Hello again,
So the school year is off and rolling. I haven’t written since just before the silent retreat so let me fill you in on that. As I have said before, silent retreats are very difficult for me. I can control myself from talking just fine, and I can focus on my prayer, so that is good. The thing is though, is that with me being so very extroverted I draw my energy from interacting with people. When I am on the silent retreat I don’t have that source of energy. Most priests (and thus most seminarians) are quite introverted, so it works well for them to be on silent retreat.
This retreat was what is called a “preached retreat” meaning that there is someone who preaches or gives sessions during it that give you stuff to pray about. The presenter this year was Father Andrew Ricci, a priest from the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin. A few years ago he was their vocation director, and is now the rector of the Cathedral in Superior. I talked with him a bit before the retreat started, he is a good man and I enjoyed his sessions. He started out guiding us a bit in getting to know ourselves. From that he went into growing what are called the theological virtues, these being faith, hope, and love. From that he talked about in general being better men and better future priests. It was pretty good, although as I said draining on me.
After that ended we had our cam day of reflection for the cam that I am on. Remember that a cam in Latin for dorm or hallway, so we use the word cam for the hallway that we live on. My cam chose to have it before the classes start so that we aren’t distracted by that. It was a pretty simple event. We went to a retreat house nearby and had prayer and a sharing of each of our vocation stories and then Mass. We attempted to go mini-golfing in the afternoon, but it was raining so we ended up just playing board games and such together before going out for a nice meal.
Classes started this past Monday. I have five classes plus my field education this quarter. For my field education I am going to be going to a site that one night a week is a homeless shelter. I haven’t started there yet, so I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be doing, we’ll have to wait and see. My classes are Greek I, Medieval Philosophy II, Natural Theology, Philosophy of Nature, and Documents of Vatican II.
Greek I is obviously just like you would think. We are learning the basics of Biblical Greek so that we have a better grasp on the nuances of what is being said in the new testament, most of which was written in Greek. It seems like the professor that teaches that, a lay woman, is going to be pretty good. She seems to have a very systematic approach to it and also the ability to make it fun. I am looking forward to this much more than I was looking forward to the Latin classes I took last year.
Medieval Philosophy II seems like it will be pretty heavily based on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. I like that a lot, his writing is very readable and important in Church history. Although obviously some of the issues he deals with are a bit dated (he lived in the 1200s) it has a great impact on our understanding yet today.
Natural Theology seems to be quite a bit about what revelation has told us about seeing God. It seems like it will be very applicable to our future priesthood. I don’t know quite what all we will encounter in it.
Philosophy of Nature seems like it will cover much of the same ground as Natural Theology, but from a bit of a different angle, a bit more the reasoned approach than the revelation. Again, I’m not quite sure where all this will take us, so I’ll fill you in more as the course goes on.
Documents of Vatican II is our study of what was written during that great ecumenical council. It is taught by a retired Archbishop, he wasn’t involved in the council, but was a priest before it started so lived through much of the change that it brought about. I am looking forward to this class quite a bit. I have read all of these documents in the past, but it will be fun to be taught how they can be interpreted and such. Many people talk about the council without a real good basis in it. They say that the council did all these radical things, but many of them were people taking stuff further than what was intended.
As usual here on the quarter system we hit the ground running right away. With only 10 weeks of classes we don’t have the luxury of working into something slowly like we did in college on the semester system. I have already done about 700 pages of reading and hope to get 3-4 papers done this weekend. Only 1 is due next week, but if I get the others done now that is that much easier of a time later on, since we never know what will come up.
Peace,
Adam
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