Reflection for the Third Wednesday in Advent

Hello everyone,
I figured I'd give you all a sneak peak into what I am giving for a reflection at the nursing home tomorrow during the communion service. As I have done in the past the first part is my reflection, after that I have included the readings which are prescibed by the Church to be read tomorrow. These readings are what I have based this reflection off of, so if you are interested you can read those too.

Peace,
Adam

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(Sung to tune)“You better watch out, you better not shout, you better not cry, I’m telling you why…”
We all know how that song goes. Why are we being told to behave? Because Santa Clause is coming to town. Obviously it is very important to prepare for the jolly man in the red suit to get here, he sees us when we are sleeping, he sees us when we are awake, and worse yet he knows when we’ve been bad or good, so we better be good for goodness sake.
I don’t know about you, but that song always kind of made me think twice before doing something when I was a little kid. But we need to remember that Santa doesn’t come just any old day of the year, he comes when we celebrate the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. What do we do to be ready for His coming? John the Baptist was trying to get everyone ready for the coming of the Messiah. John knew that his job was to prepare the way of the Lord, as is said in Isaiah. John called on the people to repent of their sins, and to start living for God.
John knew what this meant, and the Jews of the day knew what it meant, they had all been taught the words of Isaiah that we read today. Isaiah was repeating what he had heard from God, that God had made everything, and that He had made it to be lived in, not to be wasted. God does want us to go about our lives, embracing our loved ones, doing good for them, and doing good in general. As is quoted in Isaiah’s writings, “Only in the LORD
are just deeds and power.” We are also given very clear instructions on how to prepare for Christ’s coming, “Turn to me and be safe, all you ends of the earth.”
John sent some of his followers to Christ to ask if He was the one who is to come. Jesus didn’t answer it in so many words, but we know that He is indeed the one who was to come, and we know that he will come again someday.
So we need to remember among the hustle and bustle of this Advent season, prepare for Santa, laying out your milk and cookies. But even more important, prepare for the Lord, repenting of our sin and doing good works for Him.

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Reading 1
Is 45:6c-8, 18, 21c-25


I am the LORD, there is no other;
I form the light, and create the darkness,
I make well-being and create woe;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above,
like gentle rain let the skies drop it down.
Let the earth open and salvation bud forth;
let justice also spring up!
I, the LORD, have created this.
For thus says the LORD,
The creator of the heavens,
who is God,
The designer and maker of the earth
who established it,
Not creating it to be a waste,
but designing it be lived in:
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
Who announced this from the beginning
and foretold it from of old?
Was it not I, the LORD,
besides whom there is no other God?
There is no just and saving God but me.
Turn to me and be safe,
all you ends of the earth,
for I am God; there is no other!
By myself I swear,
uttering my just decree
and my unalterable word:
To me every knee shall bend;
by me every tongue shall swear,
Saying, “Only in the LORD
are just deeds and power.
Before him in shame shall come
all who vent their anger against him.
In the LORD shall be the vindication and the glory
of all the descendants of Israel.”





Lk 7:18b-23
Gospel


At that time,
John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask,
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
When the men came to the Lord, they said,
“John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask,
‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’”
At that time Jesus cured many of their diseases, sufferings, and evil spirits;
he also granted sight to many who were blind.
And Jesus said to them in reply,
“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:
the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”

Back At It, Winter Quarter 2010-2011

Hi there,
So, as it seems I often am in these things I am going to apologize for the length of time between posts. As I said in my last post, I was on a break from classes. It was a great break; I got to spend time with many wonderful people and to do a bit of hunting, and just a little bit of other relaxing. By the end of the break I was indeed ready to get back to the seminary and get moving on with my studies and formation.
I came back on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as classes started the following Monday. With this being a new quarter, there are new classes and a new schedule. I got heavy into it with 4 classes on Monday. Those classes are, Humanities I, Latin II, Ethics, and Logic. Tuesday is a light day with only one class, that being Ancient Philosophy. Wednesdays I am again going to the same nursing home as before, that will go on this whole school year. Thursdays are only three classes: Humanities I, Latin II, and Logic. Fridays I have two, those being Ancient Philosophy, and Ethics.
Humanities I, seems like it will be a bit of a literature course with finding the lessons and aspects of the faith in various aspects of famous pieces. So far we have ready the plays “Everyman”, and “A Man for All Seasons”. “Everyman” is a mid-evil piece that shows a man who encounters “death” and this causes him to examine those things in life that he thought were good, but were truly harming to him and then he encounters ways to live a better life. This appears to have been written by a priest of the era with its homiletic style and the fact that the clergy was the literates in the time. “A Man for All Seasons” is a piece from the mid-20th century but based on the story of St. Thomas More during the English breaking from the Church under Henry VIII. Thomas More was the chancellor of England who although he wouldn’t speak against the king’s divorce he was strategically silent and would not affirm the kings claim of supremacy over the Church. St. Thomas More was eventually beheaded for this. He is one of the more famous martyrs of this period.
Latin II is simply a continuation of what we have been studying in Latin. It is very difficult, but the priest that teaches it makes it at least interesting while we are there.
Ethics is the philosophical pair of Moral Theology. We are told that the difference between Philosophy and Theology at least in this case is that philosophy can be attained by pure reason, while Theology relies on revelation. So in Ethics we are talking about the reasoning way to deal with many of the same issues that we will encounter in moral theology.
Logic is a bit tougher for me to understand what we are going to be studying. Logic is also another branch of philosophy, dealing with how to properly make connections and how to make items make sense, at least I think that is what it is, ask me about it later and I might understand.
Ancient Philosophy is just as it sounds, the philosophy of the ancients. This goes from the earliest recorded philosophical topics into the beginnings of the Christian period of history. The first philosophers tended to be most concerned with what the world is made of, and ideas along those lines. The better known Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, which we are also covering were concerned with the ideas and definitions of virtues.
In addition to the classes we of course have all of our spiritual direction, formation advising, prayer times, and Masses.
This past Wednesday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Even many Catholics tend not to know what is being talked about when we mention this… so I will explain a little here. Most people think that it is about the time when Mary found that she was carrying the child Jesus. Although that is of course a great act of God, that is celebrated with the Feast of the Annunciation. That is not the Immaculate Conception (I.C.)
I.C. is the teaching passed down from the early Christians that when Mary was conceived the Holy Spirit intervened and prevented her from bearing the stain of Original Sin (the sin of Adam and Eve disobeying God in the garden, which gives us all a tendency towards sin). This is a teaching of the Church that although it is not found in sacred scripture it can be found very early in Sacred Tradition. It was a belief held by most Catholics though-out the world for ages. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that it was declared to be an official Dogma of the Church. I.C. is the patronal feast of the seminary (as well as the patronal feast of the United States) so it was naturally a big celebration here. We had a morning of prayer, in which all field education and classes are canceled so that we can spend the morning in prayer, then we had a fancy celebration lunch followed by the afternoon free.
Late last week most of the guys in 3rd year Theology left us. They are spending this quarter doing their studies on Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I pray that they are having a great experience and growing during their time walking in the same lands as our Lord did.
I think I have mentioned that we get a lot of time off from here during the school year. This is partially due to the quarter system and the two week breaks between each quarter, but also the fact that as a seminary it is important for us to help out in our parishes when we can. So although we just had two weeks off, we will only be back for three weeks before getting another two weeks off for Christmas.
Well, I think that is enough of an update. I will try not to be so tardy with my next post.
Peace,
Adam

Fall Break 2010

Okay, so I am now on break.

Finals went very well… well, what I took of them did. I had a friend from Holmen die the weekend before finals so I went home for that. The funeral was on Thursday with visitation on Wednesday night so I tried to see if I could leave on Wednesday after my field education at the nursing home. I checked with the academic dean to see about rearranging my final times and he was all right with it. I had one final scheduled for Thursday and one for Friday so I had to get them both arranged to avoid having to make the long drive back on Friday just for one test before break. The final on Thursday was for my Catechism class and the priest that teaches that was willing to just do an oral final, in which he asked me questions about what we were going to have on the test. We did that on Wednesday after my field ed, but before I left. The final for Friday was for Latin, and since we are being taught to read it more than to speak it an oral final really wouldn’t work. The final for that also wasn’t written yet so I couldn’t just take it early. It worked out that I am going to take that final during the first week back after break. So technically I have received an “incomplete” in that for now, but will get a grade after I take the final. I had one person say that it was nice that I had two weeks more to study for it, I see it more as two weeks to forget what I knew.

So I actually kind of started my two week break a little early. We get two weeks off after every quarter. I stayed home after the funeral on Thursday and then came to Stevens Point on Friday. It has been a nice and relaxing time off for this. I haven’t had many obligations to do. I went to the Saturday evening Mass and then was asked to go out to dinner with three of the ladies who are active in the parish. That was very nice to catch up with them. I followed that up by going to visit my friends that I sometimes stay with here, we sat around chatting for a little bit. I am staying in the basement of the rectory (priest’s house) and think that I will probably stay there most of the times when I come up. There has been a futon down there to sleep on for quite a while, but we are making it a little bit more livable for down there. It has taken to being called the “seminarian suite” although it could be just a guest area at other points too. There is a guest room in the upstairs, but it is kind of nice to have the basement to myself, this way I have my own bathroom and a little bit more privacy. When I showed up on Friday I found that they had put a television down there and a recliner to sit in. I do watch TV in the evening upstairs with Father some, but it is nice to be able to just relax on my own too.

On Sunday I went to both of the Masses, I enjoy seeing all the people, but really enjoy the Mass experience at the 6:00 PM Mass on Sundays here. The student choir and the large number of enthusiastic college students is a real boost to my faith life.

Monday is Father Tom’s normal day off. He invited me to go over to the twin cities with him and another priest. They were going just for a trip to the cities, and to pick up some items for liturgies for the coming seasons. While we were there we stopped at the Ikea and picked up some furniture for the seminarian suite. We bought a dresser, an end table, and a coat rack, which a student here and I put together on Tuesday. It was a great trip to the cities, great company and conversation.

Tuesday after morning Mass I went and bought new tires for my truck and ran a few errands that I wanted to get done. I also picked up a few Christmas gifts. I had to pay attention to the price on these things a bit more than in the past, but that is not a bad thing to be doing.

Today (Wednesday) I have relaxed most of the day. A bit later we will have a student supper. I’m not sure if I mentioned that program at this parish before. It is great. Every two weeks on a Wednesday there is a supper cooked by stationary members (those that live in the area) for the student members. This starts at 5:00 and at about 5:30 a speaker starts. The speaker talks about whatever they want (based on what Fr. Tom has asked them to talk about). It is a great chance for the Catholic students to get together and socialize with other students who share their faith. The norm is somewhere between 50 and 70 students who show up to this, occasionally closer to 100. I think that this is a great turn out for college students with their busy lives to take time for an event at the church. At 9:00 tonight will be a “Late Night Mass” that is a week day Mass geared towards the students. I always really enjoyed these late night Masses because they are a great ways to take a break from the week and focus on what is important.

I will stick around in Point until tomorrow morning until after morning Mass and then head towards home. I am very excited because this weekend I get to go deer hunting with a couple of friends. I will relax there until after Thanksgiving. Fr. Tom has asked me to come back to point to be the server (altar boy for those who don’t know the word) for the Masses the weekend after Thanksgiving before heading back down to Mundelein Seminary for classes to begin that Monday.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

Peace,
Adam

Reflection for Nursing home 1

Hello everyone,
I have been busy preparing for finals with studying and projects so it has been about a week and a half since I have written. I am leaving tomorrow after my field education and my last final of the quarter to go home for a visitation, and then a funeral on Thursday. So I don’t have time to reflect a whole lot on the ending of my first quarter of seminary. It is amazing that it is over already, only 17 more to go… I hope to write something next week for reflection on this, I can’t make any promises.

For the blog post this time I thought I’d share with you what I am sharing with the people at the nursing home tomorrow. As I have said I go to a nursing home every Wednesday and in addition to room visits and taking communion to people’s rooms we have a communion service with host that has been consecrated by a priest at a previous Mass. At this communion service we go through the Church’s prescribed Mass readings for the day, and then either I or the other seminarian offer a reflection. Since we aren’t ordained it isn’t considered a homily, although you would think it was a homily if you just looked at it.

Below I have copy and pasted the readings for tomorrow (except for the Psalm, since I don’t refer to that in here). The first reading is from the Letter of St. Paul to Titus, the Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke. I think it is obvious enough where the readings stop and my reflection begins. Enjoy, and feel free to give feedback if you want, I’m always looking to improve.

Peace,
Adam
Reading 1
Ti 3:1-7
Beloved:
Remind them to be under the control of magistrates and authorities,
to be obedient, to be open to every good enterprise.
They are to slander no one, to be peaceable, considerate,
exercising all graciousness toward everyone.
For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deluded,
slaves to various desires and pleasures,
living in malice and envy,
hateful ourselves and hating one another.

But when the kindness and generous love
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy,
he saved us through the bath of rebirth
and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
whom he richly poured out on us
through Jesus Christ our savior,
so that we might be justified by his grace
and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

Gospel
Lk 17:11-19
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem,
he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him.
They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying,
“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said,
“Go show yourselves to the priests.”
As they were going they were cleansed.
And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply,
“Ten were cleansed, were they not?
Where are the other nine?
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
Then he said to him, “Stand up and go;
your faith has saved you.”

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This Gospel reading from Luke is so memorable that we could all almost proclaim it from heart. What am I going to talk about? The amazing act of Jesus’ miracle? Well, it is amazing, but no. Am I going to talk about how great it was of the one to come back to give God thanks, but terrible of the others to accept His gift without any acknowledgement? While there is truth in that, you have all heard those before…

I am going to speculate a bit on what those other nine did. Maybe they had been fighting leprosy for a long time and needed to go and check if their family was still intact. They may have had a shop that provided necessities to others in their community that they needed to see if they could salvage. These cured lepers may have gone to the temple to give thanks to God on their own, in the way that they knew. Maybe, just maybe they went to the priest as Jesus told them to. This was the necessary way for a Jew to return to society from these diseases, to show themselves to the priest to prove that it was gone.

I like to give these people the benefit of the doubt, sure they should have given thanks immediately, but maybe they did later to make up for it. Maybe they ended up squandering the opportunities that they were given by this second chance. But I like to think that this experience left them changed, and allowed them to grow in life.

These changes do happen. As Paul wrote in his letter to Titus, the first reading from today, even he was: foolish, disobedient, deluded, a slave to desires and pleasures, full of malice, envy, and even hate. Paul had an encounter with Christ and as he said “when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done, but because of his mercy…” he would become an heir to Christ, in hope of eternal life.

We all have encounters with God, let us be sure to take some time out of our day to thank him, as the one leper did, but let us also allow His grace to change us as it surely did to Paul and Titus, but also hopefully to the other nine lepers.
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Philosophy

Hello everyone,
I have been thinking about what to write this week and I decided that I would post one of the papers I have written for class. This one is a personal reflection paper for my Anthropology class. In it we were asked to write about our ideas on a variety of topics about humanity. For example these might be: what is a human?, what is human happiness?, what is it all for in the end?, what is the role of religion in humanity? and such like that.
I assume that my thoughts on these topics will grow over my time in seminary and my whole life, but this is what I wrote for now.
I hope you enjoy.
Peace,
Adam
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In thinking about this writing assignment I am fairly excited about it. I am going to write a bit about my personal philosophy of life. I do anticipate that my philosophy of life will change over my time here at seminary. I think that it will be very interesting to look back on this paper at the time of my Ordination, to see how my ideas have changed and how they haven’t over the time that I am in seminary.
My personal philosophy doesn’t get into all the tiny details of a definition; it is more a conceptual way of looking at things. When I say that I don’t worry about the definitions as much as some others do I mean that the definitions that I use may be a bit broader, and could be used to capture other items than just what I am defining. This look at definitions may be a challenge for some, but I tend to rely on a common understanding of the topics I am talking about.
One example of this outlook on more open definitions is the idea of what it means to be human. I don’t tend to worry about that issue since to me it is an almost intrinsic quality that makes a human. I think that someone either will recognize what makes a human on their own, or the wording of a definition won’t have much effect on them. My definition of a human is a sensing mammal created in the image of God with an eternal soul. There isn’t much there for people to go on who don’t have an idea of what that means already. I could get into the details of most humans being mobile biped creatures, but there are some other creatures that would fit this, and some humans that wouldn’t. I could describe our senses a bit more, but some people are lacking some of the senses while some other creatures have the same ones. The idea of a soul could be used as a distinguishing characteristic, however, there is much debate of what a soul is, and there is no way to say who/what has a soul other than saying that just humans do… a circular argument. Therefore, I think that the intrinsic knowledge of what is a human should be something that we can accept as known by others… if not, then we would be at a loss to go any deeper anyways.
The idea of human happiness may be even harder to define than that of what it means to be human. Assuming that we can accept a general idea of what a human is would of course be the first step. I think that happiness can come in so many forms. There can be happiness for some which others would find to be merely satisfaction. There can also be happiness which could seem to be joy. Happiness can appear to some as love.
I think that happiness is a bit more of a “catch-all” phrase for all of these. I think that at some times what others would term satisfaction can be true happiness, when it comes after a period of complete discontent. Happiness can also mean joy for some, a time when we experience pleasure in one or many areas of our life. I believe that these two forms, while being true forms of happiness are also quite temporary. I think that the greatest definition of happiness would be equated by some as love. This can be a romantic love, the love of friends, and the love of material or self. Even greater than that is a true sense of love for all that is around you, and all that comes from God, and thus a love for God himself. This is what true happiness is for humans. I think that the other definitions which I mentioned are mere reflections of this kind of happiness.
The role of humans in the whole of God’s creation is a question that we won’t find the answer to until the coming of God’s kingdom, if it is even revealed to us at that point. Our first and most important role is to love God and to help others to love God. In doing so we are to care for all of His creation and works. I think that this is the main niche that we fill here on Earth.
I don’t know how to begin writing about what roll we play in the creation outside of Earth. Maybe God did make other creatures similar to us in other parts of the cosmos, if so we wouldn’t be the only ones who are supposed to love Him. I think that we can’t rule that idea out, but need to simply accept the things we do know and understand that God will work with us in our own way.
I don’t think that anyone can answer the question of what our place is in the cosmos other than God Himself. We aren’t all knowing as He is so we just have to accept what we do know, and as we know more we have to grow to understand that this is how He works in the world.
On the question regarding what is this all leading to I can only go on what the Church teaches and I believe. I believe in the eternal life of the soul, in Heaven or in Hell. I believe that all who have faith will be raised up with Christ into the Kingdom of eternal glory. I really don’t know what that means or what it will look like, but I trust that it will be great. I believe as has been said, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love Him.”
I am truly not trained in the theology of salvation. I don’t have that great of a grasp on what is understood through millennium of teachings as to who can be saved and who can’t. I do know first of all that those who put their trust in Christ and his forgiveness will be saved. I think that the greatest way to show this trust and faith is through participation in the Sacraments of the Church that He founded. I also believe that while it may take more time in Purgatory all Christians, whether or not they participate in Christ’s Church will be saved.
My area of being unclear on what this all leads to is the thought of salvation for those who don’t have a strong faith in Christ. I believe truly what Christ said about Himself being the way, but I struggle with the idea of what that means for those whom haven’t yet made the choice to believe, as long as they don’t outright reject Him. I do believe that those who reject Him are choosing their eternity to be separated from God. Even the Church, in its enormous wisdom teaches that we rely on the mercy of God for those who haven’t been taught about Him. I question and struggle with what level of knowledge is enough that a person is seen as rejecting Christ. The God that I know and love will take into account those to whom he wasn’t presented in a sufficient way for them to accept His saving grace.
For me the idea of religious belief does play a huge role in humanity. Probably not in any individual as we all know people who have rejected all religious belief, but for humanity on the whole it is an essential. I think that God put the need for faith and religion in us as an essential part when He created us. This can be seen from the evidence that no society has ever grown up without having a religion, whether it be a monotheistic faith as in Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, or it be a polytheistic as in Hinduism or many of the ancient religions. I think that the need for organized religion even shows in traditions that base on the spiritual rather than a deity, most of those (of which Buddhism is a great example) eventually morph into a religious ideal with practices and/or some level of higher beings.
I think that religion is a strong part of humanity purely from societal reasons as well. I believe that the moral codes found in religion assisted humanity in survival during challenging points in evolutionary history. Although most religions have had times where violence was allowed to a certain extent, there is also a strong sense of peace and doing good for others in most religions. I think that this has helped humans evolve into the beings that we are. In society, those with religious beliefs may be more likely to help others survive, and thus someday that person might help them, assisting the species and society in growing into what it is today.
I think that God put the desire for religion in us when we were made so that humans would go through the full process to discover who He is. I think that he revealed the truth of His nature when He felt that we would be ready and able to accept and at least somewhat understand. When God started to reveal Himself through the Jewish prophets is when He thought that our societies had advanced enough to accept Him and move ourselves towards salvation. Obviously, there have been setbacks in this process, but God’s infinite mercy allows us to keep moving forward in advancing the Kingdom.

Midterms Fall 2010

First off, I’m sorry that it has been so long since my last post. As I have said before, life here is very busy, and I just didn’t get around to it last week.

So… after my last post I had a lot going on. I had the big Latin exam that I mentioned. It went pretty well. I made a couple of stupid mistakes, and there was some stuff that I just didn’t know well enough, but on the whole I was surprised. I ended up getting a B on it, so how can I complain.

I also ended up re-writing the paper that I had mentioned in a previous post. It was done, but I didn’t like it, and decided rather than chopping it up completely, which would be tough to make it flow, I just hit delete and started anew, it went pretty well, we’ll see what the grade did. I also had an essay exam for the same class last week; I feel that went pretty well too, I hope the priest that teaches it agrees.

Today I had an exam in my Catechism of the Catholic Church class. This was pretty easy. The priest in that class is teaching it as a fast paced overview into the Catechism, so that we know what is there to be able to look up details later. Because of this mentality the test was written to ensure that we retained the big ideas, very much geared towards my learning style, so I think that I nailed that test.

Aside from the tests and class work there have been a couple of cool things going on since I wrote last. On Wednesday of last week we had a Mass for the newly ordained. Those men who were ordained priests this past year returned (well most of them did, others had different obligations) for a Mass here. One of them was the presider at Mass, while another gave a wonderful homily tying the scripture readings to the experience of going through seminary and then being a new priest. It was wonderful to see the energy and enthusiasm that these men demonstrated. I think that one of the other great things about this Mass with the newly ordained was it being a reminder of what we are doing here. I often see guys making it appear as if the seminary is all that we are about… I don’t think that I’ve gotten to that point, but with the busy schedule it would be an easy trap to slip into. This Mass reminded us that there is a much greater goal in our time here, that of being out serving Christ and His people and bringing the Sacraments to them.

After that Mass I just had to get through the Thursday classes before having a three day weekend. I left right after my last class on Thursday and headed up to Stevens Point to spend time there. While I am truly loving my experience here, it is indeed nice to get away for a while. I got into Stevens Point about supper time, and got to hang out with my friends that I was staying with, and their two kids. I left after a while to go to supper with Fr. Tom, it was great to have that supper to talk about the experiences that I am having here at the seminary.

Friday I went to Mass at the Newman Parish and then spent most of the day just hanging out and relaxing, including a wonderful nap (it was great). I spent Friday Night with Fr. Tom and another priest going to supper again, and then going to a Play. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with the people that I was staying with and their kids. While I love their kids, and enjoy my time with them, I am not used to having a 1 and 2 year old running around, I excused myself for a while and met up with another great friend that I hadn’t seen in a while.

Sunday I got to go to both of the Newman Sunday Masses, it was great to be back with that community and talking to them about what is going on in my life. While I was talking to them I realized that I have absolutely nothing that I can complain about with my time here. My classes are wonderful, my classmates are wonderful, the living conditions are wonderful… I am amazed by the fact that everything is going so very well. It also kind of worries me, when I am I going to wake up from this dream? I hope that it continues this great, because I imagine everything being even greater after Ordination (still 6 years away, but I can think about it).

Well, with all the tests taking up class periods I don’t really have that much new material from my classes to talk about. I am preparing a presentation on Buddhism to give to one of my classes, a full 55 minutes. We are doing this with many other religions and other Christian denominations, just so that when we hear about them we have an idea of what is meant by each of these other faiths. It is not to refute their faiths claims or find ways to attack them, just to gain a better understanding of what they are about.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. God has answered our prayers. The classmate that I mentioned previously who’s sister and cousin were kidnapped from their school in Uganda have been found and returned. I don’t know the extent of any injuries they might have received, but they are safely home, thank you to all who included these young ladies in their prayers.

Peace,
Adam

In the groove

Wow, so much happens here that I hardly know what to write about. I am absolutely loving my time here.

Last week I had my first official meetings with both my spiritual director and my formation advisor. A formation advisor just talks to you about what is going on both in prayer life and in the total formation process here. He also keeps a seminarian accountable for full participation in the formation process. For example, although I am free to come and go from here as I please I am of course expected to be at certain things, such as community prayers and Mass. If I want to go off of campus for a weekend, such as to go home, or to visit someone I have to clear it through my formation advisor. In discussions with my formation advisor he feels strongly on the importance of participation in the community but understands that people want to get away or are asked to be somewhere at different times. I just have to make him aware of when and why I will be gone, he will tell me if it is too much. My formation advisor will also follow up to ensure that I am following the university’s policies and performing academically, it isn’t as if he is to crack a whip over us, he is to discuss issues and help us figure out ways to grow and achieve our goals. Discussions with the formation advisor are considered to be in the “external forum” meaning that he is free to discuss my performance with those whom it is appropriate to do so i.e. my Bishop or my vocation director.

The spiritual direction process sounds similar to the formation advising, but it is considered to be in the “internal forum” so anything talked about there is held in confidence. Spiritual direction doesn’t have the same status as the sacramental seal of confession, so if the spiritual director hears something that would be required to be reported as a mandatory reporter by law he is still obliged to do so. In spiritual direction I talk about similar things to what I discuss with the formation advisor, but we go at it in a different way and try to figure out more spiritual ways to grow (as would be expected by the name). In both of these meetings for this first time I spent a good deal of time discussing my vocation story on what has made me believe that being here is the right thing for me… I also talked about areas that I knew in advance that I would need to work on, and the goods and bads that I have experienced here so far.

Other than that it was pretty standard during the week. The weekend was very nice, my mom and her husband came down since it was family day on Saturday. They expressed the same thing that I have about it being a beautiful campus, we even got to take a tour of the campus with an expert in classical architecture. During the tour we were taught that if done properly you can determine the importance of a building by the design of its pillars and many other aspects, although I won’t remember the specific details it was great to be exposed to those thoughts so that I do appreciate the designs here that much more. I truly enjoyed meeting the families of many of the guys that I am studying with, and my mom and her husband said that they were glad to meet the people I am studying with so that they may be able to put a face with whomever I may be talking about. Other than that it was a great weekend just to spend time with them and hang out… obviously we went to Mass together and to the formal gatherings, but we did our own thing quite a bit too.

This week I plunged headfirst into leading community events. The day that I am scheduled later this quarter to lead Morning Prayer conflicted with my field education at the nursing home, so I traded and took Tuesday of this week. Although it really isn’t that big of a deal to lead the community morning prayer, it was a great feeling and made me feel even more a part of this wonderful community. I did this both for Morning and Evening prayer, I was surprised that I wasn’t nervous about it at all, it kind of just felt right.

Today at the nursing home was another wonderful experience of helping to lead. During my time at the nursing home I spend a lot of the time visiting rooms of those who can’t get out, I bring them communion if they want, chat with them a bit, and help them with any needs that I can (I do have to check with a nurse before giving water or such since they may be on restrictions) this is very fulfilling, and I think will be even better as I get to know the people more. We also have a communion service for those who can get to it. This has a lot of the appearance of Mass, but doesn’t contain the Eucharistic prayer as there is no priest there. During the communion service we use the same assigned readings as we would at a Mass and then there is a reflection given (a homily if by the Deacon) followed by a few prayers and then distribution of communion that has been consecrated at an earlier Mass.

Today I got to give the reflection, this may seem like a minor thing, but after Ordination these would be homilies, so I am excited to get some practice in it. Everyone said that I did well (a patient even said that it was a nice homily, but I didn’t bother to go into the differences, just said thank you and moved on). The first reading from today was from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians when he talks about confronting Cephus for living wrong. The Gospel reading was from the Gospel of Luke when Jesus teaches the disciples the “Our Father” prayer (Lord’s prayer). My reflection focused on the idea of these scriptures telling us how to live our life quite directly. In Paul’s letter it not only talked about actually living the way that we are taught, but it gave the example that if we feel someone is doing something wrong we need to address it with them, rather than simply harboring bad feelings. In the Gospel I broke apart the Our Father and discussed lessons in how to live life from the various parts of it.

As I said, between leading morning and evening prayer for the whole community and giving the reflection at the communion service I have kind of dove headfirst into this. I love it, it was so much fun, and both just felt right to be doing.

I have my first paper of seminary due tomorrow in my intro to spiritual life class (yes mom, it is already done, and has been for a couple of days). I have a big test in my Latin class on Friday. I am very much enjoying the study of Latin, but it seems that I understand what is going on during class, but when I sit down on my own to go over it I struggle. Probably the biggest challenge to me in Latin is the fact that I don’t know English grammar well enough to understand how it transfers to the Latin. In English I can tell if a sentence is wrong, but I can’t normally give the exact reasons that it is wrong… so that is just something that I am trying to learn as I go to help with the Latin.

Although there are obviously many prayer requests that I could write in the blog, I normally don’t as you know. One that I am going to ask for today though is this. The sister and one of her friends of my brother seminarian here, Martin, were abducted from their grammar school in Uganda (he is studying for his home diocese there). Please keep these two young ladies and their family in your prayers. For their safe return, and for a conversion to peace for those who have abducted them.

Peace,
Adam

Personal Prayer

Hello again!

After my last post I received an e-mail from someone saying that it appeared that there was no emphasis on personal/contemplative prayer. He said that there must be the thought that there will be time for contemplation after we are dead. I merely hadn’t written about the personal prayer time since I was writing about the scheduled stuff in our busy days. There is actually a great deal of emphasis on personal prayer and I will write about that in just a little bit.

To update you, I did end up dropping my choir class. If you remember I was quite frustrated by many aspects of it. I had a great conversation with the choir director and noticed her working to address the concerns that I had raised. I decided however that on the whole it wasn’t worth it to take this class at this time. I may take it again in the future, or I will take the vocal practicum at a later point which will cover that requirement in the formation program.

Back to the personal prayer… This is a topic that is frequently brought up and emphasized as important. A person is to develop a way of making personal prayer a part of all liturgical prayer, as well as a part of their other time. We are not in formation to become contemplative monks who spend hours and hours on their knees in the chapel every day, that is an important calling for those who receive it, but we are being trained to be Diocesan Priests who are out serving the people of God. In this way it is great that we are busy and being formed in building prayer into all parts of our daily lives.

One of my favorite classes so far is Intro to Spiritual Life. In this class we are discussing the history of Christian Spirituality, and various methods of Christian Spirituality that we can adapt to ourselves. It is important for a priest to be well versed in this area, the priest may have one way that works best for him, but if he is to help all of the people he is shepherding to grow in their faith in the Lord he should know many different approaches to prayer.

In the Christian Catholic world the obviously most important part of one’s spiritual life is the Mass. In this we start out with opening up God’s word in the Liturgy of the Word (4 readings from Scripture in a Sunday Mass, 3 in weekday Mass, plus the homily in all) We then move into the Liturgy of the Eucharist by doing as Christ directed in His holy sacrifice of His Body and Blood.

Outside of the Mass there are other liturgical prayers which are important, but nowhere near the same as the Mass. Then there are also private devotional prayers that are prescribed as great ways to pray on the life of Christ, probably the most famous of these is the Rosary. The Rosary is a form of prayer in which one meditates on various mysteries of the faith (I’m sure if you Google “mysteries of the rosary” you will find them listed) while repeating scripturally based prayers. There are many other private devotional prayers that are embraced by different people.

Devotional prayer is not seen as a substitute for personal conversational/contemplative prayer. In this there are many different forms. One should always give thanks to God for what He has given us, which is everything. One should bring their needs to God, He already knows them, but wants us to ask Him for His assistance in all parts of our life. One of the most important things that someone should bring to God as a need is their sins. They should spend some time thinking about what their sins are, asking God for forgiveness, and asking God to help them to sin no more.

Spiritual reading is another great method of personal prayer. In this someone reads anything based on faith, scripture, saint stories, vocation stories, or just anything that opens the faith up more. While reading it someone takes time to reflect on what they have read and grows in their faith through that prayer. I will write about some of my spiritual reading as time goes on in the blog.

A great tool that has been given to us here to help with our personal prayer is the Examen, a prayer format that has been handed down by St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits). The parts of the Examen can take various amounts of time based on what one feels is needed. I will summarize the Examen sheet that I have sitting right next to my computer, this is something that I go through a couple of times a day just as prayer for myself.
1) Give Thanks: go over your day to give thanks for the great things that God has given… look at all aspects, the physical, the spiritual, the personal encounters, etc. Give Thanks to God for the good that has been part of your day.
2) Pray for God’s Light: In this you ask God to give you the grace to see Him in your day and to see how He would want you to see.
3) Replay the Day: This step may seem a lot like the first, but without giving thanks just think about all parts of your day, how can you find God in the good and the bad, in the actions you did and the encounters you had.
4) Express regret: figure out what you have done wrong, apologize to God for it. Apologize for the ways that you have failed to live up to what He wants.
5) Look forward to tomorrow: How will you find God tomorrow? Prepare yourself for the challenges to come, and ask God to help you get through and move forward as you go about the next day.

The last thing that I'll say about personal prayer in this post is that since people often ask for prayers I worry that I will forget them specifically. I have long kept a notecard that I write the names of those whom I wish to pray for on. Since I have been here I have expanded it to a small notepad that I keep in my brievary... I read this list and say a few prayers for these people a few times a day.

Peace,
Adam

The busy life here

Hello again,
I am so very glad that I warned everyone that I would probably only be able to get a blog up about once a week when I got here to seminary. We are so very busy, nothing too terribly hard, but fast paced that I like to have some down time when I can, and writing a blog is difficult to fit in, but I do really enjoy writing this, it is a nice way for me to do a reflection.

I guess that the first thing that I want to say is that after my last blog I finally got ahold of the choir director and had about a 40 minute discussion with her. She understood my frustrations and it was noticeable during the class on Monday that she was keeping it in mind as she went through stuff. I haven’t decided for sure to stay in the class, but it was a great step and really reduced the frustration level there, which eliminated almost all of the stress that I have here.

I mentioned that I would write a bit about the day to day lifestyle here… I’ll at least get started in this post, but that could get long so I may have to carry it on to another. Our day to day life is very busy, but it tends to be with little things with gaps in between that aren’t accounted for. I have typically preferred to be one who has longer times occupied and then a bit longer stretches off… I need to work at getting going for short stretches. Based on time that I have been around a parish, this is more the life of a priest, with scattered obligations, so it is good preparation.

On the days that I have classes the obligations start at 7:15 in the morning with the community praying Morning Prayer together from the Liturgy of the Hours. This takes about 15 minutes and then there is some quiet time in the chapel before Mass starts at 7:40. Week day Masses take about 35-40 minutes, at which time we go over to breakfast. I think that they put the breakfast out at about 8:15 and it runs until 9:05. Depending on each person’s schedule there are two class sessions in the morning. I have class from 10:45-12:05 on Mondays and Thursdays; Tuesdays and Fridays I have class from 9:15-10:05. I was able to get a work study job to help me to have a little bit of money for fun stuff… I currently have this two hours on Monday and Thursday, after Mass, so 8:30-10:30. I am working in the library, shelving books, working the circulation desk and such. I also work Friday evenings for 4 hours.

Lunch starts at 12:10 and runs to 1:00. Afternoon classes can get going at 1:10 depending on the class length. On Mondays and Thursdays this quarter I have a class from 1:10-2:05 and then again from 4:05 until 5:05; Tuesdays and Friday’s I have two classes from 1:10-4:00 with a 10 minute break in between at 2:30.

The day isn’t over after class though. On Monday’s at 5:15 we get together as a cam (floor and hallway living unit) and pray Evening Prayer together before going to supper. Evening Prayer on Tuesday’s is prayed by language groups… because there are international students here, or those trying to learn another language there are various groups for English, Spanish, Polish, and I don’t know if there are any others… I only go to the English. Wednesday Evening prayer can be on your own with Night Prayer prayed at a cam meeting. My cam has decided to do Evening Prayer again on Wednesdays and then Night Prayer will be either on our own or if we choose to get together again later. Thursday’s night prayer is prayed with the other men from your home Diocese, this is normally followed by some level of social activity, such as going out to eat together. Friday Evening Prayer is on your own, or with anyone that you set it up to pray with.

We also have formation time as a class on Mondays from 7:00-8:30 PM most weeks, there is just a couple of Monday’s per quarter that we don’t have it. During this time we have various topics, such as last night’s running a communion service for the sick… This is an important ministry because obviously the sick can’t get to Mass as easily, but a priest doesn’t always have time to visit them in the home to say a Mass in their home. The Church allows for people to be commissioned to take communion consecrated at a Mass to these peoples home. It is hoped that the person won’t just walk in, hand the sick person the Body of Christ and leave. There is a rite for a small prayer service for this. I will be doing this as part of my field education in the nursing home. I will also be holding a bit larger prayer service with communion consecrated at a previous Mass, this is because there isn’t always a priest available to come in and say Mass even in the community room in the Nursing home. It is hoped that a priest will do this sometimes, but this is another way that people can receive the Body of Christ.

As I have said previously Wednesdays I will be going to a nursing home for a field education. Everyone in my class has their field ed. on Wednesday morning, but not all the other classes do. On Wednesday mornings on campus there is an hour of Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. There is personal prayer time, along with praying Morning Prayer at this point. Mass on Wednesdays is at 4:45 in the afternoon. I think that some years have class on Wednesdays… but I haven’t looked into that for sure.

On the weekends we do have a lot of free time. Some people have field education on the weekend, some in later years go to a parish to help out, others just go to visit friends and family. If we are around we are expected to be at Morning Prayer at 8:30 on Saturday and Sunday and then Mass is at 9:00 each of those days. It is hoped that a guy will be around to be part of the community the majority of the weekends.

In addition to all of this, there is a meeting with a spiritual director that is expected to happen every two weeks at a time set up between them. I have selected my spiritual director and set up a time, but haven’t had a meeting yet, I think this will be for about an hour each time. There is also an hour meeting twice per quarter with a man’s formation advisor, just to talk about how things are going on the whole.

We also have various opportunities for other ways to grow ourselves that come up. This past Saturday I attended a conference nearby with presentations on the Theology of the Body that was geared towards those in celibate life. Theology of the Body is a series of weekly talks given over a multiple year period by Pope John Paul II. This discusses how to properly embrace the beauty of the sexual being as God intended. It was given in part to refute the societal perception that the Church thinks that sex is bad… the Church as long (not sure if I can say always since I haven’t studied that much of the history of it) taught that sex is a wonderful gift given by God to be used within the Sacrament of Marriage to unite a couple and glorify God.

This conference I was at discussed that beautiful aspect of the Theology of the Body, but more focused towards how to properly embrace what God gave us while living a celibate life. It was a wonderful step for me, it helped me move closer towards embracing the gifts that can come from a celibate life.

In addition to the information presented at the conference I was also able to see a wonderful friend who has recently joined a religious order moving towards being a sister (nun). It was great to see her and to catch up. We got to spend a bit of time together, but she was with a lot of her sisters from the same convent she is at so she was also with them. There were men and women from many various religious orders, and men going towards the diocesan priesthood as I am.

Well, this is long enough (maybe too long, sorry).
Peace,
Adam

Week 2

A week and a half of classes down… I am really feeling like I am getting settled into the routine of classes again. I can say that I am enjoying all of my classes except for the choir class.

I am a bit surprised that I am enjoying the Latin. Latin will be very difficult, and is taking a lot of time to study it… but I can honestly say that I am enjoying it. The priest that teaches it makes it fun, and doesn’t seem to get frustrated if he has to repeat something, actually I think that he enjoys the repeating because he is repeating something when we ask, which shows him that we are truly trying to learn the material.

I am actually very surprised that I don’t like my choir class. I never imagined that I would do well in it… I don’t hear tones well enough to hit the pitches. I also haven’t had any sort of musical direction since middle school, if even then, I don’t remember if we had music after elementary school. I did think that I would enjoy it though. I enjoy singing at Mass and along with the radio. I truly enjoy the act of singing (although it may be painful for those around me).

I guess that I am frustrated with the way that the choir is run, and the instructor… After one class period we were put in the choir loft with no help in how to sing the songs at all. The choir director makes whispered announcements in the choir loft that many people say that they can’t hear, what I have picked up out of those announcements doesn’t help because it uses words that I am not familiar with and have no clue on the meaning. I am not trying to slam the choir director, to be fair to her we did have a big Mass last week (Mass of the Holy Spirit, to ask the Holy Spirit to guide the students and the faculty during the coming academic year) and she needed to get ready for that, but I do feel that this isn’t what I thought I was getting into for the choir, I thought we would be helped in our singing.

Tonight at our cam meeting I mentioned that I am considering dropping choir, I have found out that even though it was presented by the choir director as a required class it is actually an elective. The seminary does require a man to be checked off at being proficient in singing the Mass parts, but that is not the same as taking a choir class. The rest of the guys convinced me to give it another week… which I will do because we have a while before the drop deadline. After the meeting two of the guys did come up to me and expressed that they understand where I am coming from, especially since I do ask questions and this gets me singled out without getting the help… they said that the rest aren’t experiencing that, and that the choir director probably doesn’t realize that it keeps falling on me. I do hope that it gets better and that we actually get some instruction to help us sing, rather than just using us as bodies up in the choir. I truly want to learn and get better, as I said in a previous post I agree that it is important for a priest to be able to sing well, so that he doesn’t hurt the ears of his parish.

I have had a couple of people get a hold of me and say that they have thought about calling me at different times, but are unsure about it because of the image that they have in their mind of seminary life. They say that although they are pretty sure it isn’t true, the image they have is from the movies of old monastic life with guys walking around in silence for selected hours out of the day and they don’t want to disturb that. I will go more into the schedule, hopefully in my next post (unless something else comes up that I feel like talking about) but in short if you want to contact me just think of it like I’m at a normal college… classes and meetings, but the rest can be open. I silence my phone when I can’t take a call… and I make judgement calls on how long I anticipate I need before answering any call. So feel free to call me, if I can answer I will, if not I will call back either the same day or within the next couple.

Peace,
Adam

P.S. I wrote this all last night, but rather than my normal practice of posting immediately after writing I decided to take a bit to think and pray about what I wrote. I decided in this case to go with my first impression. I did take some time to talk to a guy in my class who has already gotten to know the choir director fairly well. He told me that the impression that she wasn’t doing it intentionally is very accurate, and that she would feel really bad if she knew that it was coming across this way. He recommended that I go to her to express my concerns of the class before I make any decision on staying in the choir or not. I had actually attempted this before, I had stopped by her office a few times to see about asking these questions, but had not caught her in her office. As I said before I will give choir at least another week and have decided to make a few more attempts to contact the choir director in this fashion.

Two Days of classes down

Here I am!! Classes started yesterday… yes on Labor Day. That was a little odd. I kept checking the mail and wondering when it was going to be in, the I realized it was a federal holiday but I still had my normal Monday schedule. I have now had all of my classes that I will have for this quarter (they run on a 10 week quarter system here instead of on a semester system.

My first class was on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The CCC is a wonderful book that condenses all of the major teachings of the Church. There have been various catechisms though the history of the Church, but this one was released in 1992… after a period of time for people to digest the works of the Second Vatican Council so that they would be able to expand on it in a more modern/relevant way. This doesn’t mean that they catered to modern society, just made it more readable and applicable to the further understanding that comes with time that the Catholic Church has had to develop over its 2000 year history. This class is taught by a priest who previously taught in a college level seminary but has just returned from 5 years of running orphanages in Latin America.

The second class that I had was my philosophy seminar 1 which is taught by a priest who has been teaching here and running the “pre-theology” program here for nearly 25 years. The Church wisely believes that we need to study philosophy before we can really get into the study of theology. Philosophy has many definitions (which philosophers tend to debate) but we are approaching it from the aspect of having to deal with whole knowledge that is applicable to many/all aspects of life. It is said that Philosophy is the base from which all knowledge grows… we’ll see how I grow to understand it.

The last class that I have on the Monday/Thursday rotation is my Choir class. This is a requirement at some point during our studies, and I figured I’d take it now to get the basis growing. It isn’t as if the inability to sing well would prevent ordination (as is obvious at churches throughout the world) but it would be nice to be able to improve my singing ability so if God continues to call me towards the priesthood it isn’t painful for people to listen to me (as it would be at this point).

After classes last night we had our first Rector’s Address of the year. This was just an introduction talk for the year and a welcome to all. Msgr. Lyle (the rector) gave a brief introduction and welcome to the new faculty for this year, then gave a little reflection and spoke about some model priests which he had been reading about. This was kind of a thing to get us motivated towards growing in the direction of becoming good priests. This address was followed by a social to chat with others in the seminary community.

Today I started my classes with a class on Introduction to Spiritual Life. Obviously we all should have a spiritual life before starting here but this is just a guide on ways to grow in our spirituality. I will get into that more in the future as I get a better feel for how it is being taught.

My next class of the day on the Tuesday/Friday rotation is Anthropology, or more specifically philosophical anthropology. So basically the study of what it means to be human and the way that thought has developed over the years. This is taught by the same professor/priest who teaches my philosophy class so it appears that they will work together very closely.

The last class that I have is Latin 1. Although they will readily say that we won’t be fluent in Latin to any extent they require a whole year (3 quarters) of Latin. This will give us a better basis of understanding theological texts and ideas that were originally written in Latin. There are obviously translations available to those, but we will be able to look at the original Latin writing to better understand the nuances in the wording that may not come through in the translation. At a later time I will be taking two quarters of Greek to be able to look at the scriptures in the same way.

I think that I am really going to enjoy my class load this quarter… the Latin will most likely be the most difficult, my head was swimming after this the first session, but it does seem that the priest who teaches that is very good at explaining, and repeating so that we can learn well.

As I have said in a previous post Wednesdays have no classes as we will have a field education. I had hoped to be assigned to jail ministry for this, but so did a pretty good portion of my class so I ended up being assigned to a nursing home. I am actually pretty excited about this too, as I don’t have a whole lot of experience in this setting. That doesn’t actually start for a couple of weeks yet, but will continue for the whole academic year (aside from breaks).

In addition to class we of course have daily Mass and prayer time. I will write more about that aspect in a future post.

Peace,
Adam

Silent Retreat

Towards the end of my last post I mentioned that we were beginning a silent retreat here at the seminary. To be specific it is a silent-guided retreat. The guided part means that we do have sessions as a group with a retreat director who talks to us about the topic of the retreat and gives us some guidance on how we may go about praying about the topic. The topic for this retreat is simply the priesthood… Our retreat director is using his talks to talk about various aspects of the priesthood, and how they have been lived out during his 43 years as a priest.

We were told early on that the silence isn’t an end in itself… but a means to draw us closer to God. By being silent we don’t distract others or ourselves. I will tell you from my experience that when I am not talking I can’t help but be praying, a very good thing. We still do some of our community prayers out loud, morning prayer from the liturgy of the hours, and Mass to be specific.

The silence isn’t just a “no talking” it is a more general silence… we are to eliminate all the things that distract us: TV, radio, internet, telephone, and so on.

This retreat has of course been difficult for me with my very outgoing personality. I will say that other seminarians recommended that while it would be best for me to try to get fully into the retreat, it may be better and less stressful if I self-modified the terms of the retreat. I thought that this was a very good idea. I have allowed myself a little bit of internet time (for example writing this blog) but moved away from the more distracting aspects of the internet such as Facebook. I have allowed myself to read and write letters, as I find this to be a very prayerful activity, but most business mail remains unopened. A few things that were on my mind business wise I have allowed myself to deal with, as I felt that their hanging out unresolved would be a distraction to me.

One thing that the seminary builds in with the retreat to allow for the exchange of thoughts is the idea of a prayer partner. This is one person whom we picked in advance that we are allowed to get together with to either pray together, or just talk about faith stuff, not everyone takes advantage of this, but I thought it would be very helpful for me. My prayer partner and I take a walk around the lake after the morning session by the retreat director. On Tuesday we did pass on this, just to have a day of silence. My prayer partner has done silent retreats before, so wasn’t going to take part in this, but thankfully was very willing, and even happy to help me out in this way.

My prayer partner is a great guy that I am constantly amazed by. He has believed in his desire to be a priest from a very young age. He actually even moved away from home (with his parents blessing) to attend formation during his high school years at a high school age house of formation in La Crosse. He then went on through college level seminary and is now beginning his theology studies here, meaning that if God keeps calling him in this direction he will be a priest in 4 more years. Prior to my coming here I had some people talk about guys like this to me… most of them said that they thought it was a bad idea, as these guys don’t have much real world experience. I have always commented to them that the clarity of a vocation is a gift no matter what time it comes in life, it just come earlier for some people. I have grown to think this even more in talking to my prayer partner. Has he had an outside job, a mortgage or any of those things? No, but he has indeed lived a lot of life in the way that God has called him to. My experience with life outside of the church will make me a different priest from him, but surely no better of a priest, he won’t be a better priest than me for his life experience, we will just be different.

As the week has gone on I am finding that I truly am gaining a lot from this silent retreat. I am ready for it to end, as there are things I’d like to talk about with people, but it has been a wonderful experience, and I am looking forward to next year’s silent retreat already. I think I will be more strict with myself than this year to see if I can grow even more.

Peace,
Adam

Orientation Week 2

Wow, what a crazy busy week it has been for me here… and it has been just orientation stuff. As I wrote about in my last post this consists mostly of business type stuff such as getting our schedule for classes, a schedule of other things going on, required and optional, and being told what is expected of us.

In addition orientation week of course had a lot of prayer time both for liturgy prayer and private prayer. This brings me to one of the things that I wanted to talk about based on a question I had… the question was in person, but I have mentioned a prayer that goes by many titles; “The Divine Office”, “The Liturgy of the Hours”, or “The Brievery”. These all refer to basically the same thing and are used interchangeably.

This is the book of prayers that is required to be prayed daily by the priests and religious throughout the world. It is heavily loaded with readings from the Book of Psalms, which are ancient prayers that are included in the Bible… a common prayer practice among Jewish people during the time of Jesus was to recite the Psalms, and we are taught that He took part in this prayer. In the Brievery is also: daily scripture readings, quotes from the Saints, hymns, and prayers written by others in the past. It is set up to be prayed at various times of the day I.E. : morning prayer, midday prayer (actually 3 different midday prayer times), evening prayer, and night prayer. This is to keep the focus of our day on prayer and Christ.

The question that I had was from someone who asked me how it can be prayer if it is pre-written down, and doesn’t come in our own words. I stumbled through an answer at that time, but wanted to address it a bit more… my thoughts on it, as I have said before, I am not teaching a Philosophy or Theology course here, although I might explain things that I find interesting.

Of course personal prayer, in one’s own words is a wonderful and very important way to pray. Silence is also important, listening to God, rather than just talking at Him. I love those forms of prayer and take part in them all the time. However, with the prayers written by others come many wonderful aspects. I can safely assume that at the time that I am praying any prewritten prayer that someone else, somewhere is praying with me. This gives me a wonderful comfort to know, maybe they are asking God to take care of all those who are praying with them, I know I do. I can also trust that I am praying the same way that people for a long time (with slight dialect changes) have prayed, many of those people are in Heaven with God now (Saints, both big “S” and little “s”), and may be focusing their prayers now toward helping those on Earth, including me. (As an aside, and I may talk about this later, when I say the big “S” and little “s” saints what I am meaning is that the big “S” are those that the Church has recognized as Saints and canonized them, acknowledging our belief and knowledge that they are in Heaven, a little “s” saint is anyone else who is in Heaven with God, but has not been placed in the canon, or list).

Another reason that I truly love prewritten prayers is that often times I am at a complete loss as to anything to say to God. This especially happens when I am praying in front of His real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. I am so in awe of the wonderful gift of salvation that He has given us, I want to praise him, but can’t find my words. At these times are times that I lean even more heavily on prewritten prayers.

Okay, enough of that for now. As I said orientation week has wrapped up. We spent a lot of time in the business sessions, and getting to know each other. I am amazed at how wonderful the guys in my class are, I don’t think that I could have scripted a better group of guys, wonderful personalities and enough diversity to keep it interesting.

One of the last sessions of orientation week was the Virtus training. Virtus is a national program on protecting God’s Children. Each Diocese has something in place for this, especially since the sex abuse crisis raised awareness of a problem, but this is the one that the Archdiocese of Chicago wants us to have to minister within their diocese. It is a wonderful program. Although of course anyone looking at the numbers knows that the abuse rate among Catholic Priests is actually lower than any other demographic group that someone can pick, any cases of it are too much, and the media attention to it drew an awareness that allows for the Church to protect the vulnerable even more.

Tonight we started a silent retreat. This will run until Friday mid-day. Of course there are recommended ways to implement this retreat it will truly come to whatever we make of it. I am allowing myself to write the blog post(s) that I may think of during this time and I will of course post them to my Facebook as always, but I won’t do much other Facebooking, or much other contact. If you absolutely need to get ahold of me for some reason call and leave a message, I will check those, or send an e-mail and put the word “important” in the subject line so that I will open it when it comes through on my phone… otherwise I will be available sometime early Friday afternoon.

One request that I have is that everyone keep the family of my cousin-in-law in your prayers. Several members of the family were seriously hurt in a recent car crash. And of course, please keep me, my class mates, all seminarians, clergy and religious in your prayers.

Peace,
Adam

Moving in/Orientation Week 1

Hi there,

So I am now kind of moved into my room at Mundelein Seminary! I say “kind of” because there is still quite a bit of unpacking, organizing, and settling in to get done, but all of that can happen in good time. I have found that I definitely brought WAY too much stuff. My room is pretty good sized, but kind of difficult to organize.

It is especially tough to get organized this year because I am only in this room for one year, so there are limits on what I can do in the room. At one point in the past it used to be set up that a seminarian would move every year to a different room on campus based on where they were in the program of studies. This allowed people to be closer to facilities that would fit them, for example, those who were Deacons would be closest to the rooms to practice saying Mass (of course it wouldn’t be a valid Mass since they aren’t a Priest, but it would make practice easier). Now it happens that all of the guys in first year Pre-Theology (like me) are in one area, then after this year we will move into rooms mixed in with all the people at other points in their studies. We will be in those rooms for the rest of our time here.

When I get into my permanent room I will be able to do things like build a loft for my bed which will of course give me a great deal more floor space to organize stuff. For now though, I have to make do with what I can. It isn’t too bad, I have found in the unpacking that I brought a lot of stuff that I “may” want at some point during my time here. A lot of that is getting packed away again so that when my mom and her husband come down for family weekend I can give it to them to store in the rafters of their garage.

On Monday I went to Mass at St. Elizabeth’s as I always like to go to Mass and it seemed appropriate before heading down to Illinois. I also stopped at the DMV to get back my Wisconsin driver’s license and license plate… this made me very proud. I hope to never switch from WI again. Then came the drive down, routine and uneventful.

I got to the seminary and checked in. I already had my key and knew where my room was, so it was basically just picking up a packet of information with the schedule and details for this orientation week. I was very grateful to run into a couple of guys whom I knew from my Diocese who were here already and were very willing to help me carry my stuff up to my room. They also told me that it is allowed to drive on the sidewalk to the building to unload, making the whole process much easier than it could have been.

Although I didn’t need anything I accompanied these guys to the Target store just to hang out and basically procrastinate on unpacking. I did buy a pair of swimming trunks as there is a wonderful indoor pool on campus. I then got busy with unpacking, well, kind of… it was most difficult to figure out where to begin. I got a little bit put away and met a few of the guys who live in my hall way. These are some very wonderful men with amazing stories of what has brought them to feel that God is calling them to the priesthood.

On Monday evening I guess it is a little bit of a tradition (or so I’m told) to go on a “hotdog pilgrimage” basically running out for Chicago style hotdogs. I thought this sounded good, a way to get to know some more people and another excuse to procrastinate unpacking. I get there and we are loading up cars when I find out that the place we are going to is 45 minutes away… I didn’t expect that, but oh well. We went there and the hotdogs were indeed great. We got back and a few of us in my hallway (called “Cam” in seminary life… I’ll let you know when I figure out where that comes from) sat around chatting. I was growing even more excited for this journey based on the wonderful men that I will be going through it with.

Tuesday was more unpacking in the Morning, then Mass at 11:30. After Mass and lunch I unpacked a little more and then had to get dressed for my picture and a brief “business” meeting, just to go over the ins and outs of the business office here. They discussed the idea that each seminarian needs health insurance, and made sure that we had taken the program required by the Catholic Church to prevent abuse of minors.

Tuesday evening there was a welcome from the Rector and an introduction to quite a good percentage of the faculty, followed of course by a social to get to know each other.

Today, Wednesday, was the first full day of Orientation. We had the general sessions that everyone would expect when starting at a new school type setting. We also had sessions on living together in community, as we will be doing for the next few years. One session that most other schools wouldn’t have that we did was the one that discussed the liturgical practices here… basically what time and how Mass is set up here, and also the times and set up for praying the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy of the hours is a prayer book broken up throughout times of the day that is required for all priests and religious in the Catholic Church to pray… of course they want us to get used to it and develop and appreciation for it. I really like the Liturgy of the Hours, it is a scripture based prayer, heavy on Psalms and Gospel Canticles.

The last session that I feel worth really mentioning from today was the session on our field education. This is a program where seminarians go out to different sites to minister to people. We don’t have class on Wednesday, so we are expected to go to our field education site every Wednesday. At this point in my time we aren’t doing ministry within a parish, that is saved for those later in seminary. The opportunities available to me are various hospital, nursing home, and jail/detention center ministries. I am actually hoping for a jail ministry assignment as I don’t have experience in that field, it will be a good way to grow in my faith by stepping out of my comfort zone to minister to God’s people there. I will see what I get picked for when that comes up.

Well, this is pretty long again. Please keep me in your prayers, along with all seminarians, priests, and religious.

Peace,
Adam

Getting Ready 4---Moving tomorrow!!!

Wow, so I’m going to have to get through this one by covering a bit of ground quickly as I move to Mundelein Seminary tomorrow.

After the weekend of my blessing at Newman University Parish and meeting up with a great friend on that Monday I returned to work Tuesday-Tuesday. Work was pretty routine for me, but my boss accompanied me on a few things so that he would know where they were at. I also limited myself to finishing up on things and getting them close to completion if not completed instead of finding new issues to deal with. I had a few things that came up from members of the public that needed to be dealt with that were new, but I didn’t do a whole lot of new inspections to find new problems that couldn’t be resolved before I left.

After that 8 day stretch of work I got up early on Wednesday and flew out to Montana for a week to see my dad and his wife. It was great to get out there since they have lived there for three years and I have yet to visit them. I had a wonderful time seeing their house, the area they live in, and one of the few parts of the country that I haven’t experienced. This was a wonderfully relaxing trip… a few naps were taken, I slept in a bit (as much as I can), and went out to eat a bit. I got to see some of the sites in the area, cut a few trees down in my dad’s yard, and mostly just hang out.

I returned for three days of work after my trip to MT. This was even more occupied with wrap up work as the end was quickly moving in. I did my outprocessing, answered all of my boss’s questions about what issues were on going, and cleaned out my desk. I managed to stay amazingly busy for all but about the last two hours of those three days… I was glad for this, as I didn’t feel like I was slacking, and the last two hours of slow time showed me that I had planned properly and wasn’t scrambling at the end.

During the final 3 weeks or so in Iowa I was donating a bunch of items and selling a bunch on Craigslist. On the Wednesday night of my final week I went to my final session of the Bible Study program that I had been taking part in, I had been so busy of late, and with the vacation I hadn’t prepared for the Bible Study. I went to listen to the other people’s discussion and to say good bye to them. It turned out that we mainly just had a going away conversation. It was great. Thursday evening was my going away dinner with a couple of friends. I wish that more people could have come out, but I planned it kind of late, and got to say good bye to most people at other times.

On Friday evening, after my last day at work I went home and about went crazy packing my final stuff. I somehow found that I had a lot more stuff left than I had thought. After donating a bit more at the night drop at the Salvation Army I managed to fit everything into my truck so that I could drive home… including stuff piled on the passenger seat so that I had to arrange it just right to be able to see out of my side view mirror.

I didn’t end up leaving until about noon on Saturday because of the final packing and cleaning of my apartment. I drove towards my mom’s. I stopped at my brother’s to visit him, my S-i-L, and my nephew. My brother had run to the store so I didn’t get to see him… but I had spoken to him on the phone recently. I then finally made it to my mom’s house and carried in a bit of laundry to do, and a couple of things that will need to be stored at her house.

On Saturday night I went to Kornfest, the festival in the town that I had grown up in. I got to see Fr. Malin, and Sisters Bridget and Jean whom I had known since I was just a little kid. I was glad to see them and be able to talk with them before leaving. I also got to see a couple of great friends. I had a great time getting back to Kornfest for the first time in a few years.

Sunday morning my mom and I went to church with a wonderful lady who has volunteered to help me with the issue of owing money on my truck. She is a lady my mom has known from work for a long time and who has a heart of gold. She very excitedly volunteered to give me the money to cover my truck. I don’t feel quite comfortable just taking the money as a gift at this point… it seems so odd to have something like that, but I am willing to take an interest free/no payment loan for the time that I am in seminary. I may be willing to take the gift as an Ordination gift at that point… we’ll have to see. We went to breakfast after church and it was great to get to know her, I will most definitely add her to my prayer list, not because she loaned me the money, but because she is a wonderful person who has asked for prayers.

Sunday afternoon I went back to my mom’s and did the laundry I had brought in yesterday. I will be leaving in the morning. I hope to go to Monday Mass at St. Elizabeth’s in Holmen, then I have to go to the DMV to try to register my vehicle in WI and get a WI license again for the first time in quite a while, I am excited about this, but not sure how well it will work since I haven’t yet received mail in WI so can’t prove residency… we’ll have to see.

After the DMV I am going to head down to Mundelein. I will get in and hopefully a few of the guys who are already there will be able to help me carry stuff to my room. I will then have to begin the crazy task of unpacking. I am guessing that as I go through the unpacking I will find stuff that I didn’t donate or store that would be good for that. My mom and her husband are coming down in early October for family day at Mundelein so I will be able to give this stuff to them at that time.
Please keep me and all those in seminary in your prayers.

Peace,
Adam

Getting Ready 3

After I had let everyone know that I was going to seminary things started to move really fast.  Everyone wanted a visit or to spend time with me before I leave.  I understand what people are thinking, but it isn't like I will be locked away for a number of years.  Although I will of course be restricted by finance and needing to get done all that needs to get done I will be free to visit people and see them even after I leave.  I guess the one angle that I understand more on this is the people in the Iowa-Illinois area that I live in... I probably won't be coming back here a lot during my time at seminary.

 

Although I had started packing before being accepted to seminary it was now becoming even more serious.  It was also very difficult...  my last two moves were paid for by the government and professional movers had packed and moved all of my stuff... so I hadn't thinned out any of my property during that time.  I also had a lot of stuff in my storage unit in Stevens Point, WI that had been just sitting there since I had sold my house two and a half or three years ago.  So I had the long process of sorting through stuff.  I had to decide what needed to go with me to seminary, there is limited room, so this had to be limited as well.  I had to decided what stuff I wanted to keep and could store at my mom's house.  Of the remaining stuff I had to figure out what could be sold, what could be donated, and what could be thrown away.  This has been a long process.

 

I pretty much felt like I was preparing for any other move and career change... my faith life was already strong and I kept that up, but aside from that the preparations were pretty normal.  At work I kept at all the stuff that I could and started to prepare turn over documents to give to my replacement.  I hoped to be able to give these while training whomever it is before I left... However, there was too much interest from those internal to my project office so it has to go through a more formal hiring process with computer screening and interviews and such.  This has caused me to rework the turnover documents ton an even more basic way to help the new person along.

 

Life started to change noticeably for me about mid to late July.  The Diocese has a retreat for seminarians.  A retreat is just a term for getting away from the day to day stuff to hopefully grow spiritually.  I was truly somewhat disappointed by this retreat.  It felt more like a seminarian conference than a retreat.  A lot of very useful information was distributed, and there was great socialization with the other seminarians, but the talks and prayer time seemed almost just fit in, rather than the point of the retreat.  I guess that maybe the other seminarians got more out of it and may have a different take, but this was my take on it.  I had felt kind of odd going to this anyways.  There were others in the same situation, but I felt odd because I hadn't yet started seminary.  As I saw it, my primary focus should have been working to pay off my truck and preparing to go to seminary, probably not taking off of work for this, but I guess that is why I don't make those decisions, the Vocation Director does.

 

The weekend after the seminarian retreat was even more special.  Newman Parish in Stevens Point, my home parish, was going to offer a blessing for me going away.  On the way up there, I decided to see if I could take a couple of things to Mundelein Seminary to make it easier to fit my stuff when I finally moved.  I got into my room and moved a bit of stuff in.  I then drove on the Stevens Point where I finished emptying out my storage unit and took the lock off of the door.

 

The blessing used at the Masses on Saturday and Sunday was the same blessing that Fr. Tom's parish used when he left for seminary 20 years before... I thought this was pretty cool.  My mom and stepfather and brother and sister-in-law came over for the Masses that weekend.  After the Saturday evening we went to a wonderful couple from the parish's home for a little reception.  Several good friends and some family were there, it was a very nice get together and celebration.  On Sunday my aunt and uncle came to the Mass.  They tried to surprise me, but I had grown suspicious since my mom had said that she wasn't going to go to their place despite being so close.  It was great to see them, it had been a while.  After that we went out to lunch and had a great time before all driving on our separate ways.

 

I had the Monday off, so on Sunday after lunch I headed over to my mom's house to spend the night.  Monday I got together with one of my great friends who is also doing something special in her life, so it will be difficult to see her for a while.  I then headed down for a stretch of work... my last long stretch.

 

This is probably too long, I'll write more later.

 

Peace,
Adam

Getting Ready 2

Although by this point my work knew that I was leaving to go to seminary I wasn’t quite ready for it to get around for everyone to know… at least not until I had told a few more people in person. During the application process I had told most of the family that I am close to and I had told most of my friends that I am close to in Wisconsin and that area. The groups of people that I really wanted to tell in person before it got out to everyone was my friends and coworkers from my time in Kentucky and Tennessee.

I had a four or five day weekend due to working weekends on either end of a stretch and normal days off, so I decided that I would head to Kentucky first. I was going to leave after work one day, but I got everything wrapped up that I needed before the time off and asked my boss if he would mind signing a leave slip. He signed it and I hit the road. I drove and got to Kentucky in time to go to the Wednesday night Mass at St. Mildred’s, the parish I had attended while living there. I had always enjoyed going to the Wednesday night Mass there, it was a great way to break up the monotony of the week and bring my life back to being centered on Christ through the Holy sacrifice of the Mass.

At the end of Mass Fr. Mike made some mention to everyone that I was going to seminary… he had heard it from the two people that I had let know there, one is a seminarian for the Lexington Diocese whom I had been friends with while there, the other is the pastoral associate whom I had asked to write a letter of recommendation for my application process. After Mass I had a brief talk about the priesthood with Fr. Mike, it was very nice and as always good to hear another priest’s perspective on the life.

I drove to a nearby town where my friend the seminarian was working at a parish for his summer assignment. Him, and the priest at that parish had offered me a room in the rectory there for the two nights I’d be in the area. It was nice to meet this priest and to catch up with my friend. The next morning, after Mass at that parish I drove back to Somerset to see and talk to my former coworkers. I had let them know that I was coming, so many were able to make time to go out to lunch while I was there. It was great to catch up with them and give them the news that I was going to seminary. As is pretty common when I tell people, they didn’t necessarily understand the “why” of it, but were very supportive and happy because they do see it as a good thing when someone dedicates their life to God.

That evening I went to have supper with another former coworker and his wife. It was great. This couple is Baptist and him and I had talked about faith extensively when we were working together. There were the deep conversations on theology, as well as the friendly joking of each one putting forth that their denomination is better. We fell right back into our joking, and it was great. As I was leaving their place he promised to pray for me, I said “thanks, even though those Baptist prayers only count for about half credit.” We both had a good laugh over that one.

The next morning I headed down to Tennessee to see my friends there. Only a couple of them knew that I was coming. There was a get together scheduled for my good group of friends, so I thought that I’d just stop in and surprise them. It was great to see them and spend time with them. I was also happy to see their support when I told them that I was going to seminary. It was a great night of just hanging out with friends and celebrating my acceptance to seminary.

After that quick trip I was ready for it to be “public” for everyone who cared to know that I was going to seminary to study to be a priest. In this modern time the best way that I knew to get it out there for everyone to know was to post a note about it on my Facebook account. I got an amazing amount of support from all of my friends on that. As with others that I had told in the past, most of them that said something in private made a comment along the lines of, “I’m surprised, but really when I think about it I’m not.”

It was in private messages on the Facebook that I had people asking me to blog about my experience of the seminary, so that is what this is. I decided that if I was going to do that, it should be the whole experience, the discernment process, the application process, and the preparation for seminary before I even get there. I am hoping to post at least once a week while I’m at Mundelein, but my first priority will be the formation and academics there, so I apologize if it is a bit longer on occasion.

Peace,
Adam

Getting Ready 1

So my review boards at Mundelein Seminary had been on Friday June 4th, 2010. Starting on Monday the 7th I waited anxiously for a phone call from the rector at Mundelein Seminary to let me know if I had been accepted or not. Although I was told by numerous people that these boards indeed are mostly formality, I wasn’t counting my chickens before they hatched. As I think I said in my last post the seminary normally lets a guy know through mail if he has been accepted. I had asked to have them call me so that I could give my work as much notice as possible if I was indeed going to leave.

I wanted to give my work as much notice as possible, in the hope that I could help train in my replacement. My job isn’t particularly difficult, but there are a lot of items to juggle and keep straight of what is going on. There are also a lot of issues that seem similar, but need to be handled differently. The last reason that I felt it would be beneficial for me to help train my replacement is the idea that on the Mississippi River there are only two people doing this job specifically north of St. Louis, and the two shops aren’t even run the same… so it would be nice to get a little time turning stuff over to my replacement.

On Monday the 7th I was in and out of my work truck alone all day and waiting on a call from Mundelein… it never came. On Tuesday the 8th I was still in and out of my truck, but my boss was going to join me mid-day. I hoped that the call could come in before he got in the vehicle so that I could answer it and actually talk to Fr. Lyle. It didn’t come, and then I met up with my boss and we started driving to the next site we were going to look at. About 15 minutes after he got in my phone started ringing. I looked at it, and it was the area code that I knew to be the seminary. I couldn’t answer that call since my boss was sitting right next to me, that wouldn’t be a very professional way for him to find out I was leaving, so I had to just let the phone ring.

At our next stop I got out of the truck for a bit, and we got started on our inspection. I made some excuse to go back to the truck and I listened to the message and got the wonderful news that I had been accepted. I was almost walking on air the rest of the day, but I had to keep it under control so that I could tell my boss in a more professional manner.

We headed back to the office on Wednesday the 9th. I had decided that I shouldn’t tell my boss in the vehicle while driving, that didn’t seem very professional to me. We were set to get back to the office in time that I could ask him to take some time to meet with me yet on Wednesday afternoon… but as we drove on my boss received a call that some personal issues had come up at home, so he had to leave right away when we got back… another stumbling block in the process of telling him that I was leaving.

A week or two before this, I had typed up a letter of resignation, and saved it on my computer at work. I took a little bit of the free time to make sure that the letter said what I wanted and that I had updated the dates in it.

On Thursday morning, I requested that my boss take a few minutes to meet with me in the library at our office. When he finally got in I said to him, “I want to thank you for the opportunity to work here, and to say that I do truly enjoy coming to work, the people I work with, and the work that I do. However, I wanted to let you know that I will be quitting in August to begin seminary studies at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary for eventual Ordination to the Priesthood.” He was obviously surprised as I started the statement, and surprised the whole way through it. I then handed him the letter and asked him to read it, and if he had any questions or issues with it.

In the letter I had written that I did have a vacation approved from August 11-17 to go to Montana to see my dad and his wife. Although I was only planning on quitting with three working days after that on the 20th I stated that I hoped I could keep my vacation and he assured me that I could. I also stated that I hoped he knew that I would intend to keep working at the high level he had come to expect and he made a statement along the lines of, “I wouldn’t have ever doubted that.”

The conversation pretty much wrapped up with him asking how I wanted to let the others know. I guess we decided that we’d leave it to him to tell the other supervisors, but that I could tell everyone else.

Most of my really close friends had known that I was applying for seminary, as had most of my family. But there was a few people that I wanted to tell in person still…

I’ll write more about this later

Peace,
Adam