Fraternity Is Not an Add-On

On weekdays at 6:00pm, the seminary prays Evening Prayer as a community. Afterwards, I stay a few minutes in the peaceful, quiet chapel. The next moment can be jarring: I depart the chapel and walk down to the refectory to eat dinner with 43 brother seminarians—all of whom are eager for face-to-face interaction after hours of Zoom classes. I love the chapel as well as the chorus of conversation—but these loves can feel disconnected from each other. I often don’t recognize how my holy hour should fuel a desire to love my brothers over a meal together.
 
It’s easy to compartmentalize life at seminary, and one challenge is integrating prayer life with community life. Sometimes I am tempted to emphasize personal prayer or academics at the expense of community; I view seminary fraternity as an external “add-on” to the activities of worship and study at the center of my life. During these times I am tempted to view time with friends as a good study break, perhaps, but not as a priority.
 
Sometimes too, I enjoy the good of community—hanging out after dinner in the common room, Friday afternoon sports—but I lose perspective on the source of those goods. The joy I receive during an incredible football game before afternoon holy hour doesn’t quite feel integrated with that holy hour. There’s a discontinuity between enjoying football and prayer to God; it's as if I’m torn away from a natural joy to fulfill a supernatural obligation.  
 
The late German theologian Karl Adam sheds light on the importance of this integration, the center of which is love. He writes specifically on the first extreme—the individual at the expense of the communal: “there is nothing so essentially alien to the Body of Christ, nothing so inimical, as that its members should abandon their mutual love.” Loving one’s neighbor is not a Christian extracurricular; it is the core of Catholic doctrine.
 
Prayer and the sacraments are fuel for this love of neighbor, but Adam makes clear that they are not a substitute for it. Without love, the “Body of Christ on earth would be a rigid corpse, and all Church ordinances and offices, all sacraments, all dogmas, all faith would be stale and unprofitable.” Adam’s key contention is as forceful as his language: failure in love of neighbor can close us off from the grace of the sacraments. This fundamental call to love means that community life can never be an “add-on." It must be fully integrated with a sacramental life.

Fraternity's joys and responsibilities must root a seminarian's life in particular. One of the distinct blessings of life at St. John Paul II Seminary is that we’ve maintained a community during a pandemic, with 43 seminarians living together in isolation from most outside contact. We share meals as a family, laugh together, and play football—all without wearing masks. It’s easy to forget how unique this blessing is right now. May its fruit be a deeper love between each of us.

Mr. Gayou is a 2nd pre-theology seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington.