Seminarians on the Watchtower

This past weekend, I spent time with some seminarians from Louisiana. One of them was a very good friend of mine who only entered the seminary this fall. Naturally I was very excited about seeing my friend and meeting the others, and the more my excitement showed in my actions, the more jokes were cracked about stealing men away from seminary. While I laughed along with the others at the time, their comments forced me to think about my motives and actions while they were here.

I looked everywhere for the self-help book entitled “What to do when your best friend goes to seminary and then brings three to your house for the weekend”? You can take my word for it; it doesn’t exist.

I feel that, at my age, single men and women alike are always subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) searching for a spouse. Most of us know that we are called to marriage, and there is a sort of ‘watchman on the tower’ aspect to our daily lives, where we sit in anticipation of his or her coming on the horizon. Every time we meet someone, we squint our eyes and peer into the distance of our future relationship, trying gauge whether or not he or she is the one we have been waiting for. We look for those certain qualities we admire; whether or not he is religious, whether or not she works hard, whether or not he will be committed.

For Catholic girls, seminarians are easy to spot coming over that hill in the distance. Once we know what they are, we attach a whole list of good qualities to them without even having to look too hard. I know that no seminarian is perfect, and not all of them are even as holy as we might think, but simply making the sacrifice to go there to discern giving one’s whole life to God is enough to merit esteem. After all, God would call some of the best men to serve his Church.

In most cases, it is easy for women to simply recognize a seminarian, sigh briefly over the fact that God snagged another good one, and return their eyes to that horizon. The only problem was that this weekend, they were not on the horizon, there were in my apartment. As I said before, I tried to watch my words and actions, and I hope I responded to their presence appropriately. It is also possible that I am blowing this out of proportion. Maybe they are secure enough already in their calling that meeting and spending time with girls their age is not a problem. However, I would guess that this early in their lives at seminary, they may climb that watchtower too every now and then.