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Day 7 - A week in the life of a seminarian
Good Evening
everyone! Once again, I find myself at the end of the day, and I am just
starting my post about what happened... I hope that you have enjoyed this
week of recap. posts - they were fun to write (though they took a while), and
you may notice that they have made it to the top of the page - "A week at Bruté".
Anyway,
today began with schola practice at 8:30. Both guys in charge of the
schola decided on this Sunday because it gave us a few weeks to practice up
(after parents and pastors day). We ended up skipping a few practices
though, so we weren't quite ready, and had to practice this morning. I
was very glad that we practiced, but I had just recently rolled out of bed, so
it was more difficult than normal to hit those high notes (especially in Ave
Verum). I am currently working on the video, so look forward to a post
with that.
Otherwise,
Mass was somewhere in between really awesome and just average. I mean,
obviously the Mass is always awesome, but sometimes my participation or
perception of it is less wonderful. This morning, while it was great to
be singing and all, it means that half of Mass (more or less) I was thinking
about the next song, getting ready for it, and turning my camera on. Not
necessarily bad, but it still kept me from concentrating fully. On the
other hand, Fr. Joe's homily today was spectacular. As a certain
seminarian noted, "that homily was boss!". The message was
simple: who or what is lying at your gate? Like the rich man to Lazarus,
what or who are we ignoring? Is there someplace that we need to grow, that
we need to work on, that we are avoiding? Is there someone who we haven't
taken the time to know, that we haven't been charitable towards, that we
haven't shown mercy? His homily was quite a bit longer and better than
this synopsis, but you know, I can't remember everything...
After Mass I
had a donut and part of a massive chocolate chip cookie for breakfast (thank
you Fr. Joe!). Perhaps not the most healthy breakfast
(OK, definitely not), but there were nuts on the donut, so it
couldn't have been that bad.
I didn't
work on much for the early afternoon. It was one of those rainy, dreary
days where you really don't want to do anything... At 2 PM we had
Eucharistic Adoration and a living Rosary over at Marian for religious freedom.
It was supposed to be a procession with the monstrance from the chapel to
the football field, but since it was raining they decided to do it all at the
football field (I was puzzled too). Anyway, I helped bring the requisite
stuff over to Marian (monstrance, incense, kneelers, bells, etc.), and then I
volunteered to be thurifur for the afternoon. It began with Exposition on
the football field. They had a tent set up with an altar under it, so the
Eucharist stayed dry, but myself, the other servers, father, and everybody
else, was outside the tent - in the rain. After a brief prayer for
religious freedom (which was just long enough so that my arm was getting ready
to fall off from the thurible), another priest read a Gospel passage - in this
case the discourse on the bread of life from St. John's Gospel. He gave a
wonderful homily connecting how the truth will set us free, how the truth is
found in Jesus Christ (especially in the Eucharist), and how we are led to
Jesus through His mother Mary. He was so enthusiastic about the faith it
was phenomenal! I hope that someday I can have the
same fervor and devotion than he did.
After his
homily, this other priest led the living rosary. I thought it would be
kind of cheesy, but actually having a different kid lead each prayer worked out
pretty well. They read a scripture verse in between each Hail Mary, but
most of the time I was still kind of distracted just by how different
everything was. It was misting, I was tired, and every so often whichever
kid was next would say the Hail Mary in Spanish, or Polish, or German, or
Latin, or another language (at which point, instead of thinking how great it
was to be part of the universal church, my mind would jump to trying to figure
out what the language was...) You get the picture, I am a weak human
being, and sometimes my mind just doesn't want to concentrate. Something
that I thought was really awesome during the rosary, was how the priest, who
was walking the microphone around to all the kids leading the mysteries, would
gently turn them around to face the altar and Blessed Sacrament. They
weren't being disrespectful per-se,
but the way that the rosary stretched around the football field, they had
"lined" up all facing inward, and the exposed Blessed Sacrament was
outside this circle (off to one side). It really reminded me where I
needed to keep my attention, and helped me refocus After the
Rosary, we chanted the Divine Mercy chaplet, had Benediction, processed out,
and the rally was complete. In total, it took about 2 hours, but it went
by pretty quickly. I am just glad that it didn't ever start raining hard,
and that it was warm enough to be tolerable. (I guess that Father was
preaching on how to be martyrs, so perhaps I shouldn't complain about the weather...)
I ate some
leftover pasta, salad, and pumpkin pie for dinner this evening - it was
wonderful! Then I worked on the video from the hymns today, took a short
nap and went to the community Holy Hour. It's really funny, a few years
back I would have bitterly lambasted doing two holy hours in one day
(especially one in the rain), but seminary has given me a much greater
appreciation for these intimate moments with Jesus. Both were wonderful
in their own way, during both I struggled to concentrate, but Jesus was truly
present to me both times, and just that is amazing.
After the
2nd Holy Hour, 4 of us went over to Marian and played
some racquetball This sport is an absolute blast, if you
haven't played it. Fast, intense, crazy, loud, etc. I am not that
good at it (I run a lot,
but usually that is because I am trying to chase down the ball after not being
in the right spot to begin with.) I'm getting better, and I can hit the
ball hard, but I still haven't figured out how to track the ball and be in the
right spot to hit it back. We wanted to avoid dwindling away, so after
finishing a few games of racquetball, we went to dairy queen and got some
blizzards. I probably ate like 1000 calories of an extreme-chocolate
blizzard, and burnt off about 100 playing, but it was a fun evening either way!
And that
ends my last "day in the life" post (for the near future). I
hope that these gave you insight into the day-to-day workings of seminary life.
I know that I didn't go into detail very often - I was trying to keep
the length reasonable - but hopefully you enjoyed reading (or at
least skimming) them, and they make one of you smile. Keep the prayers
coming (please!) - I'll do the same! Good night, God bless!
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