Summer 2025 Course Schedule

Summer Rural Immersion Experience

Rural Immersion—Minnesota

Ben Durheim | 3 Credits | MORL 456
Ben Durheim | 3 Credits | PTHM 459G

Zoom Orientation Meeting: week of May 19
On-Campus Dates: May 31-June 7

The Rural Immersion Program at Saint John’s School of Theology/Seminary is an intensive 8-day introduction to rural contexts and cultures, and the forms of Christian ministry within them. The program focuses on helping students encounter and understand rural economic systems, health systems, and diverse cultural and aesthetic characteristics from perspectives of Christian ministerial practice. Anchored by shared prayer and theological reflection at Saint John’s School of Theology/Seminary and Saint John’s Abbey and Saint Benedict’s Monastery, the program includes engaging diverse rural churches, spaces of nature, family and industrial farms, rural healthcare institutions, rural and small-town manufacturing enterprises, and more.

Additional separate registration required, please contact the admission office at [email protected]

Theological Courses

INTENSIVE CLASSES: These courses are a combination of distance/online work and one week on campus. The online portion of classes open the week of May 19 and are typically completed by July 10. Intensive session weeks are listed below each course. Class times will be arranged by instructors.

Foundations of Spiritual Direction

Sam Rahberg / Tamara Moore | 3 Credits | PTHM 418

Pre-requisite: SPIR 437 Discernment in Prayer (1 credit course)

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Weeks: June 2-13 (M-T-TH-F) W is a study/reading/rest day

This course explores themes and practices integral to a Benedictine disposition for spiritual direction. Students will participate in experiential and reflective processes to learn and demonstrate contemplative listening in service of deepening relationship with God. Those who continue into the Practicum in Spiritual Direction will be well prepared for their responsibilities. Those who complete the course solely for personal and professional enrichment will have developed useful listening skills that apply well to other ministry contexts.

Pre-requisite: SPIR 437 Discernment in Prayer (1 credit course)

Pastoral Counseling for Ministers

Antonio Ramirez | 3 credits | PTHM 468

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 9-13

Survey of basic counseling concepts designed to enhance the pastoral minister’s interpersonal effectiveness, spirituality, assistance of others, crisis identification, and knowledge of referral procedures. In this course, students will develop skills and necessary disposition for effective listening, learn to identify qualities necessary for a listening ministerial presence, know appropriate referral procedures and mental health issues and appropriate intervention procedures, and develop an awareness of personal issues that may interfere with effective listening and pastoral ministry.

Acedia: A New Look at an Ancient Concept

Kathleen Norris | 1 Credit | MONS/SPIR 446

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 9-13

This course will look at the curious history of acedia, the 8th “bad thought” of the 4th century monastics. They considered acedia, anger, and pride to be the worst of the common temptations faced by people trying to live a monastic life. Acedia was considered especially treacherous, as it could cause a monk to lose all faith in God and abandon a life of prayer. By the 6th century acedia had been subsumed into sloth, as one of the “seven deadly sins,” and came to mean physical laziness rather than what the monks knew it to be: a profound inertia caused by spiritual despair. This course will look at that history and the implications of a rediscovery and reclaiming of acedia in the present day, including its emergence during the COVID pandemic.

History of Christianity I

Brendan McInerny | 3 Credits | HCHR 402

In Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 16-20

This course will examine the development of the Christian tradition, including the expression of seminal doctrines within the Christian church, from its origins to the eleventh century. The course will explore the main trends in the development of the institution and primary doctrines of the church within the larger philosophical, social, and political contexts of the first millennium, paying attention to the ways in which the lived experience of Christian peoples informs and shapes its thinking.

Integrating Spiritual Direction

Sam Rahberg | 3 Credits | PTHM 428

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 16-20

This seminar serves as the capstone course for the Certificate in Spiritual Direction. Students will demonstrate their ability to integrate their studies and practicum experiences into an analysis and application of spiritual direction competencies. Particular attention will be paid to a Benedictine disposition for listening with the ear of the heart.

Catechesis in a Digital Age

S. Nancy Ussellman, FSP /S. Hosea Rupprecht, FSP | 1 Credit | PTHM 468

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 16-20, 6:00-9:00 PM Central Time (Online Only)

This course aims to teach those in any ministry in the Church to understand and implement an evangelizing catechesis situated in a digital culture. Participants will learn the core elements of Media Mindfulness catechesis, a model of faith formation that integrates faith with everyday media use, so as to form missionary disciples to be an evangelizing presence on the digital continent.

Who is the Old Testament God?

Laszlo Simon, OSB | 3 Credits | SSOT 468

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 23-27

The Bible speaks of God from the beginning to the end. This applies to the Hebrew canon as well as the Christian Bible. God, however, is not a “topic” of the Bible. He is the ground that enables the Bible to be written. Furthermore, the Bible does not speak of God “per se”, but of what God says, how God acts and how God is experienced. The concern of the biblical traditions is always with God in his relationship to the world and to humans and quite especially to Israel. How to grasp the fragility and the resilience of these relations? No one can know what God is really like. People can experience God in different ways, and they bring these experiences to expression. God’s action is experienced by people in a wide range of ways. The texts of the Old Testament speak of this. They bring these experiences to expression in their variety and also in their contradictoriness. So, talk of God in the biblical texts is anything but uniform. The Old Testament could in fact be regarded as an invitation to reimagine our life and our faith as an on-going dialogue in which all parties are variously summoned to risk and change.

The course – apart from the study of selected Old Testament passages (Gen 1-3; Deut 32; Job 1-3; 42,1-6) – aims at helping students to learn how to read scholarly works critically.

The Benedictine Wisdom of the Psalms

Catherine Petrany | 1 Credit | MONS/SPIR 447

In-Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week June 23-27, 8:00-11:15 AM

In his Rule, Saint Benedict instructs monks to pray “the full complement of one hundred and fifty psalms every week” (RB 18:23). In light of this counsel and the traditional Benedictine psalmody that follows from it, this course will investigate the transformative spiritual wisdom of the Psalter that emerges when one studies and prays all of the psalms together. To do so, we will engage with contemporary scholarship on individual psalms and the theological development across the whole book. We will also consult traditional interpretations and prayerful uses of the Psalter, with an emphasis on Benedictine sources.

Foundations of Monastic Liturgy

Anthony Ruff, OSB | 1 Credit | MONS/SPIR 448

In Session: May 19-July 11
Intensive Week: June 23-26, 1:15-4:30 PM

Brief overview of monastic liturgy, with a view toward its renewal since the Second Vatican Council; the nature of ritual in a monastic context; spiritualities of monastic prayer; music in monastic worship; and the place of Eucharist in monastic life.

CAPSTONES & FIELD EDUCATION

Comprehensive Exams

10733 THY 598 Reading for Comps Exams 1-6 Credits

Dates TBA

10354 THY 599 Comprehensive Exams 0 credits