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A Day in the Life at the NAC
About a year ago I wrote an entire week of posts, basically just describing what the day-to-day life of seminary involved at Brute. Well, now I'm in Rome, at the NAC, and I figured that you guys might be interested in the day-to-day happenings here. I've only been able to write a few posts so far unfortunately, and I found that I really wasn't speaking to much on what the usual life here is like - I either talked just about one little moment or like an entire month, neither of which really tells you what the typical day is all about. So, without further ado, here's today:
So, this morning the alarm went off at 5 AM. Unfortunately, I stayed up till midnight last night working on a paper that's due in my theology seminar tomorrow and skyping the family (a seven hour time differential wreaks havoc with communication), so I woke up pretty tired. Nevertheless, after quickly shutting off the alarm, I creaked down from my bed (I have a loft, which is great, but it does shake a bit when I move around on it), and proceeded to try and wake myself up by doing this "seven minute workout". It's an app that I found for my phone that times out thirty second intervals during which you do push-ups, jumping-jacks, crunches, lunges, or whatever. So, seven minutes later I was breathing a bit harder, just about to start sweating, and very much awake. I turned on a podcast - this one happened to be Fr. Fessio on Catholic Answers Live - and proceeded to get dressed (in clerics! - which is still pretty cool even after wearing them every day for a month or two), brush my teeth, shave, and do those other things that are necessary each morning. 10 minutes later the podcast was paused, I grabbed my breviary, a prayerbook, a notebook, and Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper, and rattled down the 6 flights of stairs to the chapel. It was now about 5:30 and I spent the next 45 minutes doing the Office of Readings, meditating a bit on the readings for the day, reading a chapter on the Mass out of Scott Hahn's book, and just spending some quiet minutes preparing myself for Mass and offering up the entire day to God. I was certainly tired, but not to such an extent that prayer was impossible, and there was something beautiful about just telling God that - despite everything - I was going to try and give Him my best today. Nothing spectacular on my end, but a good start to the week nonetheless.
Morning Prayer began (in common) at 6:15, followed by Mass, and - I have to say - I wasn't struggling quite as much as I thought I would based on the amount of sleep I got last night. I think the time change (which happened last weekend here in Rome) helped because it is now light when we come out of the chapel after Mass (which was a happy surprise this morning, but probably something that unconsciously was helping me stay awake). One of the deacons (I hate to say it, but I didn't remember his name and I forgot to look it up) gave a very good homily on how Jesus intended to heal the woman on the Sabbath because He is the Logos, the Word made flesh, through Whom the world was first created, and His salvific mission is to bring God's creation back into right relationship with God. Brokenness, sinfulness, hatefulness, sickness - and every other kind of evil - weren't there when God created the world - He created it good. But through man's choosing themselves over God - in sin - evil enters the world, and the world becomes twisted, broken away from God. Jesus enters to bring the world back to God (and radically bring God into the world). He heals, not to disregard the Sabbath, but to bring mankind to true rest, apart from sin, in union with God. And, of course, He invites us to that same rest, that same union, every day in Holy Communion!
After a couple minutes of prayer following Mass I walked down the hall to the refectory for breakfast, which, this morning anyway, involved leftover cornetti (sweet croissants) from yesterday, hard boiled eggs, and some yogurt/cereal/plum concoction. 15 minutes later - after chatting with some guys while eating - I charged up the 6 flights of stairs to my room, spent about 10 minutes getting ready for class, and then grabbed a jacket (it was in the 50s this morning), headed back down the stairs, and out onto the streets of Rome. Originally, I began my walk listening to another podcast (gotta spend every moment wisely!) and studying the Hebrew alphabet (not terribly easy to do simultaneously), but after about 10 minutes I ran into some other guys on the way to class and so we spent the rest of the 30 minute walk talking about Rome, classes, plans for the rest of the day, and other such things. It's funny how quickly I got used to walking over to class - it's crazy to think that I get to walk past the Piazza Navona, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and the Pantheon every day on my way to class! Fun times!
I arrived at the Greg. (Pontifical Gregorian University - if you want the full name) at about 8:20, with just enough time to head up the 2 flights of stairs, get settled into my desk, and log into the wifi before class began. Classes are all in Italian - which, today as always, was a struggle. We had two hours of Pentateuch and then 2 hours of Church History, both divided into two 45 minutes periods with a 15 minute break in between. I am always very glad when the raucous bell goes off (it really does make a racket) and we get the break because it offers me a chance to clear my mind, stretch a bit, pray a bit (there is a very nice chapel up on the 3rd floor), or otherwise relax a bit - a very necessary thing to do because after 45 minutes of struggling mightily to translate what the professor is saying and type it out, my brain is usually pretty much fried and very ready to get distracted. Classes have been getting better over the last 3 weeks, I guess I'm picking up new words and getting faster at translating, but I am very glad that guys better at Italian than myself are taking notes (that we then share) because otherwise, I'd be left with only about half of what we talk about in class. Speaking of which, today we finished talking about the flood and began studying the tower of babel - and how God constantly tries to return man to His loving plan for creation, and away from mankind's tendencies to try to make himself God, and take the easy road to happiness, power, glory, or whatever. In Church History we talked about the persecution of the early church - the writings of the Church Fathers at that time (St. Justin, St. Ignatius, St. John Chrysostom, etc.), other sources we have of that period (The Acts of the Martyrs, The Letter to Diagnetus, etc.), and the reasons behind the persecution and the phases it went through under different emperors. That class, in particular, I'm going to have to rely on the notes because while there were PowerPoint slides (which are much easier to translate than simply an oral lecture), they each had about a thousand words on them - so it seemed - so I usually got about half-way through the slide before he flipped onto the next one... Anyway, piano, piano (slowly, slowly). In between the first and second period I took like a micro-nap (first time I've ever done that), which actually helped a ton with staying alert for the rest of the time, for the second break I spent some time in the chapel (again, dedicating the work of the day to Our Lord), and I think I just talked with some of the other students for the last break (there are probably about 80-100 students in the class, 20-something of which are from the NAC, and all the others are from other universities or orders around Rome, most of which don't have English as their first language, or Italian, so that can be a struggle at times as well - ah well, we keep trying!)
The walk back was beautiful! It was just warm enough to not need the jacket, and it was just cool enough to not start sweating on the hike up the hill to the NAC (we're located on the Janiculum hill, one of the 7 hills of Rome). As always, the streets are busy in places (mainly with people, we actually only have to worry about cars at a couple of intersections), and there are many people stuck in poverty who we always try to give at least a "bongiorno" and a smile. I'm still getting used to both groups, and trying to constantly remember to be not only polite, but kind and loving - even if only for the moment. It's one of those things, wearing the collar constantly reminds me of my call - especially as a seminarian - to live, and love, like Christ, which is a constant challenge, especially when you'd really rather just hurry back and get some lunch than stop and give somebody directions, or struggle to communicate your compassion to that homeless lady who always calls out to you as you walk past. It's a real challenge, one that I didn't expect, and one that I need to constantly take to prayer!
Today, for the first time, I served at pranzo. That basically means that instead of saying the Rosary like I usually do upon getting back (there's about 20 minutes between us getting back and pranzo), I instead headed into the refectory and started to set out jugs of water and bowls of salad on all the tables (36 tables, 2 jugs each, and the water-machines are pretty slow - it takes a while even with a couple guys working on it). Then, after about 10 minutes we started carrying back salad plates and carrying out trays of pasta (today was noodles with a creamy red sauce and little flakes of ham - really good but I have no idea what it was called). 20 minutes later, the process repeated, this time carrying back the plate used for pasta and bringing out the secundo (today it was roast beef of some sort with tomato sauce along with peas). And, a couple minutes after that it was time to carry out bowls of fruit (the dessert for today) and continue to clear plates and stuff. I would have thought there would be down time, but there wasn't. I was constantly on the move, going to fetch more food, or cheese, or water, or trying not to drop a stack of plates and silverware (always a balancing act). Either way, at 2, everybody finishes up, the waiters sit down at their own table, and then we get to eat our own pranzo (same as everybody else's, but we just wolfed it down, and headed off to get things done that afternoon). It was a fun first time - not hard, not easy, not bad - yeah, actually kind of fun!
Today, for the first time, I served at pranzo. That basically means that instead of saying the Rosary like I usually do upon getting back (there's about 20 minutes between us getting back and pranzo), I instead headed into the refectory and started to set out jugs of water and bowls of salad on all the tables (36 tables, 2 jugs each, and the water-machines are pretty slow - it takes a while even with a couple guys working on it). Then, after about 10 minutes we started carrying back salad plates and carrying out trays of pasta (today was noodles with a creamy red sauce and little flakes of ham - really good but I have no idea what it was called). 20 minutes later, the process repeated, this time carrying back the plate used for pasta and bringing out the secundo (today it was roast beef of some sort with tomato sauce along with peas). And, a couple minutes after that it was time to carry out bowls of fruit (the dessert for today) and continue to clear plates and stuff. I would have thought there would be down time, but there wasn't. I was constantly on the move, going to fetch more food, or cheese, or water, or trying not to drop a stack of plates and silverware (always a balancing act). Either way, at 2, everybody finishes up, the waiters sit down at their own table, and then we get to eat our own pranzo (same as everybody else's, but we just wolfed it down, and headed off to get things done that afternoon). It was a fun first time - not hard, not easy, not bad - yeah, actually kind of fun!
I spent the next two hours in the library, working on the process of note-redacting. Basically, because I'm not one of the chosen note-takers, I have the other job of taking the notes from three different guys for one of our classes (Introduction to Scripture) and combing them all. The goal is to then have a pretty complete set of notes for the class which everybody can then use to fill in the gaps in their own knowledge. I thought the process would be easy - boy, was I wrong. It was such a challenge to look at the 3 or 4 different sets of notes, figure out when they are talking about the same thing, and then combine them in such a way that you lose nothing of any of their meanings but don't repeat anything at the same time. It was way more of a challenge than I anticipated, and it took all two hours I had open in the afternoon (which I was hoping it wouldn't). Anyway, such is the way it worked out - I'll have to find more time in the future to do it - but for today, I didn't have any more time! After struggling to get the computer to save (the network wasn't working quite right) I raced out of the library, down to the St. John Paul II class-room (we don't usually have classes here at the NAC, but they do have some rooms for the occasional lecture or something I suppose), where I attended a meeting of the Legion of Mary.
I was in the active Legion back at home, before seminary, so the meeting itself wasn't new, but I wanted to check it out as a possible apostolate for next semester because their work sounds really, really cool. Basically, next semester I'll have an apostolate - which could be helping at a nursing home, working at a soup kitchen, visiting a prison, leading tours of St. Peter's, or - another option - doing evangelization in St. Peter's square for the Legion of Mary. It sounds really fun actually - standing out there, meeting and greeting tourists who come there and answering any questions they have about the basilica, the Church, Christ, His saints, or any of the other innumerable questions that come up when you visit Rome. It's an easy opportunity to lead people to grow deeper in their faith (or understand the importance of faith), and I will probably put it as one of the apostolates that I'd like to do. We'll see, I'll be actually trying out the work in the square on Wednesday, so I guess I'll have to wait till then to be sure.
Anyway - running from one thing to the next - I charged back up the 7 flights of stairs to my room (I was in the basement), grabbed my Breviary, the Bible, Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, and the Magnificat and headed back down to the chapel for an hour of Eucharistic Adoration. I got there just in time for it to start at 5:45 and spent the first bit of time just quietly adoring Our Lord, and then meditating on the readings for tomorrow and the psalms for mid-day prayer. It was tough to strike the balance between quieting my mind and not falling asleep, but I did fairly well today! I read the chapter on the Kingdom of God today from Ratzinger's book, which was absolutely beautiful. He explained how the "Kingdom of God" isn't just a individual relationship with Christ, and it isn't just the Church, and it isn't some sort of earthly kingdom which holds Christian principles or something - rather, the "Kingdom of God" is Christ Himself. Yes, present within us, and His Church, and throughout the world - but fundamentally, when Christ announces that the Kingdom of God is at hand, He is announcing Himself, living, incarnate, actual, moving, loving and desiring that we open ourselves up to Him and allow Him to reign over our hearts, our lives, our families, our decisions, our countries, and our world! Something that Pope Benedict didn't mention, but I was graced with the thought a couple minutes later during Benediction, was that in the Our Father, Jesus tells us to pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" - obviously indicating that we should strive to accept, to unite ourselves with, to do, God's will (that He may reign over our hearts - where He truly wants His Kingdom to come), but the very next line - drum-roll please - is "give us this day our daily bread". Again, boom, it struck me of the incredibleness and importance of the Eucharist. It is in this "daily bread", this supernatural bread, that Jesus gives us Himself. Our "Amen" to receiving "the Body of Christ" is not only our statement of belief that this is "Christ the Son of the Living God", but also that we are willing to unite ourselves with Him so closely that He can enter our very hearts and souls. With our reception of Holy Communion, we let Christ reign over us, we surrender to His will for our lives, we let His kingdom come! Yeah, that was a pretty awesome moment!
After doing Evening Prayer as a community, and saying another quick little prayer of dedication and thanksgiving, everybody headed off to the refectory for dinner. I chose (it is buffet style) to have a little bit of pasta (shells with a cream sauce), some slices of turkey in gravy, a salad, and a banana with peanut butter (we rarely have bananas here, at least right now, so it was a treat!). Again, nothing outrageously amazing, but it was all good, and hot, and there were good conversations to be had, and there was a banana!
Alright, the day's almost complete! After dinner I ran back up to my room, spent a bit of time on writing this post, worked for a couple minutes on Hebrew (I need to spend so much more time on that), and then went down and caught the last 30 minutes of a praise-and-worship hour that happens here once a week. I had rarely done that sort of things before this semester, but there is something beautiful about that way of singing and praising God - I guess I didn't expect to like it, but in the right context it is beautiful, powerful, and prayerful! Then, continuing to run to the next thing, I watched one episode of Agents of Shield, a TV series based off of the Marvel comic strips and films. It's actually quite a good show - without too much language or other kinds of vices, but showing a decent amount of action and some seriously difficult moral decisions (which they don't always make the right choice). You know, a couple super-hero's, good guys fighting bad guys, it's fun!
And now, I'm finally finishing this post, getting ready to post it and hit the sack (currently, I'll be getting 5 hours and 56 minutes of sleep tonight... - not enough, but it'll have to do). It was a long day, I literally didn't have more than a couple minutes anywhere when I wasn't doing something or onto the next thing, but - as always - God provides and "tomorrow will worry about itself". I recall hearing of a priest saying that he wanted to be tired each evening - spending himself for God and his flock - and I was inspired by it! Don't we all want to really give our lives for something that's worth it! But, I was kind of assuming that he woke up every morning having gotten 8 hours of sleep, with the sun shining, and a game-plan of what amazing things he was going to do that day. Apparently, yeah, God is asking me to give myself - day-in-day-out - to Him, but that means being tired when you go to bed, and when you wake up! Hmmm... Something about picking up one's cross comes to mind - I guess I should have expected a bit of tiredness, frustration, business, and the daily grind. Ah well, again, God will provide - it's an amazing life, if busy, and I'm loving every minute, even if exhausted!
Wow, sounds like there are a lot of stairs in Rome :-) That's great that your learning to be compassionate with people, even when you don't feel like it! I struggle with that a lot. Especially with family because I feel like they should know I care without my saying so; but learning (lately) about how it's a natural human need/necessity to be told and shown that you're loved and really cared for (and to tell and show that you do care) is helping. Taking it to prayer is an excellent idea! I like the thoughts on the Eucharist and the Kingdom. And you're learning Hebrew! AWESOME! Keep going, remember that God loves little daily things done well with great love more than big things not done well and without love. [I'll try to remember that too :-)] Praying for you! A.M.
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