There are folks who think of the seminary as a sort of monastery where silence reigns and every moment is taken up with prayer and contemplation of the mysteries.
There’s certainly a place in the seminary life for that kind of thing, but there are also moments when the parts of the community comes together to share their talents. Seminarian Mike Hennessy is using his love of brewing beer as a springboard for evangelization.
An article on the Michigan Live website fills in the details:
If you like good beer and drinking deep of spirituality, chances are you will enjoy an upcoming class Hennessy is teaching at the Catholic Information Center. “Holy Brew: Trappists, Monks and the Catholic Tradition of Brewing Beer” is being offered at the CIC next week. A third night was added after the Tuesday class filled up.
Small wonder. The CIC is run by the Paulist Fathers, an order of priests whose prime mission is evangelization. If you want to evangelize in Grand Rapids, good beer is a surefire way to get people in the door.
In this case you won’t find a better evangelist than Hennessy. A Paulist seminarian attending Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he is also a home brewer for his fellow seminarians there and an avid appreciator of craft brews. When he was assigned to spend this summer in Grand Rapids, he cheerfully offers that it was “most likely the Holy Spirit” at work.
There’s more if you’d like to swing over and read the whole story.
Seminarian Parents 