On Saturday, 27 June, students of the Maryvale Institute's Altar Servers Course gathered at Oscott College, Birmingham, for a residential weekend that brought months of online study into the same room — and the same chapel — for the first time. For a course built largely around monthly online sessions, the day was a reminder of something simple but easily forgotten: studying together, in person, still matters.

A Day Built Around Encounter

The residential weekend opened with coffee and introductions, followed by a welcome from Dr Agata Mleczko, Programme Director for Further Education at Maryvale, alongside Fr Andrew Allman, Vice-Rector of Oscott Seminary, and Paul Briers, Honorary President of the Guild of St Stephen. Fr Andrew then spoke on vocations, setting a reflective tone for the day.

Students went on to tour Oscott's College Library, guided by library staff, taking in a building filled with history. Newman first stayed at Oscott College in 1845 before moving to nearby Old Oscott, which he renamed Maryvale — the very house that gives Maryvale Institute its name. It was in the halls of Oscott College itself that he later delivered his celebrated "Second Spring" address at the 1852 First Provincial Synod of Westminster. For students who had spent months studying the Church's teaching through a screen, walking through rooms so closely tied to Maryvale's own history was, for many, the highlight of the day.

Gathered at the Altar and the Table

The day's centre of gravity was the Mass, celebrated in the College chapel with several of the course's own students serving at the altar alongside Oscott's deacons and priests. For a course whose subject is service at the altar, serving together — rather than simply studying the theory of it — gave the students' formation a lived dimension that no online session can replicate.

Lunch in the seminary refectory followed, and it was here, as much as anywhere, that the value of the day became clear. Students who had known one another for months only as names on a screen sat down together, shared a meal, and talked. It is a small thing, but it is also exactly the thing that builds a sense of belonging: a shared table, after a shared Mass, among people bound by a shared purpose. For lay students in particular — many of whom serve in parishes with little contact with others doing the same — that sense of communion is not incidental. It is part of the formation itself.

Mass and lunch were shared with Maryvale's Bachelor of Divinity students, sparking lively conversation between the two groups and a valuable exchange of experience as students of theology at different stages of formation.

Learning Continues in the Afternoon

After lunch, Rev Dr Michael Cullinan, Deputy Director of the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences, spoke on the history and meaning of the liturgy, deepening the theological grounding of the day. The residential weekend closed with final remarks from Deacon Dr Harry Schnitker, Director of HIRS, who reflected on the course's progress so far and what lies ahead for its students.

Why It Matters

The library tour, the Mass, the shared lunch, the conversations over coffee are as much a part of formation as any module. Online learning has made courses like this one accessible to students who could never otherwise have studied at Maryvale, spread as they are across parishes and dioceses. Meeting the people you have been learning alongside, praying with them, eating with them, and walking through the same historic rooms that shaped so much of Catholic life in England — this is what turns a course into a community.

Staff and students alike left Oscott on 27 June with exactly that sense: that the Altar Servers Course is not simply a set of modules to complete, but a community being formed, one residential weekend at a time.

Maryvale Institute's Further Education programme continues to expand, with new courses launching this September. To find out more about Further Education opportunities at Maryvale, visit our Programmees page.

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