sure the most sensitive — for both the instructor and the seminarian. A big part of human formation is helping the seminarian identify his strengths and his weaknesses.
“It’s working with their social skills, their personality and how they interact with people and the image they portray,” said Father Brzoska. “The idea is that the priest helps bring people to Christ through the celebration of the sacraments and various other ways. What we want to avoid is having the priest’s personality — his person, his humanness —act as an obstacle to people coming to Christ. Pope John Paul II related this way: just as the humanity of Jesus was just as important as his divinity in bringing about salvation; so to the priest, in acting in the role of Jesus, the priests’ humanity should also help continue Christ’s salvific act.”
It’s not easy to be told your faults or to have them pointed out to you. For some seminarians it may feel like they are constantly being evaluated or scrutinized and so there is some resistance.
“The challenge for the seminarian is to be able to fully give themselves over to the formation process and to trust it...[As instructors] we have to give them credit when they are open to that and so they are able to grow and be more accepting,” said Father Brzoska.
Part of human formation is also dealing with life issues — the personal baggage everyone has in dealing with unresolved family issues and broken relationships.
“Everyone has their own story and there’s a lot of brokenness; the guys themselves have some brokenness that they have to address and that’s part of the human formation as well,” he said.
To help in human formation each seminarian has a formation advisor and a spiritual director that they meet with once a month. They discuss not only the things going on in their head but also any concerns they may have in their daily, spiritual or academic life.
For Father Brzoska being vice rector is more than a job or another aspect of priestly ministry, but he feels the experience has helped him understand and appreciate what it must be like to be a parent.
“Working with the men, living with them, trying to support them and challenge them and really learning with them, I’m assuming it’s like being a parent. Sometimes you can give them the information but you can’t make them do it exactly. You’re trying to help them, saying this will make your life easier but giving them the space to make their mistake and at the same time to challenge them; to let them be mad at me and be resistant and give them the time and space to better appropriate and understand that we are not just trying to be difficult but to help them; it’s a blessing for me is to have that type of relationship and to begin to understand what it’s like to be a parent or a father. I’m invested in their priesthood and to see them be ordained and begin ministry is a pleasure,” he said.