On Saturday, August 3, five novices from the Congregation of Holy Cross’s Novitiate in Cascade, Colorado, made their First Profession of Vows at Sacred Heart Parish in Colorado Springs. All five of the novices, one of the Brothers’ Society and four of the Priests’ Society, are members of the United States Province of Priests and Brothers.

Fr. Peter Jarret, C.S.C., Assistant Provincial and Vicar of the United States Province, presided at the Mass and received the vows of the novices, while Fr. Jeff Cooper, C.S.C., Novice Master, preached the homily.

In his homily, Fr. Cooper spoke of how the vowed life plants religious men and women firmly in God's fundamental “want” of us. In essence, the novices have chosen to live their lives “at the crossbeams, where the vertical beam rooted in both heaven and earth and representing Christ's choice of us, upholds the horizontal beam of our everyday human lives, sometimes full of contradictions. But, even the contradictions can teach us how to live more trustingly in God's fundamental ‘want’ of us.”

Also assisting at the Mass were the other members of the Novitiate Staff: Fr. Joe Pedersen, C.S.C., Br. Thomas Giumenta, C.S.C., and Br. Pablo Quan, C.S.C. Br. Quan recently joined the staff to replace Br. Giumenta, who is moving to his next assignment.

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Following the Mass, the parish hosted a reception in the parish hall for the newly professed and their guests.

The five newly professed have already returned to Moreau Seminary in Notre Dame, Indiana, where they will continue their initial formation. For now, the novitiate sits quiet, but on August 13, six new novices will arrive to Cascade and be officially received into the novitiate on August 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption.