Seminarians received as candidates to Holy Orders
On October 26, 2022, four Mount Angel seminarians were received as candidates for Holy Orders during Mass in the Abbey church. The monastic community welcomed Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of Portland, Oregon, as the principal celebrant for the Mass. Other bishops concelebrated the Mass together with Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, seminary chancellor, Msgr. Joseph Betschart, president-rector, vocation directors, visiting priests, and priests from the seminary and monastery.
During the homily, Archbishop Sample encouraged the four candidates to continue their final preparation before ordination to the transitional diaconate and later priesthood. “We rejoice with you today, that the Lord has called you to labor in his harvest out of the compassion of Jesus for the crowds, and that God, like Jeremiah, has been forming you from all eternity for this vocation,” he said. After the homily, Archbishop Sample, on behalf of his brother bishops, received the seminarians’ declaration of intent to complete their preparation for Holy Orders and “to give faithful service to Christ the Lord and his Body, the Church.”
Those received as candidates included Anthony Shumway, Diocese of Salt Lake City; Maximiliano Muñoz, Archdiocese of Seattle; James Ladd, Archdiocese of Portland; Michael Williams, Diocese of Las Vegas. The rite of candidacy “makes all these years of praying to follow the will of God in my life come to a point where I can say, yes, I truly want to give my life to the Church if she will have me,” shares Shumway. For Muñoz, the liturgical rite “takes up the ministries we have been exercising in past years, synthesizes them, and puts them in relationship to our dioceses, to the Churches we hope one day to serve with our whole lives.”
Please pray for these new candidates and all the seminarians studying at Mount Angel Seminary. “May God who has begun the good work in [them] bring it to fulfillment.”
– Ethan Alano
Categories: Seminary, Uncategorized
During Sunday Mass on September 25, three monks of Mount Angel celebrated their Jubilee of Monastic Profession. Abbot Peter Eberle, OSB, and Br. James Bartos, OSB, who served as principal celebrant and deacon for the Mass, respectively, both commemorated 60 years of monastic profession. Br. Simon Hepner, OSB, observed 50 years of profession.
On Tuesday, September 13, the monks of Mount Angel Abbey gathered in the Abbey church for a Pontifical Mass of Solemn Profession. A number of visiting priests, seminarians, family, friends and other guests joined the monks to witness Br. La Vang Nguyen, OSB, profess solemn vows during the centuries-old ceremony.
to God as a monk. During the homily, Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., turned to Br. La Vang directly and reminded him that “solemn monastic vows is a bountiful reaping, and there is much promise in this for the one who does it.”
monks of Mount Angel as the monastic schola chanted from Psalm 84: “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts.” During the entire Eucharistic prayer, he prostrated himself on the sanctuary floor, covered with a black pall in an act of “mystical burial,” dying to the old man and rising in Christ.
On the evening of September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the monks of Mount Angel Abbey gathered in Mount Angel Abbey’s church to celebrate the Mass of Simple Profession for two novices, Brody Stewart and Fr. Jack Shrum. The novices professed vows of obedience, stability, and conversion of life for a period of three years.
The congregation filled the church and joined the monks in song and prayer, interceding for the men about to profess monastic vows.
Seminarians and students, faculty, staff, and other guests gathered with the monastic community in the Abbey church on August 22 to celebrate the opening of the new academic year at Mount Angel Seminary with the Mass of the Holy Spirit.
In the mid-twentieth century, Luigi DeSantis came to live at and care for the gardens and orchards of Mount Angel Abbey, where he became known as a man of faith and piety. Little did he know that his work of caring for the land and environment at Mount Angel would be continued decades later by his great-grandson Dean and the now family-owned company, DeSantis Landscapes.
boarding house in Portland. Luigi and his wife, Margherita, started a family in Portland but later moved to rural Silverton, where they developed a commercially successful strawberry
Fr. Vincent Trujillo, OSB, recalls that Luigi’s room was next to the biology and chemistry labs in what is now the Abbey museum. He remembers Luigi as a “very saintly man” who joined the monks for prayer and spent hours at the Abbey’s grotto in prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to Abbot Peter Eberle, OSB, Luigi was great friends with Br. Fidelis Schoenenberger, OSB, who designed the grotto and completed it in 1922. Abbot Peter fondly remembers the piety of Luigi, who liked to sprinkle holy water wherever he went, so much so that, recalls Abbot Peter, “the first pew [in the church] was really water stained.”
Mount Angel Seminary’s 33 graduates concluded the academic year with both the Baccalaureate Mass and Commencement Exercises celebrated on April 30 at 8 am and 10 am, respectively, in the Abbey church. In addition to graduates, many friends and family with smiling faces filled the church as a hopeful sign of better days ahead.
Though he was only 50 at the time of his death, Fr. Stuart Long led a big, adventurous life. As a high school student athlete in Montana, he excelled at wrestling and football. He continued with football at Carroll College in Helena, where he discovered his passion for boxing, winning the state Golden Gloves heavyweight title in 1985.
At a Mass celebrated in the church at Mount Angel Abbey on February 23, 2022, six seminarians were instituted as lectors and six as acolytes. Together, the men represented eight dioceses and one religious community.