Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish podcast with Father Greg and jd. Each week Father Greg and I connect on a variety of topics related to our faith in our parish in Winona, Ontario. This week I am honored to spend this time with Seminary in Giuseppe.
Oh, I had it perfectly before Njwalim as he sits in for Father Greg who's at workshop this week.
We are here to help spread the good news and to further unite our parish community.
This is episode 21. We'll be focusing on Pentecost, St. Charles, Lwanga and companions and also seminary in Giuseppe this week. Remember, you can find us on the Spotify, the Apple Podcasts and YouTube every week. Subscribe somewhere down there and you can like or subscribe and we will find your inbox this week, Seminary and Giuseppe. Can you start us off with a prayer, please?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Oh, sure. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for today. We thank you for our lives. We ask you to send your Holy Spirit to be upon us, to bless us and to help us to spread the word of God. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: That was beautiful. Thank you. Well, as I mentioned, Father Greg is attending a priest workshop this week and next. So this week seminarian Giuseppe is with us. And our listeners were introduced to you a number of weeks ago when you first arrived at Immaculate Heart of Mary. And here we are together again with a chance to talk about our faith and your story a little bit. I'm very excited.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Now, there was a brief summary of your vocation story in this week's bulletin, but let's dive a little deeper today. Maybe you're the youngest of five siblings.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: And you started in a Minor Seminary at 9.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: What's. What's that about?
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so my vocation story, you know, when I, when I talk with the guys in the seminary, we share our vocation story together. And there's always that.
We start with like a conversion story.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Like, I was on Atheist before and later on I converted, but I, like, I really didn't have that kind of a story. You know, I grew up in like, a very Christian family. My parents were like church goers. We, we went to church on Sunday, but my mother would equally go for like, all the morning masses that we had. And so I just naturally started going for the masses with her. I just Loved going to church. And then it was like a minor seminary that was created close to my house. And she asked me, would you love to go to the minor seminary? You know, I was like, okay, that's a very good question. Because I was just going to church every day, serving at masses and. Yeah. So gradually just integrating into the church community. I was like, sure. So I went to the minus. I went to the minor seminary when I was nine years old. And that was like immediately after primary school. Okay.
Yeah. Which was pretty good. Was a very fun experience. And generally after the minor seminary, people decide what they're going to do next because minor seminary is just like a, like, like a secondary school.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: And from there you can decide if, I mean, it's like a secondary school with a lot of additions because you have like church studies and then Latin and religious studies and a little bit of music.
So immediately after minor seminary. But I didn't mention that by the time I finished minor seminary because I went to like minor seminary in one of the two English speaking regions in Cameroon.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Which is currently in like struggle, like a political struggle. And there's like gun violence and everything. So by the time I was in my last year of minor seminary, there was like a gun violence around where I was. And we even got attacked in the minor seminary. Right.
I remember the night when the guys came in, they were like shooting guns all over and like, you know, beating some people. I was like, oh boy. Yeah. So it was not a very good experience.
But I left that minor seminary my last year and I went to another, like minor seminary in the country.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Where I finished. But after I finished, because due to the crisis, my family had to relocate to another like, section of Cameroon and my parents were like, pretty well to do. But I lost my father in the next region where we went to. So it was like a French speaking region and he, we lost him there.
But when I finished in the minor seminary, since it was a secondary school, I had to like, support my mother in some way. So I, I didn't go to the seminary again for like a year because I wanted to support my mother when like in a different part of the world. And I had to like, she was like struggling because we had left everything that we had behind in the previous region.
So I was like a, I was like high school teacher for a while. For like, I, yeah, I did teach for like nine months, I would say.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: But like after, after like nine months, I, my other brother got a good job and he was like, I mean, he Moved to the States sometime back, and he got, like, a good job and so he could support my mother.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: I was like, oh, fantastic.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Which was really good. I thought if he. If he supported my mother, then I didn't have to do that anymore. So I stopped teaching and I went back to the major seminary to continue.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Because I've always just loved to be, like. To be.
To be in the seminary, right? And really, I really just felt from a young age that I was really called by God to, like, be a priest.
Like, again, a lot of. A lot of people say this. A lot of Catholics actually say this. But amongst my favorite things to do as a kid were things like playing Mass, you know, like just saying Mass with my friends. And many of us, like, many of us, the young guys, we actually did this. Many of us, the auto servers, we would see Mass as a hobby and stuff like that. So that's generally my story. And I've just grown into, like, a relationship with Christ. Like, I grew up in. I guess one struggle for me practically was that, you know, growing up in a community where everyone goes to church because, like, where I lived in Cameroon, every single person went to church. And sometimes you just went to church because everyone else went to church. You know, it's just like, something you did because everyone else did. And at a certain point in, like, your life as a person, you had to decide, like, am I just going because everyone else goes or this is because I really like what I'm doing, right?
Like, personally, I just found that, like, going to church and, like, just following Jesus's teachings brought me, like, a lot of satisfaction and joy, right? Like an analogy I use with some of my friends in the seminary is like, this picture of heaven, right? We have this picture of heaven that is like, this perfect place where we're, like, in communion with God and we're so happy.
But I personally believe that heaven, like, heaven is that place, but it's equally the state. Just the state of joy with Christ, right? And this joy for me has always come through the teachings of Christ and always living this life of service. As a young guy back then in Cameroon, where I was, you know, I served at masses, I just naturally gravitated towards the priest. I was, like, going for vacations at the priest homes and then following them for, like, missions and, like, missions in the very remote places. And so we would just go together, struggling, like, spreading the word of God. I was just happy. Like, I just felt a certain joy in that service. Just, like, doing something for.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: And all of Your. All of your experiences are feeding you into this vocation.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And even when you had a little bit of time away, you were almost called back.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: To it.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Oh, that's wonderful. And so now you're in the major seminary.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: The major seminary. That's right.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: And just out of London.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Just out of London.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Okay, fantastic.
I'm going to kind of continue a little bit here on your. On your story. So you're now in the major seminary.
What subject, what studies impact you the most now as part of your program?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Okay. Like, let me, let me start off by saying that, like, before, like, I just finished my first year of theology.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Before that I was doing philosophy. Right. And philosophy. Because in the seminary you have to take three years of philosophy.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: And a few years of theology and philosophy was quite good. Like, I really, really loved philosophy. And so I've not done everything that there is to do about theology. I've done quite a few. But, like, one of my favorite courses is Christology. You know, Christology is just a studies of like.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Tell me, tell Amy and everyone else a little bit about what Christology entails.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Basically the study of, like, Christ was Jesus Christ and you know, like, and it would include things like the kind of person he was. When you say God was Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine. What did you actually mean? Right.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: And so I just loved it, especially because we spoke about this aspect of Jesus Christ which is like, which has to do with like, self giving. Like, because before my understanding of Christ, let me just say that in the seminary I've gotten a lot of, like, profound realizations. There are sometimes we did a course, like, we had a section in Christology where we talked about heresies.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: And like, almost every single heresies, they were like, stating. I was like, oh, that's what I believed, you know, and the professor was like, no, that's not what the church teaches. I was like, oh, okay. That's interesting. You know, good to know. Yeah, Yeah. I was like, that's interesting. I think a lot of Christians actually believe that. But one thing that actually strikes me about Christology, though, is just the fact that I had this atonement model of like, Jesus Christ's death on the cross. I thought, you know, because it's very popular that Jesus Christ died on the cross because he wanted to see. Save us from our sins in a way that's true, right? Like, almost like. But like, God did not need Jesus Christ to die to save us from certain, like, to pay A certain debt of our sin. Right. Jesus Christ, maybe his action of death was actually a voluntary action, almost like showing us what he actually means to be human. And dying for him was almost a lesson in humanity that for you to really find yourself as a human being, you need to die to yourself. Right. Almost like. And we're going to be talking about this with regards to Pentecost very soon.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Almost like as a Christian or as a real person, you actually, the paradox of the Christian life is that you find yourself more when you give yourself. When you, when you like, give something away, like, which is actually really contradictory. You would think that you. You find yourself by really struggling to get yourself by defining what yourself is. But you really do find yourself in this mystery, really giving out yourself.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: And so many do describe that they. They do feel more alive by giving.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: By giving of themselves makes them feel more alive and more, more, more. I don't want to say powerful, but I think I will because that's the only word that comes to mind.
So philosophy is a very impactful. I can sort of hear that in your responses and all of your.
As you tell your story too. Do you have a favorite saint that helps you in your formation?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: You know what? I would go with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Right.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: In this. Of course, in this church.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't think about that Mercury of Mary. Yeah. But I actually, I particularly said that because I've spent a lot of time with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Again, I did mention my mother went for like morning Masses every day. I generally followed her. And the distance between our house and the church we went for morning mass was like an hour of walking by foot. Right. And so whenever we went to church, when we trekked in the morning to go to church and Mass was at 6am so we started working at about 5am to get to Mass. We always pray the rosary. I always prayed the Rosary. And so that's like the primary form of devotion that I was really drawn to. Whenever I felt like really praying, I was drawn to the rosary. And really. And when I learned about the story of Mary and just saying yes, no matter what that actually entailed, you know, like, thinking about it critically was like just saying yes to that. That she didn't even know, like, how is this going to be? And she's like, yes, let it just be done to me according to your will. Something which I personally struggle with.
Yeah. So I just consider her like my favorite saints because I want to learn this almost as selfless yes. You know, to God.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: That's beautiful. I love that.
How can we better support seminarians and you in particular here at the Immaculate Heart of Mary, how can we support you?
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Okay, great question. I guess you can just pray for me, right? Because again, I'm discerning. Right. I.
I definitely have this conviction that God has. God is calling me at this particular point to be in the seminary. And I've known from a kid that I really wanted to be a priest. Right. But again, but you find in the Gospels that you're not the one actually making the initiative. Right. Jesus Christ says, I called you. I chose you. You did not choose me. Right. It's almost like, so, like in the seminary. Everyone in the seminary is really battling with, is this really my call? Am I really chosen by God? I feel this sense of being called to be in the seminary at this point, but is this my call? Right. And so just pray that, you know, Christ shows me where he's actually calling me. And I'm definitely sure that is the priesthood, but you should give me the graces that I need to, like, yeah, go through this.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: That's beautiful. Well, it's not often that we give our listeners or viewers homework, so there's your homework.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: We will be praying for Seminepi. Seminepi.
I gotta do my vocal exercises again. We will ask everyone to continue to pray for seminary. And just as he continues his discernment.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Well, let's reveal our saint of the week. Each week we feature a saint or several and share some facts about their lives. As we strive to live out our mission as Catholics, we can always look to our saints for inspiration. On our day of recording. Today, June 3rd, it is the memorial for St. Charles Lwanga and companions.
So St. Charles Luanga was one of 22 Ugandan martyrs, and he's the patron of youth and Catholic action in most of tropical Africa.
He protected his fellow pages, aged 13 to 30, from the sexual demands of the Bagandan ruler Mwanga and encouraged and instructed them in the Catholic faith during their imprisonment for refusing the ruler's demands.
He first learned of Christ's teachings from two retainers in the court of Chief Mawolungungu. And while a catechumen, he entered the royal household as assistant to Joseph Mukaso, who was head of the court pages.
On the night of Mukaso's martyrdom, and for encouraging the African youths to resist Mwanga, Charles requested and received baptism. Imprisoned with his friends, his courage and belief in God inspired them to remain chaste and faithful. And for his own unwillingness to submit to the immoral acts and his efforts to safeguard the faith of friends, he was burned to death at Namugongo on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga's order.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: That's gruesome.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: That's an.
It's a heart wrenching, terrible story.
And we will continue to pray for him and his spirit as well. And there is a prayer. I didn't find any quotes attributed to him, but I did find a prayer.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Martyrs of Uganda, pray for the faith where it is danger and for Christians who must suffer because of their faith.
Give them the same courage, zeal and joy you showed.
Help those of us who live in places where Christianity is accepted to remain aware of the persecution in other parts of the world. Amen.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: And we always have to throw in a Jesus, I trust in you.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Oh, Jesus, I trust in you for sure.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: But what a. As you said, what a brutal story. And you know, we're really fortunate to be here and to be able to pray and practice our faith without fear of great persecution and danger.
And also to have our, our churches and our parishes so close we don't have to walk an hour often, as you did to, to get to our, our Mass as well. So we're really fortunate and really blessed. And again, we'll continue to pray for our saints and pray for seminary in Giuseppe.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So this week in the church, we are celebrating Pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and the other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem. Again, those vocal exercises, they were celebrating the feast of weeks 50 days after Easter. So what is our focus for Pentecost? What is important for us to keep in mind?
[00:15:07] Speaker B: There is a lot of things we can definitely speak like we can talk about. Regards to Pentecost, me particularly, what has fascinated me with the feast is just like I've always been drawn to the languages, the aspect of languages, the fact that, you know, the Spirit descended on the apostles and they were able to speak in a way that every single person understood. Right.
When I read that, what I think about is the fact that there was initially like a barrier to, like proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, which was actually like the difficulty in communicating to every single person because we could not understand every person's language. And I've always read that story, story, that story of languages as indicating the personal experiences or the personal life stories, like personal journeys of each individual.
Like, we're certainly like a baptized people called into Like a mission. We're, like, sent on mission to proclaim God's love to every. Every person in the world. But we do not always know every single person. Right? Like, we. We might. We might just end up talking past every single person because we do not understand their story. As a Christian, like, I guess the. The lesson I've always learned from that. Oh, I think that the take on that is basically that the act like, the work of evangelization is primarily the work of the Spirit and not, like, the work, not our work. Because if you try to, like, evangelize, if you think that you are the actor in, like, this whole story of evangelization, you're making a mistake because you don't understand every single person and the angle in which you might be like, like. And I actually say this personally because from my experience, I've noticed sometimes when I've, like, spoken to someone with the intention of, like, getting them to, like, a certain conversion doesn't always happen. Like. And some other times when I've just spoken to someone very casually and I'm not intending anything, and the person tells you later on, thank you so much for what you told me. Because, like, it had. It actually touched me and it actually helped me out. I was like, okay, I didn't intend that at all. And it just humbles me. Right. And it kind of teaches me that, like, this, the work of evangelization is not really our work. It's really the work of the Spirit.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: And the Spirit, we are just empty vessels.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Transmitting words and actions and kindnesses and ways. And you mentioned a gentle conversion that's sometimes so effective.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: In touching people.
Oh, wonderful. Thank you for that. Well, that's just about all the time we have for today. Thank you for your insights. Seminary and Giuseppe, thank you so much. Can you close us with a prayer?
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Oh, sure.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for this day. Thank you for the gift of life. Thank you for your many blessings. You pour. You pour out on us. We ask you to bless us again. Bless our family members, Bless our friends. Help us, Lord, to recognize that the work of evangelization is primarily yours. Our life is primarily to serve you. And you are the first actor in our life.
We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Thank you for that.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: And thank you for your insights and for sharing your story. It was so wonderful to speak with you and to get to know you a little bit better today.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: It was wonderful.
And thanks to our fans and friends and odds and ends for joining us again this week through the Immaculate Heart of Mary social media channels, the Apple podcast, the Spotify, and the YouTube. If you like our show, subscribe and tell your friends. And if you don't like our show, tell your friends anyway and let them discern for themselves. Have a great week, everyone. We are Seminary and Giuseppe and JD Leaving you smarter, happier, and more blessed than you were yesterday, man.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Have a good week.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Oh, that's right.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Okay, here we go. The official end.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: There we go. That's awesome.
