Summer of Love with MSC Vocations

Spirit in the City Festival in London

It has been a summer of celebration for the MSC vocations team, filled with festivals, pilgrimages and volunteering. Most exciting of all we opened our new student community in Dublin on September 8th with two candidates, Kevin and Henry. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In fact we’ll start at the very beginning of summer. It is, as the song goes, a very good place to start.

Arriving after 111Km on the Camino

June opened with a young adult pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago. For those of you who haven’t heard of The Way it’s an 800km walk across the north of Spain to the resting place of the Apostle James. It has been part of Catholic tradition for well over a millennium. Each year it inspires hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to leave hurry and noise of life behind, to walk or cycle or ride on horseback to Santiago in a spirit of reflection and prayer. Our group this year came from Scotland and Ireland and they were profoundly moved by the experience, in spite of the torrential rain once or twice. June was also a good time for festivals and we took part in Brightlights young adult weekend and the Spirit in the City evangelisation day in Leicester Square. They are at the forefront of engaging young adults and exploring what faith means today.

It’s not all work with MSC Volunteering

2014 was also the second year of our volunteering programme. You can read all about Joe, Michael and Clare in this issue of the MSC Message. I joined the team for three weeks in July. It was fantastic to visit Sr. Sally and all the children in the Holy Family Centre in South Africa. In addition to it being fantastic though it was also exhausting! When you finished with the younger group of children the teenagers were only getting ready to go. Football fever gripped Holy Family as I was there in the middle of the World Cup. All the older kids even stayed up for the final and the atmosphere was electric with the kids split in their support of Germany and Argentina.

An incredible gathering of young people

In anticipation of leading a group in 2015 I went to the Medjugorge Youth Festival at the beginning of August. It was my first time there and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the 40,000 young people who gathered each day for testimonies, prayer, fun, Reconciliation and Mass. There were people from every corner of the globe and you really had the sense of being part of a universal Church. From there it was back to work in the Cathedral of Santiago to welcome English speaking pilgrims. It was two weeks of some of the most powerful experiences of Reconciliation I’ve had as a priest, as people had been reflecting on their lives as they walked The Way. Then it was back to the UK for the last two youth festivals of summer, Kingdom Come in Walsingham and Greenbelt in Kettering. Both were different from one another, but each had a unique approach to welcoming young people and celebrating what we believe.

Welcoming pilgrims in Santiago de Compostella

The summer programme for 2014 finished with me in Heathrow Airport welcoming Clare, Joe and Michael back home after a successful end to their time in Africa. All in all it was a hectic few months, but worth it. If we are to be successful in engaging people to explore religious life and priesthood we need to be where they are. We need to reach out, moving beyond our traditional comfort zones and start talking to today’s searchers, whether they are walking ancient pilgrim pathways, volunteering with the marginalised or hanging out with friends at a festival.

Kevin, Clare, Fr. Alan and Henry on a mission to the local Wetherspoons!

As I mentioned at the beginning this year we have been blessed to have two men enter into formation with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. We’ll hear more about them in the future. We’ve also been fortunate that Clare, one of the summer volunteers, has entered into formation with our sister congregation, the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. If I’m certain of anything I believe that there are men and women throughout our country considering the possibility of priesthood and religious life. What’s needed is perhaps a word of encouragement and a simple prayer from you. This is our Church and vocations are the responsibility of each one of us. As we move towards the future lets continue to build that Church together.

If you are interested in having a chat about a vocations to the priesthood or religious life you can email me at fralan@mscvocations.com or call on 086 7857955 Irl / 075 26764236 UK