Club affirms, prayers for priestly and religious vocations

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff writer
Posted Oct. 17, 2002

The Serra Club of Siouxland is an organization that devotes its time to helping vocations.

"The mission of the Serra Club is to pray for vocations and to affirm existing vocations, and the members should experience spiritual development, too," said Verna Welte, a member of the Serra Club. "As one magazine put it, we are to try to establish a culture of vocations."

The club does various activities in the affirmation program for the sisters and the priests. The sisters and priests are recognized at Christmastime and on their anniversaries. The Serra Club has videotaped a rosary that is available to anyone, particularly focusing on shut-ins.

A day of adoration has begun in all of the Sioux City parishes. Also, there is a 31 club, which asks members of the parishes to attend Mass on a certain day of the month to pray for vocations.

"We feel that God is responding to our call since we have had ordinations the last couple of years," Welte said.

The club usually meets once a month and has a speaker for each meeting. The officers of the Serra Club attend regional and national meetings. In addition to the Sioux City club, a Carroll area club was formed a couple of years ago.

"I read that there are 193 dioceses in the United States, and all of them, except for 64, have Serra Clubs," Welte said.

Besides praying for vocations, the club does activities that bring priests and sisters together. There is a golf outing for the priests as an appreciation gesture. The activity for the sisters is usually a luncheon, but one year they were taken to the community theatre.

To involve students of Catholic schools and parish religious education programs in the area, the Serra Club has a Vocations Creativity Contest with a banquet to award the winners.

Each grade level, K-8, is given a different objective to fulfill. The younger grades are asked to draw pictures of a priest, sister, brother or deacon doing God's work. The older grades are asked to write a letter to a friend urging them to consider a vocation or write a vocation prayer for help to hear and follow God's call.

"The students are asked to write letters regarding how they see the role of priests and if they would like to become a priest or a sister," Welte said. "There is a committee that judges the letters and selects the winners. This has been a difficult process because so many of the letters are very well done."

The theme of this year's contest is Baptized in the Spirit. The purpose of the contest is to increase the awareness of the Catholic students regarding vocations to the ministerial priesthood, the diaconate and the religious life. The emphasis is being put on church vocations due to the need for priests and religious.

"We are all aware of the lack of vocations in our society at this time so that is our main purpose," Welte said. "The majority of our priests are very good priests, and we need to let them know how much we appreciate them and do what we can to affirm their vocations."

On Oct. 7, the annual banquet and Mass was held to induct new members to the Serra Club of Siouxland. The new members include: Don and Dorothea Eickholt, Frank and Shirley Gruenzner, Jim and Jackie Hartnett and Denny Rehan.

Bishop Daniel N. DiNardo was the principal celebrant of the Mass, which was held in Our Lady of Grace Chapel at Briar Cliff University. The concelebrants were Father Richard Gabuzda and priests of the Diocese of Sioux City, which included the newly ordained Father Nicholas Becker.

"Father Brad Pelzel is, even as we speak, on a plane back to Rome for a final year of study," said Bishop DiNardo in his homily. "I mention this for the Serra Club who prays for vocations. It is good to see it coming through and to see two newly ordained priests for our diocese this year in our centennial year. It is a remarkable thing."

Father Gabuzda is the director of the Institute for Priestly formation at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. He was the keynote speaker for the banquet held after Mass in the St. Francis Center at Briar Cliff.

"I am grateful for all of the Serra Club members, old and new," Bishop DiNardo said. "It is an important mission of the church, that if we are going to pray that the Lord will send laborers, that we will have some official prayers and workers on behalf of those laborers who come as ordained ministers, consecrated women in religious life, brothers and permanent deacons. All of them are an important dimension of the work of Serra."