Dear Fellow Disciples,
I am inspired by you. I am inspired by how many of you use our booklets or books to spread God’s Word to others. I am inspired by how many years many of you have been supporting our ministry. I am inspired by the notes you write and the stories you tell about your own perseverance, often amid great suffering.
I am also inspired by the people I meet while carrying out the mission the Lord has given us and the chances I have to visit with you or pray for you at various events both in the US and overseas.
I am also inspired, each year, by the priests who travel to Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit each summer to spend five weeks working toward a pontifical degree granted through the Angelicum University in Rome, which is entrusted to the Sacred Heart Major Seminary faculty to oversee.
This year was no exception! Our students included priests from around the world, including various African and South American countries. Seminary professors took our classes, as well as monks from monasteries and parish priests. We also had members of four new religious orders that are responding to the calls of the New Evangelization, living lives of holiness with an openness to the Holy Spirit, and preaching the truth with courage and love. We had priests from various rites in the Church: Chaldean Catholics from the Iraqi diaspora, Syro-Malabar Catholics from India, and our own Latin Catholics. My time with them was very encouraging! Help is on the way! The numbers aren’t great, compared with the magnitude of the harvest, but every little bit helps, and the thirty priests currently in our Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) program are already a big help wherever they are serving.
What I most enjoy about teaching these priests each summer is how engaged they are with the material. They are working in the field, and they know what is needed to grow closer to the Lord and in their priestly service.
This summer, I taught Models of Evangelization and Stages of Spiritual Growth. In the Models course, we took an in-depth look at some of the great saints of evangelization throughout the centuries, such as St. Benedict, St. Patrick, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Francis De Sales. We also discussed the lessons we can learn from the Acts of the Apostles and even from a radical monk like Anthony of the Desert. We also studied the very challenging-but-insightful book Divine Renovation, written by Fr. James Mallon, a member of the Canadian Catholic Renewal Ministries Board of Directors. We also had many guest speakers during the course, including our own Debbie and Peter Herbeck and Pete Burak, who told us about contemporary models of evangelization that are bringing many people to the Lord.
In the course on Stages of Spiritual Growth, we went through my book The Fulfillment of All Desire chapter by chapter, studying in depth the great wisdom found in the Doctors of the Church. One of the priests in our course had such a deep grasp of this wisdom that I recommended to his superior that he could someday be the novice master! We are blessed with these priests.
We are blessed with you!
Ralph Martin
This letter originally appeared in Renewal Ministries October 2024 newsletter.
rmartin@renewalministries.net
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Sent reply but didn’t see robot button but hope you rec’d it. So grateful to receive stable bible based teachings in this critical church situation within “Where we are headed.”