Showing posts with label Holy Hour. Show all posts

Day 5 - A week in the life of a seminarian

Today, back to the normal schedule, we had Mass at 6:45 AM.  I wore a tie because I am assigned as extra-ordinary minister of Holy Communion for the next few days.  This isn't something required or anything,  but I like to dress up on occasion and this gave me a good excuse.  We had three priests at Mass, so I didn't have to fill that role after all.  Mass today was really, really awesome.  I don't usually know why a certain Mass, or hour of the office, or rosary hits me really well, but today was one of those days.  Fr. Joe Moriarty (our vice rector) gave the homily, and he reminded me of how important Jesus' question "who do you say that I am?" is.  Think about it!  Do you act in a way that shows your answer to this question?  Of course, as St. Peter, we will often end up falling, not believing, or being overcome by fear, but was must always come back to his answer "Lord; you know that I love you" - John 21:16.  In the office of readings I also just loved the passage (link click "office of readings" and scroll down to the second reading) from St. Vincent de Paul.  Partly quoted for your benefit: 

"It is our duty to prefer the service of the poor to everything else and to offer such service as quickly as possible. If a needy person requires medicine or other help during prayer time, do whatever has to be done with peace of mind. Offer the deed to God as your prayer. Do not become upset or feel guilty because you interrupted your prayer to serve the poor. God is not neglected if you leave him for such service. One of God’s works is merely interrupted so that another can be carried out. So when you leave prayer to serve some poor person, remember that this very service is performed for God. Charity is certainly greater than any rule. Moreover, all rules must lead to charity."

This is something that I have begun to also see in Pope Francis - maybe I need to work on it a little...  Love of Christ absolutely must appear in the rest of our life through love of our fellow man.   The question of Jesus, and are affirming our belief in Him as God, must go beyond just saying that we love Jesus.  We must answer with love to Jesus, and then follow His command to St. Peter: "feed my sheep".  

I had a small breakfast (small bowl of oatmeal) because I am fasting today.  One of the guys had a birthday yesterday, so a bunch of guys are going out tonight.  Knowing that, I decided to fast instead of skipping meat today.  I figure fasting is harder than no-meat, so I'm not really slacking...  

My first class, senior seminar, was cancelled today, so I began the school day at 10:00 AM with moral issues.  We talked some more about capital punishment, and how every seemingly clear-cut issue usually can be incredibly complicated when you are actually working on it in the real world.

In psychology we again continued to look at areas where young children are cognitively developing.  We talked some more about limitations, like irreversibility (when a young kid doesn't know what operations are reversible - opening/closing a box - and not - breaking a toy), and only being able to focus on the static state of an object (they understand that the show was untied, and now it is tied, but can't remember the steps along the way), and a lack of the concept of conservation (the same amount of liquid is taller in a skinnier glass).  Basically, their ability to think logically slowly grows from ages 3 to 7 or so.  They can think about objects, but can't manipulate those concepts.

I actually got out of psychology like 20 minutes early because the professor had finished everything he wanted to, so Andrew and I went over to the library.  I chatted with some others who were hanging out there, we talked about calculus (derivatives can be complicated), literature (Chesterton is cool), and philosophy (I finally get why the motion must be simultaneous to prove God through motion).  Then we went over to the Marian "shrine" (also called the Rosary walk) and prayed the Rosary.  I always find this really peaceful, but I struggle to concentrate on the mysteries because people are walking around, or mowing, or whatever...  Anyway, because I was fasting, I skipped lunch in the cafeteria and went back to the library to work on some calculus before class.

Calculus class was complicated today.  Those problems I was struggling with before class - they were the topic of today's class.  Derivatives had been pretty easy for me (If f(x) = x3 + 2x2 – 11 then f'(x) [the derivative] = 3x2 + 4x).  However, today we looked at much more complicated functions, where instead of just moving the exponent around (notice how it works: if f(x) = xn then f’(x) = nxn-1).  But, what do you do if your function is a bit more complicated?  Like: y = (x3)[(4-x2)1/2]  Here you have to use the product theorem.  This basically states that you take the x3 and the (4-x2)1/2 and call them “f” and “g” respectively, then you can find what the derivative of the entire expression by calculating: y’ = fg’ + f’g.  This means you have to find the derivatives of f and g.  f is easy: f(x) = x3, so f’(x) is 3x2.  But, it isn’t as easy for g.  To find the derivative of (4-x2)1/2, you have to use the chain rule.  This, on its own, isn’t too complicated.  You take the term, move the exponent as we saw before and then multiply the entire thing by the derivative of just the “4 – x2”.  So this looks like g(x) = (4-x2)1/2, so g’(x) = ½(4-x2)-1/2.  Thus, the derivative of the entire function, plugging in the parts that we just figured out, is: y’ = (x3)( ½(4-x2)-1/2) + (3x2)[(4-x2)1/2].  Having fun yet?  Yeah…  Now, set that expression to 0, and solve for x…

So after calculus, my classes were done for the day, so I came back to Bruté and played a few pool games with other guys.  I only managed to win one game, but it was fun either way.  After that I wandered over to my room (there didn't seem to be much else going on), and did a few things on the computer (including working on the computer - plugging in all those equations takes a while...)  At 4:15 PM, I went up the chapel where we had a Holy Hour before evening prayer.  The Holy Hour was, once again really, really fantastic.  (I love it when prayer is like that!)  I said mid-day prayer at the beginning, then the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and then I read a chapter out of the book by Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen, The Priest is Not His Own.  I was debating on reading this book (on the priesthood) versus Forming Intentional Disciples (Wendell) on evangelization, but I eventually went with Sheen.  As it turns out, the chapter that I moved into was about evangelization - God works in mysterious ways!  Best quote (out of many really good ones): 

Our love of souls must be persistent.  We get used to reading the parable of the Good Shepherd, but do we understand that for us priests it is a spelling out of our obligation to seek the lost sheep?  Leaving a dinner, breaking an evening's entertainment, interrupting a siesta - all such efforts are summed up in being willing to leave "those ninety-nine others on the mountain-side, and go out to look for the one that is straying"  (Mt 18:12)"

After evening prayer, a bunch of us went out and played some two-touch football.   It was a lot of fun, but, as always with football, I feel like I'm not doing something right because I rarely get the ball.  I run around like crazy, wear myself out, and often get away from my defender, but I just don't seem to ever end up in an open spot.  Anyway, the teams were really well matched and we ended in a tie (5-5) after about an hour of playing.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, tonight we celebrated Adam's birthday by going to Macaroni Grill.  I ended up getting the lasagna - It was one of the cheaper options on the menu (always a big deciding factor in my choice), and it just sounded really good.  Let's just say that I was disappointed when it came out because it was half the size of a lot of other meals, but I had changed my mind by the end of the meal.  It turned out a lot bigger than it looked!  The evening was a lot of fun!  Right after the waiters sang "happy birthday", the guys in the kitchen (it was open to the restaurant) dumped ladle fulls of grease on the stoves.  So these "waves" of flame roared out lighting up the restaurant - maybe not the smartest thing to do, but it was pretty cool!

Alright, well I'm tired, so this post will come to an end.  Before heading to bed I caught the tail end of "The Hobbit - an unexpected journey", said night prayer, played some pool (actually almost winning!), and ate some ice cream with home-made chocolate/peanut-butter topping.  Once again, an awesome day!
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Day 2 - A week in the life of a seminarian

Today Archbishop Tobin celebrated Mass (at 6:45 as usual) for us.  I was tired again, but his short but well-done homily managed to keep me attentive.  During the first reading, about the return of the exiles from Babylon and the rebuilding of the temple, I wasn't seeing much that applied to me.  The Gospel, which was incredibly short, related how Jesus hears that His mother and brothers are in the crowd and responds "“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it."  I was thinking, ok, how is anyone supposed to connect these readings up.  I know that the daily readings aren't chosen in such a way that they are supposed to match up, but usually I can find some parallel between them that I need to work on.  Anyway, Archbishop Tobin related these by saying that God's will, the acting part of Jesus' message, is to rebuild His church.  I didn't get this connection at all until he mentioned it, and I thought it was so cool to see how these two readings came together.  We become brothers of Christ when we hear the word of God (come follow me, be fishers of men) and act on it.  Neat!
After Mass, I immediately went down to the kitchen and cranked on this griddle thing we have next to the stove.  On Tuesdays, following the example of a seminarian last semester, I have started cooking breakfast for whoever wants it.  Today, since we had lots of eggs and leftover toppings from tacos on Saturday, I made omelettes.  It took a bit of trial and error to figure out how to get the insides of the omelettes hot without burning the outside, even more finesse to make sure that they folded reasonably well, and the 3rd and hardest part was getting them off the griddle onto a plate.  (OK, it wasn't bad at all, and for the most part the omelettes stayed together...)  Anyway, I think the guys enjoy it when I make something a bit beyond the run of the mill, and it's always fun to whip up a large batch of something or another.

My first class today was at 9:30, so right after breakfast I spent about an hour reading St. Anselm's On Free Will (which, go figure, is about free will, and how it is a really awesome gift from God).  I managed to finish the dozen pages or so before class, which was great, and then headed over to campus.  In class we got our tests back, which we had taken last week, and I was pretty happy to see I got an A.  First tests are always tricky, and thankfully, I had at least a rudimentary understanding of most of the questions.  He also slightly curved the grade (which, I suppose, is a good thing - though maybe I shouldn't put so much emphasis on grades...)  Then we finished up talking about Anselm's Proslogium, in which he attempts to prove the existence of God.  Last week we had finished most of it, but hadn't gotten through his response to critiques leveled at it.  Basically, Anselm says that we can know that God must exist, because in our mind God is "that than which nothing greater can exist", so for that concept of God to be accurate, God must exist.  I think most of the class was annoyed by finding that the argument seems quite good (but I haven't taken logic yet, so maybe there's a fallacy someplace), but something seems missing.  Anyway, for some people the argument was convincing and for others it didn't seem substantial enough.  Pretty interesting way to philosophize nonetheless.

After class, I quickly chatted with the teacher about my upcoming term paper in senior seminar, and he gave me a bunch of insights into how the shift in philosophy occurred in unison with the protestant reformation.  He noted that with the reformation came a different view of human nature (especially in Calvinism), essentially, before the reformation philosophy had this view of the world in which you had different "levels" (for lack of better word) of being.  God, then angels, then humans, then animals, etc.  However, with the protestant reformation, and, I suppose, the (closely) simultaneously happening scientific revolution, humanity lost some value.  Think about darwinism, this makes man just another animal, just a slightly better developed ape, that's not very in line with the whole "image and likeness of God" now does it?  Again, Calvinism, especially in the beginning, focused on man being pre-destined and how God has already decided who's going to Heaven (and who's not...).  This disconnects the stages of being, it disconnects God from man.  Alright, enough of my musings on philosophy, and back to day-to-day life.

After Augustine and Aquinas, I walked over to subway, got some lunch, and then headed over to the library where I spent the next 2 hours doing calculus (derivatives are only bad when you make silly mistakes speeding though them), reading metaphysics (it was short today!), taking a nap (it was wonderful), and eating a snickers (it actually only lasted about 5 minutes, but anyway...).  

At 2:00 PM I had metaphysics class. I guess I won't give you everything we went over, but some of it is actually pretty cool.  The first part of class was a recap of last class: all the sensible beings that we see have three act/potency distinctions (existence/essence, accident/substance, and form/matter).  Don't worry about what each of those mean (I'll do that), but basically these "qualities" or "properties" of sensible objects mean that they must be caused.  They are contingent, don't have to exist, and require something else to cause them to go from potentially existing to actually existing.  In the same way, sensible objects (by which I am talking about everything that you see, feel, or encounter in life), can also only change through something else causing it - some change or movement in them only goes from a potential change to an actual one when something else (called the agent cause) causes them to change.  This is pretty obvious, a rock doesn't move unless you push it, and you don't move the rock unless your muscles are caused to move by chemical reactions, which are caused by nervous signals from your brain, etc.  Metaphysics (at least what we are looking at) gives every little part of this picture a name so that we can "track" these bits in other scenarios or beings and find how all the parts fit together.  OK, today we moved on from this knowledge of causes, to finding/proving the primary cause, Aristotle's prime mover, and what most of you call God.  (This is the philosophical understanding of God.)  Throughout the rest of class we looked at different ways that different people have tried to prove that such a being must exist.  Some (Anselm) try to prove God's existence without using empirical evidence by using a nominal definition, and others use more demonstration-based arguments (of which there are various kinds, but basically they prove something by looking at the world around us).  Alright, I could literally write something about 5 times this long based on how many notes I have, but I won't...  Hopefully, you got an idea of how complicated (but cool) and intricate (but incredible) philosophy is.

After metaphysics I was hoping to get a lot done.  Maybe study for my calculus test tomorrow, or get another nap in (I still had a bit of a headache), or read something - you know be productive.  But, I hate to say it, but I managed to waste most of the time between 3:30 and 5:00 doing stuff on the computer.  I mean, I did do some email and worked on this blog post some, but I also distracted myself with less important stuff on the internet...  Ah well, I guess one can't always be working...

Anyway, at 5:00 we had Evening Prayer in common.  Following that, I met with some guys to pick teams for intramural football (which begins on Sunday).  I was torn between "stacking" one team or trying to balance out the talent between the teams.  Eventually, we leaned towards making one team as good as we could.  Last year we got creamed (even though we only had one team), so if we want to stand any chance of keeping up with the other Marian teams, we needed all the best guys together.  Of course, that means that half the guys will feel like they are "lesser" or whatever.  So goes the balancing act of being athletic director.  I'm on the B team because, to be quite honest, there are a lot of guys who are better at football than me.  I know the guys will understand, but it still involved trying to weigh one guy's talents against another's and they often just aren't comparable...

I ate the rest of my subway sandwich (chicken pizzaiola) for dinner (along with a Little Debbie - thanks Aaron's mom!).  I spent a little while designing a Bruté t-shirt for when we do sports and what-not, and then I went to spiritual direction.  Unfortunately, this isn't something that I can talk about too much - you know, it's kinda personal.  But, it was a pretty good conversation for 45 minutes or so, and I can tell that I am growing...

At 8:30 PM we had a Holy Hour.  Usually, on Tuesdays we have our Holy Hour in common at 4:30, but today we had it later so that a group from campus (the San Domiano scholars) could join us.  It is the first time (to my knowledge) that a group has joined us for prayer, so it was kind of cool to have all the extra people and voices joining in.  I read some more out of Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity which today was about Jesus.  I really need to end this post, so I'll leave you with a quote that I read today.  Here (now) Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, is explaining how many modern theologians want to see the God-Man as either Jesus or Christ, either Jesus "who told all men of their common father and so made them brother" versus Christ "who then demanded faith and became dogma" - page 199.  Ratzinger notes that some want to pick just one or the other side of Jesus Christ.  Pope Benedict rejects this disconnect.  "[F]aith's decisive statement about Jesus lies in the indivisible unity of the two words "Jesus Christ", a unity that conceals the experience of the identity of existence and mission." - page 204.

 And with that, good night!  Thanks for reading!
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Day 1 - A week in the life of a seminarian

I've been thinking lately that while I have posted plenty of moments from the seminary (fun, academic, spiritual, and other topics), I haven't really tied them all together.  I guess, I haven't given the whole picture of seminary life, just bits of it.  Thus, for the next week I am going to try and post something each day basically giving you all the run-down of what I did that day.  I'm going to try and make it interesting, so I won't include everything, but I want to give you the big picture of what seminary life is like.  Enjoy!

Monday - 9-23-13

So this morning started with my alarm blaring to life at 6:00 AM.  I immediately fumbled around for snooze and then disabled my cell phone which went off simultaneously (back up alarm).  After slowly become conscious, my alarm again came to life and this time I rolled out of bed (6:15).  I quickly dressed, shaved, and got my contacts before heading up to the chapel around 6:30.  I prayed the Office of Readings before Mass (with Morning Prayer) began at 6:45.  Unfortunately, I was pretty tired this morning because I had stayed up till midnight or so to get some studying done, so Mass wasn't as transformational as I always hope it will be.  After Mass I said a brief thanksgiving, then the tessera prayers (Legion of Mary), and then made my way down to breakfast.  Today, as I said, I was pretty tired, so I just threw a banana in with some cheerios.  I chatted with the other guys who were eating, and then headed to my room around 8:00.  I quickly checked email, but then got down to some last minute cramming for my Moral Issues exam.  

So far we have covered pretty much all the basics regarding moral theology, and basic ethical stuff.  Basically, the gist of the class has been that throughout salvation history we see God asking people to trust and follow Him, primarily through love of neighbor.  This focus, of course, doesn't change with Jesus, especially as found in the great commandment (love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love neighbor as self).  Anyway, the class had managed to extrapolate that principle into about 20 pages of notes, and 5 pages of study guide.  I hadn't filled out the study guide much, so mostly I just skimmed my notes to study for the 45 minutes or so.  Around 8:45 I quickly changed, grabbed my stuff, and charged out the door.  I intended to ride my bike to Marian today because I wasn't heading back to Bruté at the usual time (when I can catch a ride with somebody), but Cody and Ray were heading to Senior Seminar (my first class as this morning as well), so I threw my bike in the back of Cody's truck, and we sped over to campus.  I can ride over pretty quickly (5-6 minutes), but it tires me out going that fast, usually I am sweating a bit, and my legs are wobbly when I get there, so it was nice to find somebody driving over.  By the time we got there the bells (which go off 2 minutes before class were ringing), so I grabbed my bike, rode across campus from the library (where we had parked) to Marian hall (where my class was), locked my bike up in record time, and ran into class.  Ray was joking that this would be the first time I had been late to class, but actually we made if over with about 30 seconds to spare!  

In senior seminar we are going through Pope Benedict's Introduction to Christianity, and today we were examining chapter 5, in which then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger expounds on the mystery of the Trinity, how it is something that requires faith to believe - it isn't obvious, or discover-able by reason alone - and profoundly stretches the bounds of the usual philosophical principles (substance, essence, relationship, etc.) that we use to describe/examine something.  An interesting analogy that he makes is that this belief in the Trinity isn't irrational, but just exposes the limits of human knowledge, in this case limits of theology.  Just like physics can't easily explain the dual nature of light as a wave and particle, theology can't really explain how God can be both one and three.  Cool stuff!

My next class, moral issues was the one that I had the test in.  I had about 5 minutes to run through the material one more time before the professor handed out the test.  Disconcertingly, a bunch of other students were anxiously quizzing each other over their complete study guides, so that wasn't very encouraging.  Nevertheless, the test was handed out, I whizzed through the first few multiple choice (leaving a few blank on my first pass), filled out the other fill-in-the-blank answers, and then went back completing the questions I skipped.  I felt good about the first section, being pretty confident with most of my answers.  The second session, an essay, had two options, and I picked the first one about explaining that God is anti-slavery (in the largest sense of the term) using the Old Testament, the New Testament, the current pretty bad situation in Haiti, and exorbitant pay for corporate executives.  I quickly whizzed through the first few paragraphs, explaining that God is love, and that God gave us freedom of will, and that we were made in the image and likeness of God, so we should be loving to others around us, thus giving them freedom (in having a good life, and being able to freely choose the true good, God).  I talked a bit about the exodus, and then the great commandment in the New Testament, and how both are related to freedom (found in love).  I awkwardly squished something about Haiti and even less about corporate wages onto the end of the paper, filling the sheet up to the last few lines, and turned in my test.  Actually, while I was on the last paragraph, the teacher announced that we had five minutes left, so instead of finishing early (like I was hoping), I had to quick-walk over to psychology, where my next test waited.

The psychology test, composed of 50 multiple-choice questions, was a bit tougher than the previous one in that class simply because I hadn't studied as much.  I don't think I bombed it by any means, but I had several questions that I wasn't very sure on.  We'll see, I don't think it'll be too bad.

After psychology, I went with the other seminarian that is in the class with me to the cafeteria and had an interesting lunch of chili-dog with noodles on top (I wanted a chili dog, but noodles went good with the chili, so I did both), some concoction with chicken nuggets (the nuggets were good, the goop was interesting), and some chocolate pudding with pulverized oreos and a cookie.  Now, if that isn't a healthy meal, I don't know what is!  Then a few of us met at noon at the Marian shrine on campus (not to be confused with Marian hall) and prayed the rosary.  As it turns out, there are a few of us that are open between noon and one, and we decided to get together and pray the rosary during the time.  I love the bit of time that I can spend in prayer in the middle of the day, it really ties my day together, and brings me back into focus (when usually I am pretty hassled by all the classes and what-not).  It's pretty awesome!

My next class, at one, was calculus.  Today we went over higher order derivatives.  We have a test on Wednesday, so this won't be on there, but basically it entails taking the derivative of a function that you already got the derivative of.  An example:  the position function gives the position for an object.  So the function says: H = -16t2 + Vot + Ho  -- don't get confused by the symbols, H is the position for whatever numbers you plug in, t is time, Vo is the velocity at the beginning, and Ho is the height at the beginning.  Now, if you want to know velocity, instead of just position, you take the derivative of this equation which turns out to be: H’ = -32t + Vo -- If I had to guess, you could care less about this math, but it turns out that you take the derivative again (H'' = -32), you now have the function for acceleration.  It's pretty cool to see the math behind all those atrocious equations from physics...

After calculus ususally my school day would be done, but today I met with Dr. Denz (the senior seminar professor) to talk about the 15 page paper that I would be working on for the end of that class.  I didn't have much of an idea on what I wanted to write, but one of the example topics he gave was a look at how philosophy changed greatly during/after the reformation.  I was intrigued because I figured history couldn't be that hard, and this is an important (and revolutionary) time in church history, and to be quite honest, most philosophy done since then seems a bit bogus (but that's just me).  Anyway, Dr. Denz was pretty enthused about the topic (I guess nobody else had picked it) and gave me a ton of ideas about how to go about it.  There is a huge book written on the topic called The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory, which will be my main source (and I'll have to kind of examine Gregory's argument and what-not), but then it turns out the topic is much deeper than history (I should have known).  Apparently, the great divide between medieval and modern philosophy (at least according to Gregory) is that the analogy of being is lost/eliminated/not accepted.  We have just been covering this type of stuff (analogical, univocal, and equivocal terms, and different properties/principles of being) in metaphysics, and so far my brain has just about melted every class.  I mean, it's crazy cool, mind warping stuff, but definitely requires a lot of thinking.  We'll see, I think the paper will be really cool (when it's done), and not so much fun while I'm working on it.  It will definitely force me to understand the metaphysics, that's for sure...

 OK, so that meeting was a very insightful 15 minutes or so, and then I rode my bike back to Bruté and settled in for an afternoon of catching up on some reading.  I read for about 25 minutes in several different books (in an attempt to keep myself awake), before heading (at 5:15) for evening prayer.  After that, I went back over to the caf. for dinner (toasted pita bread, a bagel with peanut butter, and some fruit - yeah, I was still pretty bored today).  After dinner we had soccer practice, which was entirely composed of a scrimmage between about 10 of the guys.  It was a lot of fun, all the guys are getting pretty phenomenal at soccer (they are leaving me behind - I'm going to have to up my level of play)!  I took a quick shower afterwords and then ran up to the optional Holy Hour that began at 8:30.  An hour later, after some good prayer time, and some spiritual reading, I was spiritually refreshed.  Then I skyped my family for about 30 minutes, spent an hour writing this post (took longer than I expected) and now I'm going to bed.  

 Yeah, so that was Monday, absolutely packed with things to do! I hope this kind of post doesn't bore you all completely, maybe some quirk in my rhetoric (or just a typo) will make you laugh.  I don't know...  I'll try to switch up the style a bit tomorrow - maybe focus on smaller happenings...  Anyway, good night, and God bless!
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Weekend Recap - 4-28-13

I hope these recap things aren't getting boring.  I'm trying to give you guys a picture of what happens in seminary, and this is the easiest way to do that.  The blogs on spiritual-type stuff take longer to put together because they generally require at least a little bit of research.  I have some good ideas for this type of article, but haven't finished any yet.  Anyway, this weekend has been quite fun!

Yesterday the sophomore service group (the sophomore seminarians, myself, and a guy who will be entering Bruté in the fall) got up for an early Mass (7 AM vs. the normal 9:30), graciously said by Fr. Bob.   Then we quickly changed and slammed down a few donuts (which were a nice start to the day!) before heading over to the Indianapolis St. Vincent de Paul Society around 8:00 AM.  The first part of the day was a program called beggars for the poor.  This entailed packing a truck full of food and clothes and then distributing them to the homeless in downtown Indianapolis.  We probably worked for about 30 minutes carrying around crates of soda, sorting/folding clothes, and getting stuff on the truck.  

Around 9:00 AM we got to the parking lot where the beggars for the poor program happens.  By the time we got there, there were already some people set-up and already a good number of homeless people waiting.  Last time we did this (last semester), I was on the food line and handed out buns for the chili dogs.  This time I wondered the crowd, talking a little bit with the people and giving away small food things.  I first gave away bags of different kinds of nuts (salted/honey-roasted peanuts, and cashews) - those were easy to get rid of.  Then I tried my luck at the orange-cracker-peanut-butter-thingies, which fewer people wanted, but I eventually gave away all of them.  Then I gave away these bracelets that we had (the rubbery kind) that said "Mother Mary Pray for Us".  I thought it would be all but impossible to give them away, but that was not the case.  I don't know if the people just liked bracelets, liked the phrase on them, or whatever, but they went like hot-cakes (actually, that's a pretty bad analogy because the cornbread muffin things - basically hot-cakes - were impossible to get rid of).  One guys actually took about 10 of the bracelets and said that he would give them out to his friends!  Anyway, around 10:30 or so we finished giving out the food/clothes and the crowd was beginning to disperse.  We chatted with a few of the people left, heard their stories, and then headed back to the St. Vincent De Paul Center.

For the next hour maybe we helped out in the back of the center sorting, folding, and hanging clothes that they would give out over the week.  All the people were really joyful and enthusiastic about what they were doing.  They were also very happy to see the 9 of us helping out (they usually have 2, so we sped up the process a lot).  After we finished everything they had for us to do, we went over to Hardees and got some lunch.  I got the $5 bag lunch, which came with 2 burgers, fries, a cookie, and a drink - I usually wouldn't have ordered that much, but all the other meals were $5+ and only came with one burger, and I couldn't pass up the good deal.  (It was pretty good, and I think I burned it off as you will soon see...)

After lunch we headed back to the St. Vincent De Paul.  It is located in this pretty cool old building, and we now headed back to where the loading docks were.  There were several big rooms attached to this area with different assorted stuff in each - one had fridges, one stoves, one couches, one tables, etc.  There was a mix of different stuff we did here; some involved unloading trucks of stuff and organizing it among the different rooms, and the other major work we did was taking stuff from the different areas and loading it up in people's cars (who need it).  We had a blast doing it all, like the Beggars for the Poor program, it really felt like we were helping these people.  Plus, whenever there weren't trucks to be unloaded, or vans/cars to be loaded, we enjoyed checking out the many different pieces of furniture   We found folding rocking chairs (cool), a massive couch (literally, a foot bigger on every side than a normal couch!), a super-comfy recliner (I almost fell asleep in it), and a rocking lazy-boy (yeah, pretty awesome).  Let's just say that we had a great time!  (we finished around 2:45 PM)

Saturday afternoon, after returning from the sophomore service stuff, I worked on the Shakespeare paper of doom.  OK, so it's not that bad, but I spent hours watching plays on YouTube while reading/making notes in the book.  I finally took a break and said Evening Prayer, it was so peaceful in the chapel, and while praying about it I finally got an idea for a thesis of my paper (prayer works folks!, I had been wrestling with that for days...).  Anyway, I got a few paragraphs assembled and then was pretty tired of Shakespeare, so I went out with a few guys to get some food.  We went to a place called Nick's Chili, which had a great selection of different chili-related food (chili, cool hot-dogs, burgers, fries...).  I ended up going with the 5-way chili (I guess it's called "5-way" because it has chili, beans, noodles, cheese, and onions).  It was fantastic!  Totally recommended!  I don't remember anything all that awesome happening Saturday evening, I guess I just hanged out with the guys, but I got to bed at a reasonable time (10 PM-ish).

This morning, we didn't run because one of the guys wasn't available, so I got to sleep in until 8:30 (It was wonderful).  Mass was great, I was concentrating relatively well, and the songs that Daniel chose were awesome (it included my all time favorite "Jesus Christ is Risen Today!").  After Mass the Frisbee game that was supposed to be played today (at Marian) was rained out, so I just hung out until lunch.  Today it was done by the Bruns family (Corey is one of the bloggers I mentioned before); they made shrimp and chicken Alfredo (fantastic), Caesar salad (my favorite), fruit salad (wonderful), and two kinds of desserts: fruit and chocolate trifles (you know the kind where there is pudding/whipped cream/fruit/whatever else all in a bowl - yeah these were spectacular).  Better yet, there is a ton of leftovers, so tomorrow's dinner will be just as good.


After lunch about a dozen of us went out behind Bruté and played ultimate Frisbee for about an hour and a half.  It was a blast!  Not only was it a ton of fun, but I felt great the entire time.  All the running that I have been doing has given me a ton more stamina than I had before.  I didn't feel incredibly tired at any point.  Corey took some pictures which I embedded below.  Anyway, after that, I said mid-day prayer, took a shower, and then had dinner. Today was one of the few days where we actually had 2 community dinners (in one day), which was absolutely fantastic.  For dinner the Stenges cooked (Anthony is a wonderful cook and apparently it runs in the family because their dinner was phenomenal).  They had Caesar salad (twice in one day - yeah!), cheesy-hash-brown-bake-stuff (tasty), and pulled pork (anything with bbq sauce is like my favorite food, so this was awesome).  Finally, for dessert they had apple crisp a-la-mode (it was fantabulous).  


OK, well I guess I'll wrap this up (I've just about ran out of adjectives).  After dinner I took a short nap and then went to the Holy Hour.  We said the rosary as a community, I said Evening Prayer by myself, and then read some of Pope Emeritus Benedict's book, Jesus of Nazareth - Part 1.  Let's just say that it was superb.  I'll end with an excerpt: (page 129, chapter 5) - 

The other false form of prayer the Lord warns us against is the chatter, the verbiage, that smothers the spirit.  We are all familiar with the danger of reciting habitual formulas while our mind is somewhere else entirely.  We are at our most attentive when we are driven by inmost need to ask God for something or are prompted by a joyful heart to thank him for good things that happened to us.  Most importantly, though, our relationship to God should not be confined to such momentary situations but should be present as the bedrock of our soul.  In order for that to happen, this relation has to be constantly related back to it.  The more the depths of our souls are directed toward God, the better we will be able to pray.  The more prayer is the foundation that upholds our entire existence, the more we will become men of peace. ... This orientation pervasively shaping our whole consciousness, this silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditation, and our being, is what we mean by "prayer without ceasing."  This is ultimately what we mean by love of God, which is at the same time the condition and the driving force behind love of neighbor.
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Sunday Recap

Well, here I am again with a daily recap.  So much is happening around here and I decided to just roll it all into one post.  Hopefully it makes a little bit of sense, but it probably doesn't...

This is what I didn't get to see at Sacred Heart!
Yesterday, as I briefly mentioned I went to Sacred Heart (here in Indianapolis) to take some notes on how their music was for Mass.  We (I'm in the class with 3 other seminarians and other non-seminarians) have an assignment in music class that requires us to go to a Sunday Mass over the next few weekends and write a paper on the music that they do.  (Does the priest chant anything? does the congregation join in?  what songs are chosen?  do they play an organ or something else?  - you get the picture).  Anyway, Sacred Heart, as I was told before I went, is the most beautiful church in the Arch-diocese of Indianapolis, so I was happy to have picked it.  Of course what I didn't know was that they are currently redoing their floors and Mass was in the church hall...  Yep, that was a bummer.

After I got back from Sacred Heart, I joined a group of guys who were making dinner.  On the weekends we don't go to Marian for food, so we have to either eat at Brute or go out someplace.  Being the guy that I am, I typically lean towards eating here rather than spending money elsewhere.  Thus, I was happy to join these guys making dinner, since it would undoubtedly be better than the microwaveable pizza, ramen noodles, or hamburger that I would have made on my own.  It turned out that they were working on a stir-fry with rice, chicken, green peppers, onions, sliced almonds, and a saucy concoction with soy sauce, garlic, and other unidentified spices.  Either way, it turned out delicious!

So, yesterday evening (now it's like 7:30PM), I joined a different group of guys to go ice skating.  Now, I don't think I have ever been ice skating before (maybe some time when an ice storm covered our back yard???), so I was prepared for the worst.  Nevertheless, I quickly got the hand of it, and had a really, really fun evening.  By the end of the hour and a half, I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to learn how to slide to a stop (by flipping your ankles/skates sideways), to skate backwards (I definitely wasn't too elegant doing that either), and racing with the other guys (which, though I didn't win, was relatively successful at).  I only fell down twice and had tons of fun!  (check out my previous post for a video of one of the races).

Now onto today: the first thing on the schedule was Mass at 9:30 AM.  I scheduled myself to cantor it, so on Friday I got together with Aaron, the other guy who is in charge of musical stuff, who also happened to be the organist this weekend, and we picked out the hymns for today.  Unfortunately, at this time I don't remember all of them (opening, offertory  Communion, and recessional) but the opening one was Forty Days and Forty Nights.  - Sorry, my brain is pretty tired, and I'm just drawing a blank -  I managed to pull off everything, even chanting the responsorial psalm without any disasters (it was my 2nd time doing it), except the hymn for the offertory.  Anyway, that was getting on just great; I started on key, with the organ, hitting all the notes correctly, the other guys even joined in singing, and then I got to the 3rd verse, at which point I started singing the fourth...  Yeah, I was oblivious for about a line, then, during the second line, I was trying to figure out why everybody was singing something different from me, and then (3rd line now) Aaron started singing the correct verse, and I finally figured out where I went wrong...  I actually don't know how noticeable it was to everybody else - at Brute the organ/cantor are in the back, so I was possibly drowned out by the organ and everybody else - that's what I'm hoping anyway.  Ah well, it seems as soon as I'm feeling full of myself (just pulled off the responsorial psalm right!), God gives me a dose of humility...  

dessert looked just like this - except not as elegant
For lunch one of they guy's family came in to cook us lunch.  As always it was fantastic; lasagna  salad, garlic bread, and a strawberry-pie-on-a-cookie dessert.  Yeah, it was awesome!

Next, for the first time, I went to pray (with a few guys) in front of the abortion clinic.  I'll just note that it was a wonderful experience and leave the details for another post.  (Gosh, I feel like I keep relegating some tidbit to another post and then never get to it...  Sorry, these things take time, and I just don't have much right now...)

When we got back from that around 2:30 we went for a run.  This time we had another guy join the normal group of us (bring the total to 5), who happens to generally run a bit faster than our typical 7:40 pace (more on that in a bit).  It's really funny; I used to always laugh at  those crazy runners that are out pounding the pavement when it's freezing outside.  Well, that's been me for the last week; today was actually a bit warmer than our last run, and it was maybe a bit above 30 degrees.  After a mile or two you do warm up, but until then it's pretty chilly.  Anyway, today was our higher mileage day, so we were doing a four mile loop.  Josh, the "new" guy to our group, really floored the pace when we made the last turn about 2/3 of a mile from Brute (which happens to be 2/3 of a mile uphill) and I drifted slowly off the back.  Thankfully, the other guys were feeling the burn and also began to drift apart, but I only managed to catch up to one of them in the last sprint...  It turned out to be a faster time per mile (under 7:30) then what we typically do for 3 miles, so, yeah, we were cruising.  It was good for me I'm sure, but I'm still pretty sore.

After getting back from the run, I took a hot shower, and then studied with some guys for a theology test on Friday.   (I had avoided doing any schoolwork on Sundays so far this semester, but I was pressed for time, and it was theology, so I did it.)  Then I Skyped with the family until almost 7, when we have a community Holy Hour, and then I ate some dinner, watched a show with the guys, worked on the blog, and now I'm off to bed.  Have a great Monday folks; do something fun!
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