Worcester, Mass., Sep 13, 2017 / 03:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The first time Our Lady of Fatima appeared to the shepherd children, she asked a question.
For Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., host of “EWTN Live,” this question could be addressed to each one of us today.
“We certainly are inheriting a lot of problems that have been percolating for a while,” he told a crowd of hundreds gathered Sept. 9 at the DCU Center in Worcester, Mass. for the EWTN Family Celebration. “We’re certainly seeing a lot of tension in our country that’s even different from the sixties: there’s more tension and anger at one another than we’ve seen since the sixties, and perhaps a bit more intense.”
“We pray that we can avoid the mistakes that came by the failures to listen to the message of Fatima,” Fr. Pacwa said.
Like she asked the shepherd children a century ago, “(Our Lady) asks the question each one of us has to answer: ‘Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for all the sins by which He is offended and for supplication for the conversion of sinners?’,” the priest said.
In 1915, an angel appeared near Fatima, Portugal to young Lucia dos Santos and three of her friends as they prayed the rosary in the fields. An angelic figure later appeared on several occasions to Lucia and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The figure spoke to them about Jesus’ and Mary’s “plans of mercy” and on his last visit gave them Holy Communion.
On May 5, 1917 Pope Benedict XV published a pastoral letter asking the faithful to ask Mary to bring an end to World War I.
Eight days later, the Virgin Mary appeared to Lucia and her cousins. In a series of six apparitions, she asked them to recite the Rosary and to make sacrifices on behalf of sinners. She also brought them a three-part secret regarding the fate of the world, urging the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart.
This Oct. 13 will mark the 100th anniversary of the “Miracle of the Sun,” when some 70,000 people gathered in response to the children’s reports and witnessed the sun spin and twirl in the sky, at one point seeming to veer towards earth before returning to its place.
For Fr. Pacwa, the historical context was important to remember.
“We can look back at many points in history and see God’s activity as appropriate for its own place and time,” he said.” God is not there to waste effort and time, but rather to have a purpose for the salvation of the world.”
“And Fatima is an event that occurs at something of a key turning point in the history of western Christianity. And for all Christianity in the world,” he said.
At the time, Portugal itself was under the influence of Masonic government officials, and revolution was stirring in Russia. The western world was formed by atheistic philosophies, nationalism and a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” mentality that ignored “the weeping mothers and fathers of the sons who died” in the war.
“In 1915, Pope Benedict ordered all the churches to pray for the Sacred Heart for peace. Germany, France and Spain refused to pray for peace,” Fr. Pacwa said. “They absolutely refused and would not allow the prayers to go on.”
“That’s why in 1916, the angel of peace was sent to Fatima: to teach the children to pray. He was sent there to teach them especially that real prayer: ‘My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you. I ask pardon of you for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love you.’ And they felt that strong hope of God’s presence.”
Fr. Pacwa emphasized the question of Fatima.
“Are you willing to offer yourself?” he asked, saying this is something each Catholic can and ought to do every time he or she goes to Mass.
“At the offertory, offer ourselves with the bread and the wine, so that when Christ transforms the bread and wine at the consecration, and transubstantiates it into his Body and Blood, so also he may take our offering of ourselves and transform it to him, unite our self-offering with his offering on the cross.”
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Ricky Reyes dribbles the ball up court as now-Father Peter Schirripa follows behind at the national basketball tournament for seminaries in 2022. / Credit: St. John’s Seminary
CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2023 / 14:40 pm (CNA).
Imagine the scene: The alarm clock starts beeping and it’s 4 a.m. Basketball practice starts in an hour. It’s time for a group of bleary-eyed young men to grab their gear, meet their teammates, and begin a one-mile uphill jog in the middle of New England’s freezing weather to the basketball facility.
Once inside the gym, the work begins: stretching, sprints, layups, scrimmaging, shooting, defensive posture, all with one goal in mind — winning.
This type of intense training is all in a day’s work for one team of men in Boston.
No, it’s not the Division I team at Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern University.
Rather, it’s how a team of seminarians at St. John’s Seminary in Boston trains. And their goal of winning is twofold: victory in the spiritual life and a championship trophy at the national tournament for seminaries, which is held once a year.
But what does playing basketball have to do with priestly formation? Well, according to the seminarians who play for the St. John’s Eagles, quite a lot.
St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team at practice. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
A ‘microcosm of the spiritual life’
When 27-year-old Deacon Marcelo Ferrari, the team’s co-captain, first entered seminary, he saw the game as more of an extracurricular activity, “a good opportunity to spend some time with close friends and maybe build some fraternity.”
“But very quickly it became clear that the basketball team is just a microcosm of the spiritual life,” Ferrari, of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, said.
Playing the game together imitates the spiritual life in that “you experience a lot of humiliation, especially if you’re not as skilled like me,” said Ferrari, who has more experience in soccer than in basketball.
“But you also just learn a real sense of what sacrifice means,” he said. “Even practice just being at 5 in the morning is enough to demand a lot of the human heart.”
The experience of being on the team aided in Ferrari’s priestly formation in “so many ways,” he said, adding that “it became a critical space for me to recognize especially more of those subtle movements of the heart.”
“There’s nothing like team sports to bring out every part of you,” he said.
An uphill climb
Ferrari had never played organized basketball until he entered St. John’s Seminary. It wasn’t until another seminarian who established the team, now-recently ordained Father Peter Schirripa, asked him to join that he considered it.
“He saw me playing soccer and was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s mildly athletic. Let’s see if we can get him a basketball and see what he can do,’” Ferrari said.
This type of recruiting was par for the course for Schirripa, 30, who grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and had the idea for the team when he first entered seminary more than six years ago.
But Schirripa, who had experience in basketball, track and field, and soccer, credits the founder of the media apostle Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron, with the conception of the idea.
Schirripa was visiting his alma mater St. Anselm College during its 2017 graduation ceremony, the spring before his entrance to seminary, when he met Barron, who was giving the commencement address. Barron mentioned to him that there was a national basketball tournament for seminaries and encouraged Schirripa to put together a team from St. John’s.
So, Schirripa brought the idea to his superiors at the seminary and got a green light to start building a team for the national tournament.
Deacon Marcelo Ferrari at one of St. John’s Seminary’s basketball practices. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
“The leadership was like, ‘Sure, you can do it if you can pull it off.’ But I was a first pre-theologian. I’d been there for, like, three weeks,” Schirripa said.
“And let’s just say there was not a robust athletic or even really communal culture at St. John’s at the time. And so trying to inspire guys to do this and play on the team, it was like I was just taking whatever warm body I could get,” he said.
Eventually, enough seminarians wanted in, and Schirripa’s idea came to fruition, which culminated in St. John’s taking a squad of 15 guys to the national tournament at Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, and winning two games in 2018.
“We went out to it and we won two games, which is crazy because we were so bad,” he said.
He noted that the games were livestreamed and their brother seminarians were watching.
“The whole common room was watching it and I think people couldn’t believe that we did it,” he said.
“And the rest,” Schirripa said, “is history.”
St. John’s has been sending a team to the national tournament ever since. The best they’ve done is third place in a tournament that typically consists of between 12 and 16 teams.
The future of the church
Part of St. John’s success can be attributed to their volunteer coach, Patrick Nee, 44, a practicing Catholic in the greater Boston area who was a Division I basketball player at Brown University in the 1990s.
Nee had coached on the high school level, on travel teams, and even on his young children’s teams, but what made this coaching experience different was the “shock” of being immersed in seminary culture.
“It’s not an experience like I’d ever had before, just being in a gym with 15 seminarians, being on a bus or being on a plane with them and just realizing how good it was,” he said. “And these guys are really holy guys that are just terrific. Getting to know them all, it has just been really inspiring for me.”
Patrick Nee coaches St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
Nee, a high school state champion from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, said that he stopped practicing his Catholic faith during his college years and didn’t come back to it until his late 20s.
He said that when he returned to the Church it took him on “a journey.” And over the last five years, that journey has “intensified” even more, he said, adding that “this experience has played a role in that.”
Nee said that it’s overwhelming “in the best way” when he is at the tournaments and “every guy you meet is this on-fire guy who’s studying to be a priest.”
One of those men on fire for the faith is Brian Daley, a member of the St. John’s team, Ferrari said. He recalled an incident at practice one day when a newer seminarian began to indulge in “light mockery” of the other teams they would be playing in the tournament.
Ferrari said that Daley reminded his teammate: “No, these men that we’ll be competing against are all giving their lives for Christ and they’re great examples for us.”
Ferrari called it a moment of “deep fraternity” for the team, who were all inspired by the wisdom Daley shared.
The deacon also said that as a team that fire is seen at every practice through prayer.
At every practice, each player is handed a sheet of prayer intentions to offer up their labor on the court so that all of their work is “done with an eye that sacrifice is fruitful.”
Seeing all of the hard work the teams put in for one weekend showed Nee that they care a lot about winning, “but they never lose track of the bigger picture.”
St. John’s Seminary basketball coach Patrick Nee guides his players during the 2022 tournament. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
He said that being a part of the team has strengthened his faith and added that the whole experience inspired him to tell Schirripa that “we need to share this with people.”
“I wish other people could see this. I mean, if you know anyone who is negative about the future of the Church, it’s like, well, walk into this gym for five minutes and you’ll change your mind immediately,” he said.
Nee’s vision for sharing the experience with others became a reality five months ago when St. John’s Seminary released “Souls in the Game,” a documentary that “highlights priestly formation beyond the study of philosophy and theology.”
The 28-minute documentary follows the team’s journey from the early morning practices to the recruiting and training of the seminarians to the final tournament.
“There is no pressure at all. Go out and play. We have brought life to St. John’s Seminary. God has used this team and let’s go out there and show everyone that we love each other, we love our vocations, and we’re going to represent St. John’s,” Schirripa says to his team during a pregame speech in the documentary.
Viewers might be surprised by how competitive the games are, especially in the scene where 6-foot-4 Schirripa is shown slamming it down during the tournament, which resulted in a technical foul for the team.
Despite the penalty, the team was roaring with excitement at Schirripa’s slam dunk, a feat that not many players ever get to experience on a 10-foot hoop.
“We were ready to storm the court,” Ferrari said in excitement in the documentary.
That documentary can be seen below.
Physical exercise such as can be had playing on a basketball team is something that every seminary should “absolutely” have, Schirripa said.
“I think it’s absolutely essential because you need a physical outlet and you need to obviously have a healthy body, mind, and soul. But it also teaches you to work towards something that’s bigger than yourself, which ultimately is the apostolate,” he said.
“And so it’s such a great venue for formation,” he said.
Our Lady of Fatima – Pray for us.