This year, Sacred Heart parish has the pleasure of having two Summer Seminarians. Please welcome Ryan Braam and Matt Ludwig to our parish.
My name is Ryan Braam and I am excited to be one of the seminarians here with you at Sacred Heart this summer. Although I was originally supposed to go to Honduras for a Spanish immersion program, I truly consider it a blessing that I am able to have the chance to spend more time doing parish ministry. These are strange and difficult times, but I truly believe that God continues to work in mysterious ways. I am from Leonardtown, Maryland, down in St. Mary’s County, though my parents now live in Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from St. Mary’s Ryken High in 2014, I completed my freshman year at Catholic University before beginning seminary in 2015. I have now completed my second year of theology at Theological College. As I prepare to enter my last two years of seminary, it is amazing to look back at all that the Lord as done in my life these past five years. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, running, listening to podcasts, and making cord rosaries. I also sometimes get nostalgic for computer programming, a throwback from when I was a computer science major before seminary.
My name is Matt Ludwig and I am very excited to be at Sacred Heart this summer! I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and I have a twin sister named Katrina. I came to DC for college at George Washington University, where I was pre-med and studied health policy. I worked on Capitol Hill and did some health policy consulting. I also wrote about baseball for SB nation and my goal is to visit every Major League stadium. Before college I had never considered the priesthood—I had my own plans for life. During the first couple years of college I learned to pray and slowly began to trust God, letting him guide and change my life more and more. Eventually I realized that if I was going to give God complete control of my life, I needed to at least consider the priesthood. The summer before my senior year of college, I went on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, who smoothed out the path that led me to start seminary after I graduated two years ago. I just finished my second year of pre-theology at John Paul II Seminary in DC. I play a lot of tennis and spike ball, I like to cook, and I’m a big St. Louis sports fan. I hope to meet all of you very soon!
