Boulder County club sponsors vocations awareness film

A short film titled “Come Follow Me” was produced under the auspices of the Serra Club of Boulder County, Colo., by Good News Productions. The film, released on DVD, is aimed at today’s media-oriented students. Members of the Boulder club Vocations Committee wanted to enhance the current vocations awareness programs for Catholic school children and youth groups by creating a program that would inspire young people to listen to their hearts and to consider the possibility of a call by God to the priesthood or religious life in these difficult times.

“Come Follow Me” opens with close-ups of proud steeples sporting magnificent crosses at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver. The camera then moves slowly down vine-covered walls to where nuns walk across a campus or church ground. The sound of tolling bells is suddenly broken by the noise of an alarm in a dormitory room. The camera moves inside the room where a young seminarian puts on his cassock in preparation for attending morning Mass. As the young man leaves his room, the music picks up the pace to match the steps of other young men leaving their rooms and descending the stairs to begin the day. They enter the chapel and bless themselves with holy water as they prepare to receive the Eucharist.

The film reveals a balance in the lives of the seminarians as we watch them at Mass, in their classes asking questions, sharing with one another, enjoying their meals together, playing soccer, creating music, and as they are involved in various projects. We are invited into the intimacy of their quiet times and their fun and relaxation at the end of a long and challenging day.

There are playful scenes of a nun and her dog, a priest juggling, another holding the end of a jumprope for children in a school yard, a nun in her habit dribbling a ball with young children on a basketball court. We are shown the variety of experiences that priests and nuns have as they work with children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We attend the baptism of a tiny baby, a wedding, last rites for the dying, and a funeral. We observe the joy and the grief that confronts religious.

We see the elevation of the Host by Pope John Paul II at the World Youth Activities in 1993 in Denver. The film concludes with him standing behind the altar, smiling.

The movie is backed solely by music sung and played by the seminarians at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver.

The Boulder County club received a $3,000.00 grant from the Serra International Foundation to help with production costs of $6,000.00. Serra International Foundation Executive Director John Woodward said he plans to use the film internationally. Woodward was able to schedule a viewing of the film at a special meeting of the Boulder County Serra club on April 8, 2004. Later in the day, he had an interview with Good News Productions that was televised on their weekly program, “The Catholic Hour.”
Woodward will handle the distribution of the film for Serra International while the Serra Club of Boulder County will handle the distribution of the film in the Denver area.

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