Diocesan seminarians receive Ministry of Lector

Diocesan seminarians, Josh Hill and Steven Vetter, were among 35 seminarians at the Pontifical North American College in Rome to receive the Ministry of Lector on Jan. 12, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
 
Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis Bernard Hebda conferred the rite in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at the college.
 
In his homily, Archbishop Hebda stressed the “great drama of the event recalled today, as the Word comes to be baptized by the Voice.” John the Baptist, said the Archbishop, “proclaimed himself to be unworthy to untie the strap of his cousin’s sandal.” Yet, through the persistence of Jesus, John responds to Jesus’ request for baptism with a humble “yes,” continued the Archbishop, “is the prelude to one of the great manifestations of Jesus’ identity” as the Son of God, and it is through the example of John that the Gospel reminds us of the “amazing consequences when we say “yes” to Jesus.
 
Archbishop Hebda continued by stating that like John the Baptist, these “young men will stand before us and offer their ‘yes’ as Jesus asks them to embrace “in a new way the mission of preaching the Gospel to the whole world, as readers and bearers of God’s word.” Confronted with such a sublime task, he asked the men to be instituted, in spite of their own sense of unworthiness, if they were “willing to bring the message of salvation to those who have not yet received it, enabling them to come to know God our Father and his beloved Son Jesus Christ.”
 
Before Archbishop Hebda concluded, he exhorted the men to meditate on the word of God constantly, so that each day they “will have a deeper love of the Scriptures,” and be able to “show forth to the world Jesus Christ, radiating him” rather than themselves. Concluding, Archbishop Hebda encouraged the men, like John, to allow themselves “to be voices that faithfully proclaim the Word.”
 
As part of the rite, the Archbishop placed the Holy Scriptures in the hands of each candidate and said, “Take this book of Holy Scripture and be faithful in handing on the word of God, so that it may grow strong in the hearts of his people.”
 
The seminarians currently in their first year of theological formation for the priesthood, will have three additional years of theological, spiritual, and pastoral formation before being ordained to the priesthood in their home dioceses.
 
—Information provided by the Pontifical North American College