Formation Program

Religious Formation

After a positive discernment with our vocation director, and submitting your necessary documents, the superior of the community will invite you to a guest period, the aspirancy. During that time, you will live with us our community life, and deepen your vocation, especially through prayer, daily work assignments and classes. Aspirancy lasts usually several months, until you are clear in your vocation discernment and we come to a positive decision.

The goal of the religious life is the “total consecration of oneself to GOD in the following of CHRIST, at the service of the Church’s mission” (VC 65).

Then follows Postulancy (around one year). During this period the foundations of the Christian life and doctrine are deepened. The postulant learns to integrate himself into the community, to observe silence, to pray and to detach himself from the world.

Novitiate: Life in the Order begins with the novitiate. It is arranged so that the novices better understand the vocation to our Order, experience its manner of life and form their mind and heart in its spirit. By prayer and self-denial they are introduced to a fuller way of perfection.

The period of candidacy and postulancy may be held in the USA. The novitiate is conducted at our Monastery Belém in Guaratinguetá, Brazil.

At the end of novitiate, the Brothers will consecrate their lives to GOD by professing the religious vows. They will receive a religious name.

These vows are temporary and renewed yearly. Final (perpetual) vows are made after six years of temporary vows. This allows the brothers ample time to be deeply grounded in the religious life and in their vocational conviction before making this step.

Brothers who are called to the Consecrated Brotherhood, after professing their first vows, are assigned to a religious house of the Order, according to their abilities, receive ongoing formation and help the community.

Priestly Formation

After professing the first vows, the Brothers called to the priesthood do their Philosophical studies in the philosophical and theological faculty, the Institutum Sapientiae, the pontifically erected study house of the Order located in Anapolis, Brazil.

It comprises 2 years of philosophy and 4 years of theology. In philosophy and theology, special consideration is given to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Special emphasis is accorded to liturgical education (cf. SC 14-17). The Brothers are to be instructed in spiritual theology, so that their religious life receive a solid foundation and so that they be qualified to exercise the care of souls in the Church’s various states of life.

The professors are mostly priests drawn from the Order of the Holy Cross.

After completing their philosophical studies, the Brothers usually do a “Practical Year” at one of the other houses in the Order, often in Europe, especially at our Motherhouse in Austria. The purpose of this year is to deepen their spirituality and know other houses – Brothers and Sisters – of the Order. This year also serves to deepen and consolidate our family spirit.

Thereafter, they return to the formation house in Anapolis, Brazil for the four years of Theology study. After professing their perpetual vows (after six years of temporal vows) the candidates are ordained to diaconate. A year later normally follows the ordination to the priesthood. After their ordination, the new priests are given their first pastoral assignment, which may take place in the community of their country or abroad somewhere else.

You will ask: Why is the seminary in Brazil?

First of all, since we are still a small Order – numbering about 140 Members — and want to form our future priest brothers in the spirituality of the Order, we centralized our formation. Providing a genuinely Catholic formation in philosophy and theology which faithful to the Magisterium of the Church based on a solid Catholic spirituality is very important to us.

In the 80s, when the Order was looking for a place for the formation house, a Bishop from Brazil, approached the Order to help him in the formation of his Diocesan clergy. Following the recommendation of St. John Paul II, the Order opened the Seminary in Brazil. Since then, the seminarians of the Diocese of Anapolis (Brazil) and of other religious congregations study with us at our seminary. The Monastery was build as an image of the City of God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

It’s our wish that all our seminarians worldwide get to know one another, so as to promote real personal, fraternal charity and to guarantee unity and harmony in the spirituality. The Order, moreover, wants to foster a “family spirit” and to be “internationally minded”. Therefore, we study together in an international seminary. In this way, we get to know Brothers and Sisters of different nations; we study together, live community life together; this experience is particularly enriching, and opens our mind and heart for other cultures and mentalities. This is certainly valuable for the American scene, where more than 50% of the Church is made up of recent immigrants, whose mother tongue is not English.

Day in the Life in the Formation house (Seminary) of the Order in the Holy Cross Monastery, Anápolis, Brazil)

6:00am	Lauds (Morning Prayer) followed by Holy Mass, with Midmorning Prayer integrated
7:30am	Breakfast (in silence)
8:00am	Beginning of Classes in the Institutum Sapientiae
12:00pm	Office of Reading
12:30pm	Lunch
1:00pm to 6:00pm	Time for study, one hour Eucharistic adoration, work assignments, language classes
6:00pm	Vespers (Evening Prayer) and Benediction
6:30pm	Dinner, followed by Community Recreation
7:45pm	Spiritual Colloquy, beginning of Silence
8:10pm	Compline (Night Prayer), followed by the Rosary. Beginning of silent time. Time for study and spiritual reading.
10pm	Night rest