BRIGHTON -- Eight people received degrees from St. John's Seminary's Theological Institute in a Mass celebrated by Bishop Cristiano Barbosa on May 21.

The Theological Institute provides formation and pastoral training to laypeople, deacons, and religious. Six of this year's graduates -- Ellen Gunning, Michael Habeeb, Kathleen Hogan, Rodolfo Panizales, Michaela Silva, and Francis X. Stanton III -- received Master of Arts in Ministry (MAM) degrees. Marian McGrath and Deacon Frederick O'Brien received Master of Theological Studies degrees.

"All eight of our graduates arrived on this journey today through the power of prayer," Gunning, the class speaker, said in her remarks.

She and her classmates attended Mass together, spent hours in adoration, prayed the rosary with the Knights of Columbus, and did the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. They learned canon law, Church history, Christology, and the Old and New Testaments. They read books and papal encyclicals, writing reports on what they learned. Their courses were often the same ones taken by St. John's seminarians.

"You entered into a journey of knowledge, and it's beautiful, all that you are learning," Bishop Barbosa said in his homily at the Mass preceding the commencement ceremony.

He told the graduates that they are leaving with the knowledge of the Church, knowledge that is celebrated at every Mass.

"Understanding that God is calling us to communion with him and one another, we become his body, called to build his body," he said.

The bishop said celebrating Mass for the commencement reminded him of the confirmations he has been doing throughout the archdiocese recently. At those confirmations, he often says, "This is the end of the beginning." He noted that the Mass he was celebrating marked a beginning for the graduates, as well.

"You finish here, you become part of the St. John's family, and you are called to a mission," he said. "In a war-torn and wounded world marked by so much division and uncertainty, you are called to be ministers of hope, faith, and love."

Gunning said she began her studies at the Theological Institute in 2020 because she wanted to improve Bible study at her parish, St. Mary of the Sacred Heart (now Our Lady of the Angels) in Hanover.

"There's always more that we can learn about our faith," she told The Pilot, "and our faith is very rich, it's very deep, and our ministries are ministries that address the soul of the person."

That soul, she explained, can belong to a "youngster" about to receive First Communion, a teenager about to be confirmed, married couples, or the elderly.

"I'm more conscious in seeing Jesus in the situation, in the person that I might be ministering," she said.

In order to receive a degree, she and her fellow graduates spent time in "Field Education," actively serving in ministry. Gunning volunteered in prison ministry at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater. She saw many of the prisoners grow in faith. Several of them became Catholic.

"They're real people like the rest of us," she said. "They had lives before they were incarcerated. Some of them were fathers, some of them worked, some of them did something at a relatively young age that put them into the prison. They all had a desire to know God."

McGrath, a volunteer for the OCIA program at St. Bernadette Parish in Randolph, first heard about the Theological Institute's programs in 2017. She began her studies the next year because she wanted to know more about God.

"What I'm here for, what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, as opposed to what maybe I've done before," she told The Pilot.

Learning about the Gospel of Matthew, and how it was a fulfillment of the Old Testament, struck her the most.

"I hope to be able to instruct people better in the faith," she said. "I hope that I live my faith more so now, because rather than teaching, I think we evangelize better by our lives."

Habeeb was a youth minister, also at the former St. Mary's in Hanover. The pastoral associate there had gone through the Master of Arts in Ministry program and enthusiastically recommended it.

"I wanted to get better at leading young people closer to Christ," he told The Pilot.

He has been in the program so long that he can't remember the year he enrolled. After completing his coursework, he moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2020. He is now director of mission programming at the University of St. Francis.

"I work with a lot of college kids and help evangelize them and help them grow in discipleship, so a lot of this stuff will be directly applicable," he said.

In his remarks, St. John's Academic Dean Paul Metilly said that with this year's class, the Theological Institute now has over 300 graduates. For that, he thanked God, Boston's bishops and clergy, and St. John's faculty. He gave a special word of thanks to Msgr. Stephen Salocks, the seminary's outgoing rector, who has served on the faculty for almost 40 years. Metilly said that Msgr. Salocks' support for the Theological Institute program was "unflagging."

"From our hearts, to your hearts, to what you have done in and for the Church's heart, we sincerely thank you, monsignor," he said.

Msgr. Salocks said that when he was told he had to teach the New Testament for two hours a week in the MAM program, he jokingly asked if he could do brain surgery and nuclear physics, too. Nevertheless, the seminary continued to teach and learn the Word of God, and, according to Msgr. Salocks, have fun while doing so.

"St. John's Seminary wanted this to work, and continues to want it to work," he said. "Yes, we have our ups and downs, both as a priestly formation program and as a life formation program, but we keep going."

He said that the seminary is doing God's work, and he was grateful to have been a part of it.

"We do it all for the sake of the Gospel," he said.