January 2012

Hello again everyone,

Obviously I’ve been very busy with stuff here that has caused long break in posts.  This one will probably be short for the same reason, but I guess I never really know about that until I get working on it.

Since I wrote last there has been a lot that has gone on.  My Bishop came down to the seminary.  He took the La Crosse guys out to eat on the Tuesday but was really here to celebrate the Mass to install the Second year theology guys as Acolytes.  I wrote a bit about the Acolyte Mass last year, but to remind you it is one of what used to be called “minor orders” on the way to the priesthood.  The idea of minor orders has gone away but these are now offices to be installed in that allow for different functions in the Mass.  Most people would see an Acolyte as simply an altar server (altar boy) but there is a bit more that they can do and some theological ideas with it that I don’t fully understand so I won’t try to go into them.

Following late the night of the Acolyte Mass (actually about 1:00 the next morning) I had to coordinate picking up the group from my parish that had been on a mission trip to Guatemala.   Fr. Tom rode back to the seminary with us and then spent a day here before catching the train to take a quick vacation.

The following weekend my mom and her husband came down.  We spent a good deal of Saturday at the Shedd aquarium and then went out to dinner with my cousin that lives near here and an old neighbor who has moved to this area.  On Sunday we went to Mass and then they left.

Since then I have been trying to get a lot of homework done and working on my application the St. Paul Seminary.  This is an interesting process even though I went through it applying for here.  All of the forms are different and even the autobiography that I have to write is formatted differently so I can’t just use my old one while adding to it.

Those of us going on the CRS GlobalFellows trip to Burkina Faso have had one of the three conference calls that we are going to have with CRS before leaving, to help us prepare.  I will try to write in my next post a bit about what I am hoping to gain out of this experience.

I have to get back to working on other stuff.  I hope you enjoyed this brief post.

Peace,

Adam