Meet a Seminarian

Name: Shane Daniel Wieck
Age: 23
Date of Birth: 11/23/1990
Home Parish and City: St. Thomas the Apostle, Amarillo
Current Seminary you attend: St. Mary?s Seminary in Houston
If it?s God Will, what year will you be ordained: ?2018?please pray for me!?

What is the most important thing you?ve learned in the Seminary so far?

?Boy, that is a tough question to answer. The Lord has certainly been very generous to me and has blessed me profoundly with many important life lessons. The greatest of these, if I had to choose, would be that suffering and struggle are not meaningless, but the precise place where God chooses to make us one with Him! I guess it is the lesson of the Cross: Jesus most fully revealed that He was God by choosing to die and by absorbing our suffering because there He showed that God is love. He descended to the lowest of depths so that God could be present precisely where we think He is absent!?

What do you look forward to most about becoming a priest?

?I think it a great privilege that a priest gets to be the presence of Christ in the lives of people. To be His hand of mercy and forgiveness, to bring new souls into the life of grace, to usher old souls into the life of Heaven, to bring hope to people in a dark world, to say those words that change the world: ?this is my body, given up for you?. To laugh with people, to cry with people, to be a presence of light in the night of suffering. I guess this is all just a long way of saying that I look forward to being a part of Jesus? saving mission.?

Who is your favorite Saint and why?

?For me, it is a tie between three (sorry I couldn?t choose one)?St. Théresè of Lisieux, St. Maximillian Kolbe and St. Faustina Kowalska.
?St. Théresè, because she understood her littleness to be an avenue to union with God and not an obstacle and abandoned herself in complete trust to the Lord; St. Maximillian, because he had an intense love for our Mother Mary and is an incredible example of priestly zeal and self-gift; and, St. Faustina, because she knew and was open to the Lord?s message of mercy.?

One thing every Catholic should know? ?At your Baptism, God the Father said to you: ?Behold! this is my beloved son (daughter), in whom I am well pleased.? In other words, that day, you became Jesus, you became a son or daughter in the Son, a member of the Body of Christ!

?This is the meaning of everything. St. Athanasius said that,?God became a man so that man might become God,? living in His one eternal life. That is why Jesus gave us the sacraments: because by them He makes us one, truly one with Him. We become what we receive in the Eucharist and we come back to union through reconciliation. This is the Church, the Body of Christ. How awesome.?

Describe your relationship with Christ?

?Christ is the lover of my soul and my truest friend. As such, He is constantly inviting me and giving me the grace (often in hidden ways) to become the best-version-of-myself, which is really His invitation to love Him back with His own perfect love.

?I often try to do that on my own, and He patiently reminds me, again and again, that I cannot by showing me my own poverty. I can?t give Him what I don?t have, and I have nothing to give Him that He hasn?t given me. Sometimes I want to fight this poverty, and I do, but then when I cry out helplessly He answers me and gives me a taste of His glory, His life that I wouldn?t have known had He not humbled me. This cycle repeats itself over and over.

?He is so faithful, so good and it is a joy-filled life. I tell you what, there is nothing more exciting, nothing more meaningful than this relationship. Encounter Him in the silence and suffering and poverty of your life, and you will never be the same!?