Open Wide the Doors for Christ!

Today was the first day of classes, but, instead of just running through the day as I usually do, I want to connect the day with faith.  I mean, I'm in seminary, but often my posts, at least when I don't have a lot of time, just tell you what happened and leave it at that.  That, I think, isn't enough.  The point of this blog is to show seminary life, but seminary life is so much more than what happens to me each day, it also involves what God does to me each day.  It is learning to depend on God, and that is the topic of this post.

In my last class today, the mission and history of Catholic schools, which is the only evening class that I have taken at Marian (it goes from 6:30 to 9:30), the teacher ended class with a prayer from Thomas Merton.  The rest of the prayer is at the end of this post, but for now I just want to concentrate on one line: I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  

Now, having said that, lets look at the rest of the day.  I woke up tired because I went to bed late last night (after midnight).  I was trying to get things ready for today - order books, figure out my schedule, write a blog post, etc.  However, while it isn't a big deal when I would go to bed at midnight at home because I could sleep until 8 or so, here I am getting up at 5:45, which means I only had about 5 hours of sleep.  (Side note: I'm the type of person that really wants 8 hours of sleep, maybe 9, so 5 is not cool at all...)  

Anyway, today my classes started at 10 AM with Philosophical Themes in Catholic Authors, then at noon Logic, at 1 God and Philosophy, and the one on Catholic education at 6:30.  Don't get me wrong, philosophy isn't easy, but I still have been learning a ton in my philosophy classes and have started to look forward to them.  Well, this morning I wasn't quite as enthusiastic (I'll blame it on the lack of sleep), and so I went to class hoping that whatever the professor said would get me interested.  

Well, in the first class, Philosophical Themes in Catholic Authors, the professor opened class by lambasting students who don't read everything from the works they are assigned, and proceeded to explain that we would have a quiz every day so that he could ascertain that we had read everything and had thought about it.  Now, again, don't get me wrong, I always intend to read what I am assigned, but I was really hoping that this class wouldn't be the hard kind - I know, it's philosophy, how would it be easy? - but still, I was really hoping that despite my taking 19 credit hours this semester it would turn out easier.  On top of this, the teacher explained that we would have a 7-9 page paper due at the end of the semester, which I really did expect, but for whatever reason was really hoping I wouldn't hear this morning.

I had a break of 1 hour before my second class which I spent in the library, mostly just wasting time (I had nothing I could do just yet in class and I didn't force myself to do something else productive - you know, finish my application to the NAC, or write a blog post, or something).  Then I grabbed a bite to eat and headed over to logic.  Now, this is the same professor as Metaphysics last year - and his classes are always rock solid and just plain fantastic, so I was really hoping he could get me fired up for this semester.  Well, as you might guess, it didn't quite happen.  The little things, like the fact that the room was packed, or I wasn't concentrating too well, or the joking around that would normally have been a lot of fun, but instead was distracting, just annoyed me I guess.  I mean, I wasn't mad, I just wasn't very happy...

Alright, well the same pattern continued into my third class, again, one I was sure I would enjoy, God and Philosophy.  This was the topic that finally got me interested in philosophy last semester - how we can understand something about God, how faith and reason can overlap - and it was a teacher who I had only heard stellar things about.  Guess what, again, I failed to get enthused.  I guess I was just a bit tired or something, but for whatever reason I was only concentrating on how difficult the class could be - all that reading, the quizzes, the paper, whatever - and not how awesome, or fun, or educational it could be.

So, back to my final class, the dreaded Mission and History of Catholic Schools.  It is a 5 week class that meets on Monday evenings - so I was thinking it couldn't be too hard - but it was still in the evening, I was still tired (despite a short nap this afternoon), and I was still a bit glum from not having a great first day.  So, basically, I was pretty unexcited.  I didn't even want to offer the difficulties up - it was just an off day.  Anyway, I sit down around 6:30 and a few minutes later the teacher walks in and proceeds to spend the next hour introducing the topic (which I was happily surprised, looked to be pretty solidly Catholic) and then having the rest of us introduce ourselves (myself and another seminarian are in the class along with 5 young ladies, all of whom seem to be pretty strong Catholics, and most of whom are planning on becoming teachers).  I was starting, in the class I least expected to, to become interested.  We continued to run through some basics, she outlined how the 2 fundamental differences of Catholic schools are the fact that it is meant for the furthering of the Church and the faith (seems pretty solid) and is funded by the Church, not the state (which is partially accurate, but certainly still a big differentiator).  Finally, she ended with that prayer.

Bam, it hit me.  I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  I went back to Brute and got to catch the last 10 minutes of Adoration, after which I prayed a rosary, and what kept running through my head was the fact that anything, even if it is tough, not what I want, or not what I expected, can be offered up to Christ and transformed by Him so that it brings me - if only because I have to pray more to get through it - closer to Him.  Just wanting to do something for Christ is doing something for Him.  While praying about this, I started thinking about all this and I was trying to see how I could say that joy could be found, even in things you don't like, just by doing them for God, or maybe even seeing them as part of His plan.  I settled on the fact that doing anything for God brings us closer to Him, where true joy and peace and love is found, and so, wham, you are better off (even if you didn't like whatever you were gonna have to do).  

But, the amazing thing is that as I write this post I have become more and more excited about all these classes.  I, right now, can't wait until Wednesday to dive back into this stuff.  You know that rush of adrenaline that happens when you are excited - yeah, that just hit me!  Oh man, this is going to be a great semester.  Those Catholic Authors - come on, it's Flannery O'Connor and C.S. Lewis, bring it on, quizzes or not!  Those dry logical arguments - forget the boring stuff, I'm in a class with 20 other seminarians and one of my favorite teachers, this is going to be a blast!  That work-intensive God and Philosophy class - this stuff is the absolute epitome of philosophy, it's what I loved so much about last semester, it's going to be fantastic!   That Catholic education class - its full of excited, young Catholics, ready to dedicate their lives to the church and to their God, talk about enthusiasm!

Yeah, so God managed to not only get me to offer up the struggles to Him but also completely transform my way of looking at them.  Thank you God!  This semester is going to be great!  And with that, I'm going to bed... Huzzah!  As always, there is so much more to say on this topic, but I really do want to post more often, so I think I may just stick to a big point or two and try to show how seminary life connects up to them.  We'll see if it works out.

Wow, the week is just flying by - I guess that is what happens when your days are absolutely full of thing to do.  Today began with morning prayer at 7:15.  I was somewhat lazy, so I didn't do the Office of Readings beforehand, and said it after Morning Prayer.  Nevertheless, after a quick breakfast of yogurt, a toasted english muffin, and chocolate/caramel milk (we now have caramel syrup, and Adam said it was delicious, so I tried it - pretty good!) , I spent the next hour or so tidying up my room and reading up for different classes.  My room had gotten a bit messy over the past few weeks, and seeing some other guys who have kept their room spotless, I decided some organizing was in order.

In Augustine and Aquinas we talked about Anselm's defense and explanation of free will.  Your synopsis: Free will isn't the ability to choose between two options (alternative possibilities) such as good or bad, or cheerios or corn-flakes, though we do often have that kind of freedom, it is our ability to maintain rectitude of will.  What is rectitude of will?  This is the state our will is in when it is ordered correctly, that is towards the good, which, as Christians, we believe to be God.  Basically, Anselm says that when we choose something that isn't good (or we inordinately desire some temporal/temporary good) we are essentially giving up our humanity.  As humans, we have the option to choose the good, but Anselm explains that when we choose something that is not good we in fact become trapped in sin, and lose freedom.  Obviously, this is a super-summary of the stuff we talked about, but thankfully Anselm ends by explaining that we can get out of this cycle of/slavery to sin through grace that God freely bestows on us.

After class I got an early lunch at the cafeteria.  Today I got salad, meat-on-a-stick (the consensus was that it was chicken, but who knows), and some pumpkin bread.  Everything was actually delicious!  After lunch I headed over to library where I worked on reading for metaphysics, chatted with other people (mostly seminarians, but other folks will join our little zone as well) about all sorts of topics, read a bit for other classes, and then prayed midday prayer.  I was glad that I didn't had too much going on because it allowed me to do some "hanging out" rather than forcing myself to get stuff done.  It's nice every once in a while!

Alright, I'm already beyond half-way through the day!  Metaphysics was pretty cool today.  We dove straight into proving the existence of God.  Today we were going through the argument from motion.  This argument appears as early as Aristotle, but we were going through the version found in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae.  The basic propositions: (1) - Some things are in motion.  We can see things around us are changing and moving - in metaphysical speak, they are going from potency to act. (2) - A potency can be reduced to a potency only by an agent in act.  If that didn't confuse you, congrats!  Basically what this second proposition says is that the only way that things (people, animals, rocks, stars...) can be changed, moved, or caused to do something (this is going from potency to act) is through the action of something else that actually exists.  (3) - Whatever is [in] motion must be put in motion by another.  Basically, this says that something that potentially is one way cannot move/change itself to be actually that thing.  Example: a rock that is potentially at the bottom of a hill can't move itself there unless something else pushes it (or gravity pulls it).  This gets more complicated with living things, but it still applies.  Example: your leg doesn't move unless your muscles "fire".  (4) - There cannot be an infinite series of motions put in motion by another.  OK, this is where it gets really complicated, and where I don't understand it fully (yet), but basically, the world wouldn't work if you kept going back one step (to the previous agent) infinitely.  So, taking the earlier example, your leg moves because of muscles, which move because of nerves, which move because of signals going around in your brain, which move because your will decided to move your leg, which moved because??  See how eventually you have to get to some agent that isn't explained or moved by a previous agent.  Eventually, Thomas Aquinas says, you have to get to an unmoved-mover.  A being that isn't caused or moved or changed by something previously.  Actually, I've left out a large part of this 4th part, T.A. says that temporal sequences of causality can regress infinitely, but simultaneous sequences of causality don't.  Either way, he argues that God causing the universe/creation is an example of the second type of causality, so the point stands...

Skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want any more metaphysics, but if you're adventurous keep reading...  :-)  During the second half of class, we went through properties which must be true of this prime-mover, unmoved-mover - you know - God.  First He must be immaterial (not made of physical, material, stuff).  Why?  If God is made of matter, he would have to cause the universe to exist through material contact/movement.  Why is this a problem?  Well, the only way that a material can move another material (think pool balls or something), is if itself is in motion.  Yet, if we say God "was" (thinking in our temporal mindset) moving when He created the world, that means He was changing, which isn't right.  We call God the prime-mover because He causes motion/change in the world, not because He was actually moving.  This is tough to think about, but physical movement means that God would have been moved by something else (which means that He isn't the original source of movement).  The second point that we made was that God, the unmoved-mover, is that He is not in potency at all.  This is connected with the previous point.  Remember, movement and change, in metaphysics  is talked about in terms of going from potency to act.  (Before moving, a being has the potential to move, or change, or whatever, and after if moves it is actually in the new state, or place).  So saying that God doesn't have any potency, is saying that He can't change.  If by causing the original motion (creation) of the universe, God moved, or changed, or is any way went from potency to act, that movement wouldn't have been unmoved.  (Something must have moved God from the potential state to the actual one).  I guess I won't get more technical, hopefully the argument above isn't full of fallacies and you can follow the train of thought a bit...

Another point made during this talk of the unmoved-mover (God), the topic came up of how God, if He is in fact immaterial, could move/cause a material universe to move/exist?  I mean, how can something that is spiritual cause something that is material?  We just kind of assume that this is "easy" because God is God.  But in metaphysics we are looking at the issue without having the "back-up" of theology (Revelation and Tradition).  It's not like it is anti-religious discipline, but we are trying to figure out how things could work, or how we can explain what we see, without just saying that God did it.  Obviously, sometimes, God did just do it, and we can't figure out why or how, but sometimes we can answer those questions and that is much of what metaphysics seems to be about.  Alright, back to how God, as immaterial, could cause the world, which is material.  Basically, what the professor said was that this was a tough question, that we really don't understand, how God could do such a thing (using metaphysics).  This argument for God is a demonstration quia, which means it tells us that an unmoved-mover must exist for the universe to exist, but it doesn't tell us how this unmoved-mover works.  Interestingly, and once again we see how philosophy connects with theology, (even though for class today we were trying to prove God without theology as explained above) the professor noted that this paradox of immaterial moving material is very similar to how our (immaterial) will moves our (material) body.  How does it work?  We really don't know.  But it gives insight into just how much we are created in the "image and likeness of God".  It's not like God (pre-Jesus) had a body that looks like ours, but isn't it interesting that somehow God has connected our will to our body - making a hybrid of spiritual and material.  It isn't easily explainable, how this works.  Previously the professor had noted that the human "hybrid" is possibly the hardest thing to explain metaphysically - I am starting to see why.  Man people are cool!

OK, enough metaphysics (want more? check this out at catholic.com)!  After class, I immediately went over to the Marian chapel where, as usual for Thursdays, we had a Holy Hour with the Marian community.  I went to confession, said the rosary, prayed for different people (including all you folks), and prayed evening prayer with everybody.  Mass immediately followed.  Today I was cantor, so that required me to pick and start the opening hymn and lead the alleluia verse.  Usually, I am a bit nervous cantoring at Marian (more-so than at Bruté) I guess because there are more people and you have to use the microphone and stuff, but today it really wasn't that difficult.  After Mass most guys (including myself) went over to the cafeteria for dinner, for which I had a toasted pb&j (really tasty) and a few other things (that I now forget).  

After dinner I hung out in the library because I was supposed to attend this talk about an hour later.  It was a talk about ecology/environmentalism from a Catholic perspective, so I was barely interested, but not really.  Senior seminar class was canceled tomorrow, so the professor asked us to attend this lecture...  Anyway, nobody was at the theater in the library, so I had to look up the event on the computer about a minute before it was supposed to start and found out that it was across campus.  I speed-walked over there, arriving late, but before they started (thankfully).  I don't want to spend too much time on the talk, but basically the guys said that the Catholic church teaches that we need to take care of the environment, you know don't destroy the place, because the Bible says so, and that was pretty much it.  He managed to stretch that into about an hour of talking, and there were a few other bits which I think he could/should have left out, but I won't get into it.  Whatever - I'm not one to complain...

I got to the second half of schola practice after the talk.  We were going though Ave Verum, which we will be singing in 4-part harmony on Sunday.  It is a beautiful song, but I am on the soprano line this time (last song I was on the base line), and there is two places where the song gets really, really high.  I managed to hit the first such "spike" normally, but I have yet to get through the second one without going falsetto.  It actually doesn't sound bad, but I am always just waiting for my voice to crack at just the wrong time.  I guess I'm stretching my vocal range...  

 The last major thing today was night prayer (compline) which I was cantoring today.  We chant night prayer three times a week in common, and we use a cantor-congregation style setup.  Basically, the cantor chants one verse, and then the body of guys, and then the cantor and so on...  I was again, not really nervous about it today (which is awesome), and I think that myself and Aaron (the organist) did a really good job.  The speed seemed good, I didn't stumble on any words, the guys jumped into their parts quickly, it was wonderful (and beautiful).  It's amazing what happens when you do things for the glory of God rather than yourself!

And with that, I basically made the rounds, finished typing this post up, talked with a few guys in my room, and now I'm off to bed.  It was another great day!

Today I had the opportunity to catch up with the Junior Legion of Mary group that I had attended (and later acted as president of) for several years.  I didn't want them to think that I had completely forgotten them, and today was their semi-annual pizza party, so I headed over there after work, and hung out for a little while.  The pizza was (very) tasty, the desserts were (as always) excellent, the group was doing well (and growing), a quick game of tag afterwards was hot (and some kids are faster than I remember them).  All-in-all it was a great evening, and it gave me the catalyst to make this post, which I have been meaning to make for a while.

 

As I said, I was a member of the Legion of Mary for several years while growing up.  As a legion member, you meet once a week (the meeting involves praying the rosary, saying the tessera prayers, and reading out of the legion handbook).  The Rosary is, well, the rosary (gets better the more you pray it, by the way), the tessera is a short pamphlet that has the prayers that legionaries say each day, and the hand-book is a (rather in-depth) book on many, many different Catholic devotions, practices, and more hands-on, out-in-the-world, work for Christ, His Church, and His Mother.  The hand-book is not only a fantastic book about how to be a good member of the legion of Mary, but also a great book on how to be a great Catholic and disciple of Our Lord.

 

The Tessera, those prayers that legionaries say each day along with the Rosary, are also a fantastic set or prayers that any Catholic could pray (and get holier).  Here I just include what is called the closing prayer, because that is what has been really jumping out at me lately, but the whole thing (found at above link) is absolutely gorgeous.

 

The Closing Prayer of the Legion of Mary Tessera (pray slowly, letting each word really sink in):

 

 

"There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfilment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time."

 

[Lumen Fidei - paragraph 4] - my emphasis in bold

The family (including myself) is currently en-rout to Yosemite National Park.  We left Saint Louis early this morning, and have completed our first leg of the flight, landing in Dallas.  I was praying morning prayer during the flight, and I thought that one of the intercessions was particularly applicable.

"Open our eyes and the eyes of our brothers - to see your wonders this day."

The good, the true, and the beautiful - called the transcendentals - are things that all humans desire, but so often we look for them outside of God.  Here's the deal; ultimate good, absolute truth, and infinite beauty, are found in God.  However, when we find things that are good, when we advance in knowledge towards truth, when we see something beautiful - we can use these moments to bring ourselves closer to the true source of those things - God.  Obviously, there is a lot more to this topic, but our flight is boarding in half an hour and I gotta get my stuff packed up...  Just remember that goodness, truth, and beauty, wherever they are found, can always be applied towards our growth and relationship with God.  At the very least they can be moments where we thank God.  I'm sure that this phrase will be very applicable throughout this entire vacation - it will be awesome!

Happy Memorial Day everybody!  To all veterans and current serving armed forces: thank you so much!