By Anthony Barich
A PERTH student has organised an event to fortify his fellow students at Sydney’s seminary against the prevailing culture in what Pope John Paul II called “the school of human virtue” – sport.
Matt Hodgson, studying at Sydney’s Seminary of the Good Shepherd for priesthood in the Archdiocese of Perth, has helped organise a triathlon with a difference designed to help produce priests who have grown in health, virtue and fraternal brotherhood.
Along with other critical types of formation that they receive at the seminary, including spiritual and theological, the seminary staff organised in October 2010 their first St Sebastian Cup – formation staff not allowed.
Twenty-two students participated in a triathlon with a difference, consisting of mini-golf, basketball and volleyball, which were selected by the seminary community by a vote.
Split into two teams of Juniors (Years 1-3) and Seniors (Years 4+) captained by second-year Junior Daniel Davila and sixth-year Senior Emmanuel Seo, they competed for a trophy named after St Sebastian because he is the patron saint of athletes.
Matt, who formerly worked in Perth’s World Youth Day Office in 2007-08, is now the seminary’s Semester 2 Sports Coordinator.
He told The Record that the benefits of such an event are many. “We need healthy seminarians. Regular exercise is one way to promote this. If seminarians develop good health habits in the seminary, then, put simply, they will live longer and thus be active in their future priestly ministry for longer,” Matt said, but qualified it by stressing that this is just a generalisation as seminarians and priests who suffer illnesses “can also be inspiring witnesses to vocational fidelity”. It is also critical, he said, that seminarians are not alienated from the natural world.
“Improving technology has brought many positive advancements that serve mankind. However, it is a double-edged sword and many of today’s young people have grown up in a virtual world where one can construct a persona on-line at the expense of developing one’s own humanity in the real world. Playing sport is one way of getting away from computer/TV screens and interacting bodily with God’s creation,” he said.
“We need seminarians who are growing in virtue. Once described by Pope John Paul II as a ‘school of human virtue’, sport is one way to develop those human virtues that are so integral to the Christian life.
“We need seminarians who are living in brotherly unity,” he added.
“Division is the primary evidence of the workings of the Evil One. Of all the places in the world that he wants to create division, the seminary is the place that the Evil One targets most vociferously. Team sport is one way of banding seminarians together and preventing schisms amongst the community.”
It is also important, he said, that seminarians are agents of cultural transformation.
“There is a significant overlap in this country between ‘sporting culture’ and ‘raunch culture’. An event such as the St Sebastian Cup shows that it is possible to hold a successful sporting event without promoting drunkenness and/or licentiousness,” Matt said.
For the record, the Seniors won it three-zip.