Christ our Hope: Apostolic Journey to the United States 2008

Pope inspires Bishop Bruté seminarians at New York Mass

Father Robert Robeson, left, rector of the Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary in Indianapolis, stands with seminarians on the Staten Island Ferry during their trip to New York to attend the Mass on April 20 at Yankee Stadium with Pope Benedict XVI. The seminarians are, from left, Martin Rodriguez, Gregory Lorenz, Timothy Wyciskalla, Adam Ahern, Andrew Proctor, Benjamin Syberg and Daniel Bedel. All except Ahern are archdiocesan seminarians. Ahern is affiliated with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. (Submitted photo)

By Sean Gallagher

In 1987, Father Robert Robeson was a young graduate student at the University of South Carolina when he participated in an ecumenical prayer service led by Pope John Paul II on the campus.

It was his first time to see the pope.

Two decades later, Father Robeson led a group of seminarians, who were close to the same age he was when he first saw the pope, to participate in a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on April 20 at Yankee Stadium in New York.

“The memories from 1987 are still etched vividly in my mind and in my heart,” said Father Robeson, the rector of the Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary in Indianapolis. “It had an enormous impact on my life and on my faith especially.

“I don’t think it will be any different for these young men. I think it’s going to have a huge impact on their faith.”

Father Robeson and the seminarians sat along the first base line of the stadium in the middle deck during the liturgy.

The Mass with the pope was a big event in many ways for second-year college seminarian Daniel Bedel.

Just seeing Pope Benedict enter the stadium overwhelmed him.

“I was trying to take pictures with my camera and I started shaking. I couldn’t really take a good picture,” said Bedel, a member of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Enochsburg in the Batesville Deanery.

Although Bedel, the other Bishop Bruté seminarians and Father Robeson were excited about seeing the pope, they knew that the pope would focus on Christ.

“Everybody gets all really excited about him, but what is his job?” Father Robeson asked. “His role, his great gift and what makes him such a great pope is the fact that he always, always points to Christ. His role is to lead us to Christ and to help us to come to know Christ more fully.”

Bedel experienced that in a powerful way just before Communion when everyone, including the pope, prayed, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

“When he said those words, it really hit me that this is the pope, but the Mass is about Jesus Christ,” Bedel said. “He takes all of that attention that people put on him and turns it toward Christ, which is exactly what the pope should do.”

In his homily during the Yankee Stadium Mass, Pope Benedict in part focused on Christ by encouraging his listeners to “find the source of our ultimate happiness in [Christ] who is infinite love, infinite freedom, infinite life. In his will is our peace.”

Those words echoed in the heart of Martin Rodriguez, who is a third-year college seminarian at Bishop Bruté, as he was on the long road trip back to Indianapolis the day after the Mass.

“That really struck me because I’ve seen many people who struggle to find their own vocation,” he said. “They keep running away from it.”

Toward the end of his homily, Pope Benedict exhorted the young people to consider a priestly or religious vocation.

“Young men and women of America, I urge you: Open your hearts to the Lord’s call to follow him in the priesthood and the religious life,” the pope said. “Can there be any greater mark of love than this: to follow in the footsteps of Christ, who was willing to lay down his life for his friends?”

After the pope made this invitation, the huge congregation responded with loud cheers.

“That really was encouraging because not only is the Holy Father kind of congratulating you for taking up the call, but you have 60,000 Catholics from across the United States who are also encouraging you through this applause,” Bedel said. “I hope that with that message and with the applause that young men that are maybe thinking and praying about a vocation might step up and take charge of that.”

During the Mass, the pope also honored the contributions that Catholic immigrants to the United States have made to the Church over the past two centuries.

Rodriguez, who is originally from Mexico, is one of the more recent of these immigrants.

Yet in New York, he witnessed a far greater diversity of believers than he had experienced up to now, seeing scores of Catholics who came to the United States from across Central and South America and many Asian countries.

“That really gives you a sense of the universal Church,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not only the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. It was the whole Church that came together to see the successor of Peter.”

As he was driving a van of seminarians back to Indiana the day after the liturgy, Father Robeson looked forward to a bright future in the wake of the pope’s apostolic journey to the United States.

“It gave me a great sense of hope to see our seminarians so inspired by the Holy Father,” Father Robeson said. “This was the third time that I had seen the pope, but every time it’s filled me with a deep emotional power.

“You can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. It’s like you’re a little kid again.”

(For more information on the Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary, log on to www.archindy.org/bsb.) †