How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
Harmel men live in households, committed to mutual support, accountability, and encouragement in the life of holiness. Household brothers encourage one another to be fully engaged in the Harmel community and in a life of sacrament and service. Each household has a specific charism and character, and each household comprises men of different programs and years, offering Harmel men the chance to build bonds of brotherhood and support that extend beyond their class schedule, employment partnerships, or year of study.
Weightlifting, forging, camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, soccer, football, hockey, basketball, go karts, rebuilding motorcycles, Brazilian jiu-jitsu (a particular favorite of our chaplain)—Harmel men spend their leisure time in a variety of ways, on campus and off. There is plenty to do in the greater Grand Rapids area, whether you prefer the city, the country, or the beaches.
Faith Formation gathers the community several times a week — confession and Vespers, Mass, a meal taken together, a guest who takes the floor, and Compline to close. Across a semester the men hear from visitors drawn from the wider Harmel community on subjects as practical as work and study and as weighty as chastity, manhood, and the love of the Father. These are not lectures delivered from a distance. They are men and women who drive out to campus, eat at the table, and stay afterward to talk.
Harmel Academy is located in beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan, across from Aquinas College, and on the property which once served as the minor seminary for the diocese of Grand Rapids.
Greek philosopher, Epicurus, wrote, “we should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.”
Harmel men build community sharing common space, common practices, and common tasks. Enjoying a meal together is one such common practice through which we learn to serve and support each other.
Community Dinners are provided Sundays through Thursdays. Due to the unique (yet also typical) working man’s schedule, breakfasts and lunches are prepared and managed by each student according to his need. Students have access to a full kitchen in the lounge of Harmel’s dorm as well as common refrigerator and pantry space.
“You’re always surrounded by your brothers, and they’re always supporting you.”
Harmel men live in households — small groups of different years and trades who share meals, leisure and the daily work of holding one another to holiness.
Ora et labora: men pray Lauds, Vespers and Compline together daily, learning from St. Joseph that prayer is not a break from work but the soul of it.
Work is good in itself — a share in God's own making of the world — so a man's trade here forms him as surely as it pays him.
Great books read in a monastic key rather than an academic one, where a welder reading Flannery O'Connor is not taking a break from welding.
