Investing with Faith / Fr. Eric Augenstein

Gifts to vocations endowments help form our future priests

Being a priest is complicated. At heart, the priestly vocation is a call from God to stand in the person of Christ and serve the people of a local community.

But because our lives are complicated—and our communities are complicated—the process of priestly formation is one that must consider all the many moments in life that can be opportunities for grace and mercy.

The Church takes seriously her responsibility to form healthy and integrated priests who can mediate Christ’s presence through word, sacraments and pastoral ministry. We are committed to providing our seminarians with a rich variety of experiences that help prepare them for the complex life of a priest.

The Vocations and Seminarian Endowments through the archdiocesan Catholic Community Foundation help us make this formation possible.

Take the summers, for instance. It can be tempting to imagine the life of a seminarian as being spent entirely within the walls of the seminary, taking classes, praying, living and working together. But there is much of priestly formation that happens outside the formal seminary setting, especially during the summer months.

This summer, many of our seminarians will be living in rectories and ministering full time in our parishes. Others will be spending the summer in Cuernavaca, Mexico, participating in a Spanish language and cultural immersion. Two of our seminarians will be deepening their spiritual lives at the Institute for Priestly Formation in Omaha, Neb.

A group of our men will spend extended time this summer serving the poor in our local communities. And we often have seminarians working in hospitals in the summer months as chaplain interns. These summer formation programs supplement the ongoing human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral formation that takes place in our seminaries.

So where do our endowments come in? We are blessed in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis to have several endowments that support seminarian education and formation. In addition, we receive support from the United Catholic Appeal and an annual second collection in our parishes for seminarian education.

These three funding sources provide the financial resources needed to form the future priests of our archdiocese, from seminary tuition to summer Spanish language courses, from spiritual retreats to hospital chaplaincy programs. Our endowments ensure that we have a consistent source of financial support for these formation ministries. They have become an ongoing gift to our local Church in providing solid and faithful formation for our seminarians.

During the seven or eight years of seminary formation, it costs about $350,000 to educate and form one priest for our archdiocese. No one person can fund this on their own. The generous support of many people throughout our archdiocese makes this priestly formation possible.

I invite you to prayerfully consider if a planned gift to an endowment might be one way you can support our future priests and help build up the Church in central and southern Indiana. Our seminarians will be better priests because of the formation provided through your generosity.
 

(Father Eric Augenstein is archdiocesan director of seminarians. Tax or legal information provided herein is not intended as tax or legal advice. Always consult with your legal, tax or financial advisors before implementing any gift plan. For more information on the Catholic Community Foundation, visit www.archindy.org/CCF, e-mail ccf@archindy.org, or call 317-236-1482.) †