Visiting St. Paul Seminary

Hello again everyone,

I have received a few nice comments on the paper that I posted last week.  I am glad that you enjoyed it.  I will try to post more papers in the future if I think they are the type that you would enjoy. 

To catch up a little bit from before that post… The weekend before I attended the wedding of two good friends.  They had asked me to serve and then say the grace at the reception meal.  I am always very honored to be asked to join in peoples special day.  The wedding was a lot of fun, almost a reunion for a large number of my friends from college.  In fact, every Eucharistic Minister (except the priest) at the wedding was a person that I had worked with when I worked at the Newman University Parish.  I had a lot of fun. 

For the wedding I had called the priest at the parish where it was being held to see if I might be able to stay with him to save some money.  He said that normally he would, but his family was in town that weekend.  He did call offer to and did call a neighboring parish and got me permission to stay with them.  This was great, because hotel rooms in that area were near $90 a night and would have made my budget really tough.

Last week at school was a few mid-terms and other than that normal until having Friday off.  We get one long weekend during the fall quarter, I’m not entirely sure why, but it is a nice break.  On Thursday afternoon another seminarian from La Crosse in my class and I drove up to Stevens Point.  We had to drive separately, since he had to be back early but we both arrived at near the same time.  We went out to supper with Father Tom and then spent some time together before all of us went to bed early.  We had to leave at 6:00 in the morning to head to St. Paul, MN to visit St. Paul seminary there. 

I had set up this visit a while back with a couple of seminarians that La Crosse has there already.  We didn’t feel the need to drive way early to get there for the first class, but made it easily in time for the second morning class.  Mark (the other seminarian) and I attended class with Billy, a seminarian from La Crosse in first year Theology.  After that class we looked around the seminary a bit and then had Mass.  I kind of like that mass is at 11:35 there, rather than first thing in the morning.  I like the idea of centering my day around Mass, but there is also something to be said for starting the day with Mass like they do here at Mundelein.  I guess it is just personal preference for different people.

The campus there is smaller than here at Mundelein, but very nice.  The rooms that the seminarians live in are comparable size.  At St. Paul Seminary each seminarian shares a bathroom with one person, opposed to here where we have our own.  It probably wouldn’t be too big of a deal to share with one.  The fitness areas at St. Paul are a bit smaller, but I may be able to find other areas to work out on the St. Thomas University campus, of which the seminary is part.  I like the idea of being part of a larger university.  I am not sure how much interaction the normal seminarian would have with others on the campus, but it would surely open up some more opportunities for activities.

The classes that Mark and I attended were both very interesting, and very well presented.  It seems that there is a smaller percentage of the faculty that is priests at St. Paul, but the professors were very engaging and seem to have good relationships with the students.  I wish that I’d gotten a chance to talk to the rector of the seminary or to say more than hello to the vice rector, but in the little encounter that I had with each of them they seemed nice.

People have asked me if this means that I am for sure transferring next year.  I can’t say that.  I am going to pray about it a little more, but I think that I will tell the vocation director that I am interested in transferring and ask him to ask the Bishop if I should start the application.

Well, that has brought this up-to-date.  We are now in the four week sprint to the end of the quarter, I don’t think that I have any more travels in that time.  We’ll see what I can do to make it interesting.

Peace,

Adam