Fr. Manny Alvarez – Seminary is not supposed to be easy | The Life of a Priest Podcast

This is an excerpt from the full interview on The Life of a Priest, a podcast available in the Tabella Catholic App.

Father Manny Alvarez is the pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, Florida. In this excerpt he shares his views on seminary and what it must be for men who are aspiring to become priests.

Seminary is not meant to be easy. It’s not supposed to be. And as Catholics, we don’t want it to be easy. We want the men to be ordained priest to go through the ring or to experience like that crisis of faith that I experienced when I was 19. And listen, I would experience, you know, other crises during my seminary time.

There were times where I was belligerent, flippant. I was called once in an evaluation, you know, I remember seven years into seminary. I was exhausted with seminary and I remember the bridge director that I had at the time said: “Do you think God put you through seven years of seminary and rigorous work and rigorous formation to pull the rug out from you now?”

Listen to the entire interview with Father Manny Alvarez on the Tabella Catholic App.