Dear all,
Hope does not disappoint is the Papal Document of Pope Francis announcing the Ordinary Jubilee Year of 2025. Jubilee Years or Holy Years have been proclaimed every twenty-five years since the thirteenth century. The Holy Year is an extraordinary year of grace characterized by special liturgical celebrations, pilgrimages, processions, an invitation to conversion, and to practice the works of mercy.
Pope Francis has taken the theme of “Hope does not disappoint” from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 5:5). Hope is sometimes a forgotten virtue of our age. There is a lot of pessimism about the state of the world and the Church. Pope Francis rightly underlines the importance of this virtue for every Christian, seminarian, and priest. Without hope, we lose sight of what we are called to be. With hope, we know God is on our side.
May this New Year 2025 be filled with our Lord’s finest gifts and blessings!
Fr. Daniel Leonard
Rector
A Ministry with Discernment
Twice in my life, I have found myself so strongly drawn to a spiritual reality that I could not get enough of it. The first was when I encountered the Founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, the Venerable Bruno Lanteri. The second was my encounter with the retreat he loved, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which I made before diaconate and final vows.
A few years after ordination, while working with our seminarians, I spoke with a classmate back from Argentina. He encountered there a group of Jesuits doing some of the best work ever on Ignatian discernment, among them Daniel Gil, SJ and Miguel Angel Fiorito, SJ. He shared his experience with me. The conversation taught me that I had much to learn about discernment. I began to study the works of these authors in detail, as well as those of the American Jesuit, Fr. Jules Toner, another of the great figures in Ignatian discernment. I began approaching such men as directors for my annual retreat, among them, Fr. Toner, perhaps the sharpest mind I have ever encountered, Fr. George Aschenbrenner, SJ, Fr. Dominic Maruca, SJ.
The turning point came when I was asked to direct an eight-day Ignatian retreat for a group of sisters. In the retreat, I gave a thirty-minute conference each morning on St. Ignatius’s fourteen “First Week” Rules for discernment. Something electric happened in the giving and receiving of this content. Many more such talks in retreats followed. Then I was invited to offer this teaching for spiritual directors in training, later in parishes, and many other groups. My provincial asked me to write this material as a book—he had to ask three times before I realized that he was serious and that I should undertake this!—and books, too, became a part of this ministry. Podcasts and webinars soon followed, and this work became full time.
In 2006, I was invited to work with the Institute for Priestly Formation in its various programs. From that time, I have increasingly shared this teaching with priests and seminarians, a great blessing in my life. In 2015, Archbishop Aquila asked my provincial that I come to Denver and St. John Vianney Seminary to offer this teaching here, and these have been blessed years. I am happy to share this teaching and related topics with men who have a good spiritual formation and a desire for the spiritual life.
Discernment has become increasingly important in our time, and the recent Final Document of the Synod indicates that its importance will only grow. My hope is that this teaching accompany the men through formation and into priesthood, that it be a resource for their own spiritual life and a source of encouragement for the people they will serve.
Father Tim Gallagher, OMV
St. Ignatius of Loyola Chair of Spiritual Formation
Gift of Life
Since 2019, I have been blessed to be an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. John Vianney Seminary. When I was asked to write a piece for this newsletter, I panicked. “Do they want me to write a profound essay displaying my philosophical chops?” Fortunately, I was told I could write on anything, and the first thing that came to my mind was my ten-year-old son, David-Immanuel.
It was 2:30am, January 28, 2014, the Feast Day of Saint Thomas Aquinas. A newly ordained priest was baptizing our infant in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). My wife, Anne, and I watched as our fragile little one, only two hours old, was fed oxygen. We looked at the priest, so grateful he had awakened from his slumbers to feed our child the Holy Spirit. (Later, he told us that this was the first baptism he had ever performed).
Anne didn’t have the opportunity to see David-Immanuel when he was born a few minutes after midnight. But I did. The nurses let me briefly hold him, before rushing him off to the NICU.
I knew something was not right. I suspected that David may have Trisomy 21 (commonly known as Down Syndrome). Anne’s pregnancy was difficult throughout the entire nine months. This was to be a moment of relief and joy for her. How could I tell her of my concerns?
The doctors soon confirmed my worries, telling us that our son indeed had Trisomy 21. It was difficult to express the wave of emotions we experienced amid what, at the time, felt like tragic news.
We did not want this. We were not equipped for this. We were not strong enough. We were scared.
The issue was not whether we loved David. That was a given. In fact, that is what made it so difficult. To watch someone so innocent and so fragile and so beloved – knowing that he will face challenges that no “normal” person can understand. As my dissertation director told me at the time: “You will discover you have cracks in your soul that you never knew existed.”
David-Immanuel was diagnosed with autism at three years of age. It did not really manifest substantially until the age of seven, when he regressed dramatically – no longer able to count, read words, say the alphabet, and, for the most part, speak. Going through these series of events was another heart wrenching loss. And yet, our love for David-Immanuel only grows.
Now, we are a family of five, with two other boys – Itzhak (6) and Joachim (8). His brothers treat him like he’s one of them –yelling at him when he knocks down their blocks or messes up their army men. The neighbor kids, as they have gotten to know David, include him in their games. And he has the most beautiful smile and laugh. Of course, we continue to do all sorts of therapies in the hope of providing him the best possible future. One thing is for certain, he will always have friends to the end with us as his family.
We thank God for our beautiful David-Immanuel Aquinas Krause and his beautiful smile. And we ask that Venerable Jerome Lejeune (a French pediatrician and geneticist who discovered the cause of Trisomy 21), pray for us!
Dr. Jonathan Krause
Director, Pre-Theology Cycle | Assistant Professor
