For the second time in three summers, the Archdiocese of Anchorage will ordain a seminarian to the transitional diaconate which precedes his ordination to the Catholic priesthood.
Fifth year seminarian Robert Whitney will receive the sacrament of holy orders on June 3, 7 p.m., at Holy Family Cathedral. The tentative date for his ordination to the priesthood is just over a year later, June 23, 2017.
“It happened way faster than I could have ever imagined,” Whitney said of his coming ordination as a deacon. “I can remember when I first came to the seminary, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, and I’m finishing my fifth year now.”
Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz accepted the University of Idaho graduate in 2011 to be a diocesan seminarian. Whitney was then sent to St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In his five years there, four other Anchorage men have joined him to pursue a calling to the priesthood under the direction of Father Tom Lilly, who is charged with the care and direction of seminarians for the Anchorage Archdiocese.
“It has been my distinct pleasure to walk with Robert over these past six years. He is a man of integrity and has a big heart,” Father Lilly observed. “He has been willing to do the personal work necessary while in formation to be a servant to his people. I have no doubt that Robert will serve with distinction as a transitional deacon and I look forward to serving with him as a brother priest.”
Having completed the majority of his academic formation, including three years of Scripture study, Whitney is working through courses on rites of the church in which he performs mock baptisms, marriages and funerals. Whitney is also studying homiletics — the formal instruction on writing and preaching sermons. He called his classmates and professors “the hardest audience one could expect” when delivering homilies.
Whitney is grateful for all those who have supported his journey to the priesthood, but none more so than Archbishop Schwietz for whom Whitney has served many years as an altar boy.
“I wouldn’t be in seminary if it wasn’t for him,” Whitney said, adding that Archbishop Schwietz was one of the “instrumental” causes of his vocation.
With five years of seminary training down and just one to go, Whitney looks back appreciatively on the past half-decade as a time of great challenge combined with an inspiration to grow in his Catholic faith.
“People are watching what I’m doing,” he said of his seminary professors and directors, “and I’ve got other brothers that are calling me to greater holiness and everything that entails.”
'Anchorage seminarian on home stretch to the priesthood'
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