Celebrating a Vocation from Our Collaborative

 
Last Monday there was somewhere special I wanted to be, but conflicts with the travel time kept me away. Still, at 11am Monday morning my heart and my prayers were 200 miles away at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Middletown, New York - and a member of our collaborative community was there. At that hour, a Mass was celebrated at which a group of Carmelite novices made their First Solemn Profession, the vows by which they became religious brothers in the Carmelite Order. Among them was a member of our own St. Mary Parish: Brother Stefan Rochefort. I regret that I haven’t shared his story with you before now, as it is a true joy and inspiration to have a new church vocation with ties to one of our parishes!

While growing up in Wrentham, Brother Stefan was a member of St. Jude in Norfolk. In recent years he has been worshiping with us whenever he is home with his family in Wrentham. After attending the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, he applied and was accepted to the Carmelite formation program. As a Postulant he was in their community in Chicago, and then moved to New York for his Novitiate. He will now live two years of pastoral ministry, then he hopes to continue his theology formation at Catholic University of America while living in the Carmelite House of Formation. While our parishes played only a minor role in his vocation story, it is a blessing that we had the opportunity to “water” the seed of his vocation that had already been planted.

You may recall that vocations in the Church is a central theme of Disciples in Mission, the pastoral plan for our archdiocese, and Vocations and Discernment one of the top three priorities in our Local Pastoral Plan, “Go Therefore and Make Disciples,” where our planning team wrote:
 

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May God continue to bless Brother Stefan Rochefort, the priests, deacons, religious, and other members of our parishes who have said yes to vocations in the Church. May the Holy Spirit guide our collaborative in ways we can help promote a culture of vocations, including diocesan priests to sustain our parishes, as we work on our goals and make vocations and discernment a priority in our communities and all of our lives.