Dear Friends of SJV,
Happy Easter! As we continue to celebrate our Risen Lord, the seminarians are making their final push toward the end of the academic year. As their final exams draw near, they must work hard to prepare themselves to demonstrate all they have learned.
Most of our seminarians are looking forward to their summer assignments, but eight of these men will be ordained to the priesthood and will begin their ministries to Our Holy Mother the Church. Please pray for all our men as they prepare for their next steps in their journey.
As we look toward the ordinations, in our newsletter this month we hear from Father Gary Selin, who is a 2003 alumnus of our Seminary and serves as the Spiritual Director for the Spirituality Year House. Then we’ll hear from one of our priests to be, Deacon Jonathan Francois from the Archdiocese of Denver, as he reflects on his time as a seminarian, and looks forward to his priestly ordination.
I am grateful to you for your prayerful support of our seminary.
In Christ,
Fr. Ángel Pérez-López
The 2025-26 transitional deacons from the St. John Vianney Theological Seminary.
“I will raise the chalice of salvation and will call upon the name of the Lord” (Ps 116:13)
“I will raise the chalice of salvation and will call upon the name of the Lord” (Ps 116:13)
As we prepare for the priestly ordinations of our priests-to-be, we call to mind the remarkable grace of the ministerial priesthood and give thanks to God for this wonderous gift. The newly ordained priest has many reminders of his ministry of service, including the chalice which he uses for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
In anticipation of our forthcoming priestly ordinations, and in thanksgiving to the Triune God for the gift of the priesthood and the Holy Mass, I want to share with you a story of a chalice that I received from a priest who had a profound impact on my priestly vocation.
On May 25, 1958, Father Perry Dodds was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Boise, having recently completed his seminary studies at St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. His parents gave to him a Romanesque-style chalice and paten made in Holland. Around the base of the chalice are the words of St. Paul from Philippians 2:8: “Obediens usque ad mortem” (Obedient unto death).
When I was 11 years old, Father Dodds began his pastorate at my home parish, St. Edward the Confessor in Twin Falls, Idaho. During those years, I served many of his Masses and noticed his beautiful chalice, which accompanied him in his subsequent assignment to a country parish and into retirement. As a senior in high school, I was able to serve the 12:10pm daily Mass, a profound experience that awakened my soul to a priestly vocation.
As a college student and later as a seminarian I served the Mass of Father Dodds in the private chapel of his apartment during his retirement years. Finally, as a priest I had the joy of concelebrating Mass with him, using that same chalice given to him by his parents at his ordination in 1958. These Masses were always scheduled for 12:10 p.m.
In 2009 Father Dodds became deathly ill due to kidney failure and other ailments. At one point he could no longer offer Mass, but in his bed of pain he offered his sufferings to the Triune God. On May 17 Father Dodds offered up his soul to Jesus Christ in the last priestly offering of his earthly life. When did he die? It was at 12:10 p.m., the time of his daily Mass.
After I celebrated Father Dodds’ funeral Mass, I found out that he had bequeathed to me his chalice. I am blessed to use the chalice for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls. In God’s ineffable providence, I have used this chalice for Holy Mass in our seminary chapel where Father Dodds prayed as a seminarian over 70 years ago.
Fr. Gary Selin
Spiritual Director, and Class of 2003
St. John Vianney Theological Seminary
A Marvelous Life
When I entered seminary in 2019, one of my grade-school teachers asked my little brother on the playground what he thought of his older-brother becoming a priest. To which he replied, “He isn’t going to be a priest! He’s going to be a seminarian!” Clearly, my parents and I hadn’t adequately helped him understand that a man becomes a seminarian so that he may one day become a priest. In hindsight, my little brother may have been right at times. It has often felt that I became a seminarian for life, with the promise of priesthood always situated on an elusive horizon.
But these last few months as a deacon have made my impending future more concrete. In stealing away from the other seminarians to go practice Mass on my own, or to drill the exact words of absolution and anointing of the sick, it feels like I am suddenly running out of time. Many seminarians in their final months at St. John Vianney are secretly wishing that they had more time: to be more holy, virtuous, liturgically literate, mature, etc.
Time, however, is not what is truly at stake; it is love. Every Thursday night the seminarian prays, “He has put into my heart a marvelous love for the faithful ones who dwell in his land” (Psalm 16). The marvelous love that I have encountered in Christ and the spiritual fatherhood he has offered to me in priesthood is the greatest love I have ever known. If we permit time’s eroding effect to tarnish this marvelous love over the course of our ministry, we will hear the words of Christ in the Apocalypse, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:5).
It is in trusting this marvelous love that overcomes my need for time. Instead of fulfilling my brother’s false prophecy of remaining a perpetual seminarian, I will hear in the responsorial psalm at my ordination, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110). Our finite preparation in seminary allows for the immeasurable reward of being Christ’s priest on earth and eternity. Like bread and wine offered and transformed at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, my classmates and I will offer ourselves to be transformed as Christ’s priest. Through the laying on of hands and prayer of Archbishop Golka, Christ will transform this ‘forever seminarian’ into a priest forever in fulfillment of Christ’s marvelous love.
Rev. Mr. Jonathan W. Francois
Seminarian, Archdiocese of Denver
