Open Wide the Doors for Christ!

Every month or so we have what is called a travel weekend, which is pretty much what it sounds like - everybody is allowed to travel some place around Europe and experience a bit of culture, food, art, history, nature, or whatever, all while building friendships with other men here and having a chance to get away from the bustle and business of Rome.  So far, I have gone on three such trips - the first to San Giovanni Rotundo (we visited the shrine of Padre Pio, Monte San Angelo, and Lanciano), the Amalfi Coast (we saw some beautiful scenery, and also got to pray before the relics of St. Andrew, St. Matthew, St. Benedict, and St. Scholastica), and this last weekend - which is probably going to be the craziest travel weekend in the foreseeable future, when I got to fly back to Alabama and be there when my sister took simple/temporary vows at the Dominican Monastery of St. Jude.  Needless to say, it was an amazing blessing to be back there, but - as seems to usually be the case - it was a whole lot more amazing than even I thought it would be beforehand!

While I was in Assisi I found out the date that my sister would be taking vows - November 22nd, the feast of St. Cecilia - and, of course, I was excited for her, but I knew that it wasn't very likely that I'd be able to be back for it, not only was it a long trip, and in the middle of the semester, but it was also NAC policy that guys don't go home for their first two years here.  However, then I heard of one of the new men who had gotten permission to return home for one of his sibling's wedding.  I didn't know if the same exception would apply to me, but I was certainly not going to pass up at least trying!  So, at my first meeting with my formation advisor - the priest who, you know, advises me as regards my formation (I meet with him once a month, we talk about how things are going - academically, pastorally, humanly, practically, etc. - and he helps to make sure I'm balancing my time/effort well and gives tips/advise/direction as regards any of the problems that could crop up from studying over here) - I asked if there was any way that I could go home for my sister's profession.  He hadn't ever experienced that question, but promised to investigate it with the "powers that be" (the formation staff here at the NAC).  I hadn't heard anything for a couple of weeks, which I tried hard not to interpret as a sign one way or the other, when I had my meeting with Msgr. Checchio.  He met with all the new men during our first month or so here, and, at least in my case, most of the conversation was him asking how things were going, talking about the process of settling in, challenges that I might encounter, and things that I should focus on during this first bit of time here.  It was a great conversation, he is a wonderful rector, but near the end of the conversation I was surprised and excited when he casually mentioned that "I'm glad to hear you'll be able to go home for your sister's profession."  I'm pretty sure my mouth fell open for about a second while I tried to comprehend what he had just said, and then I rattled something out about how great it would be, and he responded with something about loving Dominican nuns and being happy to give me the go-ahead to return for that ceremony.  I, to say the least, was excited!  I got permission from my diocese as well and a couple of days later dropped the news on my family when we were skyping.  They too, were pretty happy (alright, maybe that's an underestimation...), and dad was also really helpful in tracking down a decent deal on the flights that I would need (and would fit around everything).

So, last Thursday (the week before Thanksgiving), I left class at the Gregorian (Christology is that morning) and power-walked over to the bus stop where I had a ticket to Fiumicino.  Of course, because of some uprising/protest/strike, the bus was going to be like 45 minutes late.  I already was pushing it close to get through the airport, so I was starting to get a bit worried when an Italian lady had the bright idea to hire a taxi.  Five of us (myself, the lady, and three other young ladies) found a cab - I got back middle, as always - and off we went.  30 minutes later, nobody having had the guts to start a conversation, we pooled our money, paid the driver, and entered the airport.  I found the desk I needed, they gave me my boarding passes (after a bit of difficulty), and I made my way through security.  Off to Amsterdam!

In Amsterdam, having not done much except whiling away the hours of waiting/flying with a couple different books and stuff, I eventually boarded my flight to Atlanta and then settled in for the long flight.  As it turned out, I was right next to a couple who were returning from a trip they were taking with their church to the Netherlands.  We had a really nice conversation about Christianity, the priesthood, theology, the church, celibacy, and several other such topics - it was great!  Not awkward, they were very open, and I really enjoyed it.  After a pretty tasty meal (the food was good and they served wine, which was surprising, and enjoyable), I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, which was not only funny and entertaining, but also relatively clean (always nice when you're not constantly wondering at what point you'll have to turn something off).  Then I spent a bit of time in prayer - not the easiest thing in the world in a plane, but being "up there" lent a different feeling to the experience, so that was cool.  I think I watched another movie at some point, and I spent some time reading some different books (Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, a book on the Pentateuch, Fr. Gaitley's 33 Days to Morning Glory, and probably a couple of other ones).  The hours slid by and before I knew it we were being served dinner (again, pretty good) and only an hour out of Atlanta.  After an uneventful landing, and a bit of walking through the Atlanta airport (and customs...), I found my last gate with an hour or two to wait before boarding.  Being back in America, I decided to find some American cuisine and after debating about whether a certain burger place was going to be worth it, I just went with Chic-fil-A and got my fill of chicken nuggets and fries.  Again, most of the time was past with a bit of reading and some listening to podcasts and whatnot (mainly homilies and other Catholic stuff) - it's funny, I've only been on a plane several times now, but it was already getting pretty usual.  Soon enough we were boarding and then - only like 30 minutes later - I was in Birmingham.  And, 10 minutes later I was elated to see my family at the bottom of the escalators (that I was riding).  It was so good to see them again!  We stayed up late chatting together and then I dropped in bed - some 28 hours after getting up (it was a really long day). 

The next day, Friday, we checked out a couple of things in Birmingham - including the Cathedral (beautiful - it was a lot simpler than the churches over here, but it had stained glass windows, which aren't very often found here) and a museum of art (which had some beautiful pieces - religious and otherwise - though to some extent I have started to take that sort of thing for granted, so it wasn't quite mind-blowing).  Yeah, it was a fun day, just spent hanging out with the family, and that evening we drove over to the monastery and brought our things into the guest house.  After another short night of sleep (which is getting more and more typical) and another banana (which isn't typical over here; they provide plenty of apples, pears, peaches, oranges, plums, and kiwis, but not bananas), my brother and I met with the priest who was going to be saying Mass.  As I was expecting, it was in the Dominican Rite, which was the Roman/Papal Rite of the 1300s (very similar to the Extraordinary Form, with a couple variations), and as I wasn't expecting, one of the servers was expected to chant the Epistle.  My brother - being the generous, humble guy that he is - let me have fun with that, and after 30 minutes of reviewing what we were doing (how the profession ceremony would happen, what was different, who was doing incense, etc.) and a good bit of practicing on my part (actually, I wasn't that nervous, the tone wasn't difficult and the passage was short), we banged the set of chimes that they use to signal the beginning of Mass and processed out.  The chapel - as often in cloistered monasteries - was set up with the sisters/cloister lined up with the altar and the lay congregation off to the side (like an "L", with the sanctuary in the corner) - and because it was ad orientum, I only had a glance of my sister (in the cloister) and grandparents/uncle (who were in the congregation, obviously, but whom I hadn't seen yet).  Mass was like a Low EF Mass, but with incense, so everything went relatively normally until around the homily.  Right after the Gospel (about the foolish and wise virgins), but before the homily, my sister announced her desire to take temporary profession in the monastery.  It was simple phrase, but she was so excited! 

Before the trip I was excited to be back with the family for a bit, to visit my sister, and to enjoy a bit of American cuisine, but - looking back - this was the best moment!  There was my twin sister, much like those 50 men here who gave their lives totally over to Our Lord 2 months ago, giving her life to God - more officially/completely than before - and absolutely overjoyed to do it.  The homily was great - expounding on the beauty of the cloistered call to chastity, and the idea that kept running through my mind was that of joy.  I had been thinking about my sister's vocation in terms of difficulty.  Entering the cloister is tough, it means giving up a lot, and I thought that for that reason it was a great call.  I mean, we all have to give up something to follow God's will for us - that's the cross - but the cloister seemed a particularly difficult one regardless.  However, my sister wasn't filled with trepidation - at the difficulty - or bravado - at the challenges to come - or even excitement - for the life ahead; she was filled with joy, peace, happiness, and other such awesome gifts of God.  The thing was, where I see challenges to be pulverized (with God's help, of course), she wasn't even looking for the next challenge to be attacked, but instead simply looking at God, and trusting that He would help in whatever might come.  Where I focus on the incoming/upcoming thing to do, finish, learn, grow, or become, she simply focusses on the end goal of all that "doing", which is God, and His will.  I've wondered in the past how some of the sisters you see are always so joyful.  I mean, I'm trying to follow Christ too, but I'm not exactly constantly beaming with joy and excitement...  What's the difference?  They trust God better than I do.  Boom, now I know my next challenge, oh wait...

I guess, I could prolong this post quite a bit further, droning on about the intricacies of what I was up to, but I won't, because the big things had already happened.  As usual, we struggled to come up with a poem to send back through the turn for the sisters...  Yep, I got to talk a lot with my sister (not another, but still) and we stayed up late catching up as a family (it felt like 5 AM to me)...  Yeah, I had another banana the next morning, and Mass was beautiful again (as was all the prayers that we were able to join the sisters for), and saying good-by to everybody was hard (though we did enjoy a 5-Guys burger before parting, which was about as American as it gets).  Of course, the flights were long (Spiderman 2 wasn't as good as I was hoping, but I got a tiny bit of sleep in and a bit of praying/reading in), and the airports somewhere between exciting and exasperating.  But the trip ended on a good note because the busses were running from the airport, and - annoyingly, but mostly amusingly - the wheel on my bag (with chocolate chips and BBQ sauce inside, among other things!) decided to self-destruct mid-way back to the NAC (approximately when I was passing St. Peter's), and, when I went over to St. Peter's for Mass (it was now Monday, because of the time-traveling that I had been doing..., so I hadn't been to Mass yet), I found that it was the funeral Mass for Cardinal Angelini.  I was pretty much a zombie standing there (I was going on 30 hours without much sleep - I would have never imagined they could make a seat as hard to fall asleep in than those on airplanes), but it was pretty obvious I was back in Rome.  Mass in St. Peter's, Swiss Guards, tourists, the mad rush for Communion, hearing Italian...  Va bene!

Super recap: Flying on planes can be fun, American food is still great, seeing the family after a couple months is even better, and God's grace in action, in my sister, is amazing!  The whole experience fit really well with Thanksgiving (which we are still celebrating here at the NAC - with tons of food, football, and the new/old-man shows); it truly reminded me what I am most thankful for.  Yep, being here in Rome is awesome, the food is great (here and back home), and I'm enjoying myself immensely, but life is about so much more than that!  It's about being thankful to God for His much more precious gifts: tremendous friends (here and in America), an amazing, loving, supportive family, and a call from God Himself, to follow Him, to love like Him, to give like Him, and thereby live with Him forever (starting now!)  Tremendous, right!  Thanksgiving indeed! 

Photos in the monastery from their website, otherwise from myself...  Please keep all the sisters in your prayers, especially as we begin the Year of Consecrated Life tomorrow (with the beginning of Advent!)

http://www.stjudemonastery.org/2014/sister-mary-thomas-first-profession/

As promised, here's the second half of my experience as subdeacon, and how it forced me to do some serious discernment and deepening of my relationship with God.

On Holy Saturday morning, myself and my brother headed over to St. Rose to practice for the Easter Vigil that we would both be assisting at that evening (him as MC, myself as subdeacon).  I won't go into the whole practice, because that would be really repetitive once I explained the liturgy itself, but it was a moment of resignation to God's Will.  Now that I had been subdeacon once, at the Good Friday liturgy the day

I practiced chanting a bit that afternoon, trying to smooth out the transitions between words and make sure I knew the starting note, cadence, emphasis, and other important details.  It took several run-through's before I got through the entire thing without mis-pronouncing, or mis-singing something, but by that evening I was feeling reasonably confident that I wouldn't completely mess them up.  I spent plenty of time hanging out with my cousins - playing outside, chatting, struggling through some Mario Kart - and we had several delicious meals (thanks mom!), and around 9:30 PM we all headed over for the vigil Mass.

What struck me was that the whole experience wasn't nearly as daunting and overwhelming as I thought it would be.  For Good Friday I thought that being subdeacon would be incredibly difficult, and it wasn't easy by any means, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.  On Holy Saturday, again, I thought that things would be impossible - complex, tricky, important, uncomfortable - and, again, it wasn't easy, I certainly had to throw myself out there, learn to do new things, push myself out of my comfort zone, but it wasn't really all that bad.  I didn't quite enjoy myself, but I started to see the positives and not the negatives, how the experience was leading me to grow, to giving myself more to others, to abandon myself a bit more to God.  Certainly God's grace was working!  

The ceremony began with the blessing of the Paschal candle and the Exultet, during which my only task was to hold the crucifix - a simple task, but one that became taxing on the arms after 20 minutes or so.  I was already vested in tunicle, amice, and alb - which was a bit less unpleasant than on Good Friday, but still felt weird - and what kept going through my head was the fact that I would soon have to chant one of the four lessons (going through salvation history).  As it always seems to happen, time kept going forward, and eventually the Exultet finished, I set the cross down, and the readings started.  I had a few more minutes before mine (while the first two were chanted), but then had to step up to the ambo, take a deep breath, and start chanting.  I was nervous, and sweating, and afraid, but the first word came out pretty well and then everything just flowed smoothly until the end (like a minute later).  Following that - summarizing a lot - I eventually got the cross again, we had the blessing of the baptismal water, the renewal of baptismal promises, the second half of the litanies, and then Easter Mass!  Unfortunately, most of the Mass I was concerned with what I had to do next, so I wasn't paying too much attention, but it was a beautiful, exciting, joyous ceremony.  Simplifying things greatly, I basically followed the deacon's cues on where to stand/move and the only exceptional things that I did were to chant the epistle (thankfully it was short, I started on a note that I could hold throughout, and I held the melody throughout - success again!  Thank you God!) and hold the paten during the canon and consecration (another somewhat awkward moment, but one that brought me closer to Christ as I knelt there and adored my risen savior in the Eucharist).  The rest of Mass spun along as usual - I didn't invalidate anything, or light anything on fire, or otherwise make too many mistakes - and then the triumphant closing hymn began and we processed out.  

Looking back, I have just begun to see the positives of the whole experience.  Of course, as I think I've been emphasizing (probably too much), being subdeacon was hard.  Not so much in the sense that what I did was difficult, even the chanting wasn't terribly scary, but I just didn't feel ready to step into that role, to put on the amice, and tunicle, and beretta.  I think I was scared of the reminder that the whole experience evoked in me of what I was in seminary for - to become a priest - and that ordination is a (God-willing) fast-approaching reality.  Ordination, now 4 years out (if everything goes as usual) is something that I don't think about too much - it's scary, it's putting myself totally in God's service, it's a commitment to live like Christ, which is audacious, incredible, beautiful, and terrifying - but being subdeacon reminded me of that eventual goal.  It put me in a position much closer to the priest than ever before; I had a part in the liturgy unlike "just" serving or reading.  However, by offering up the whole ordeal/experience to Christ, I was able to bring myself a bit closer to Him, to more deeply love Him at least a little bit (especially because it was during the triduum).  I guess I see the whole experience as a sort of Good Friday or Holy Saturday.  Obviously, it was nothing like the suffering and death of Our Lord, but it did involve a bit of suffering and dying to self, something that always seems necessary for holiness.  But something that I have come to realize is that in being subdeacon - certainly it was hard, it was death to self - but it was also Easter, it was also a moment that God filled with grace.  The Paschal mystery is all about how God bring good out of evil - specifically the greatest good of salvation out of the worst evil, the death of Jesus.  Through the smidgen of suffering and fear that I endured in being subdeacon, He brought me closer to Himself.  God made me realize that being a priest entails precisely this kind of laying down of my life for God and for all of His children.  You know what, seminary is a lot of fun, even during finals week (right now) there's a camaraderie and excitement to being with all the other guys and knocking out finals together.  Seminary is about turning yourself over to Christ, but it doesn't hurt all that much usually.  Being subdeacon wasn't much fun, I really, really, didn't want to do it.  Yet, in doing it, I was brought closer to Christ than in doing the hard things (that are fun) in seminary.  Those moments allowed me to realize things that I hadn't thought about during many hours in prayer, the hardest of finals, or my favorite passages of Scripture.

Yeah, so in conclusion I guess I learned to trust more in God.  Not only that He would get me through doing hard and fearful things, but that He is capable of bringing great good out of things that I can't find good in, or I find very difficult.  Reliance on God - it's easy to think about and hard to live out, but such is the goal of sanctity.  Jesus I trust in You!