Open Wide the Doors for Christ!

A few weeks ago another one of the seniors here got some guys together who wanted to do Lectio Divina [latin for "divine reading"].  I had no knowledge of what this all entailed, but my strategy so far in seminary has been to sign up for everything, so I put my name down.  I guess I did know it involved reading Scripture, something that I wanted to do more for Lent, so that was also a motivation for joining...  Anyway, as I have found out, Lectio Divina basically involves spending an hour with a short snippet of Scripture.  This seems really intimidating at first - and it certainly isn't easy - but the hour is divided up into four periods, lectio [reading], meditatio [meditating], contemplatio [contemplating], and oratio [praying].  If you're going to do this, definitely read a better introduction, but basically these steps involve: 

The three times I have done it have all been really efficacious, not only bringing me to a better understanding of the Scriptures, but also bringing me to a realization of things that I need to work on.  For whatever reason, it always seems to come around when I am really busy, but it's always been worth it.  Now, I could go into how fruitful and beautiful and difficult doing Lectio has been, but I won't.  Instead, I just want to share with you the prayer that I wrote down during the 10 minutes of Oratio on Thursday (something that is a bit more personal than my usual post, I suppose).  Again, our passage was from John 4:7-15 - The Woman at the Well  (this prayer will make a lot more sense if you read the Scripture passage first).

Yesterday afternoon and this morning was the annual seminarian get-together for all the guys from the Springfield Diocese.  It was a blast!  I always love hanging out with the other seminarians from Springfield, not only because they are from my diocese (and I want to get to know them) but also, they are just an absolutely fantastic group of guys.

The bishop wryly noted that his diocese probably has the greatest percentage of "Dominic" seminarians. (2)

Bishop Paprocki had Mass for all the seminarians (along with many of their families) yesterday at 4 PM, and afterword everyone got to talk before dinner together.  Mass was beautiful, it was fun to chat with some of the other guys' families, and dinner was tasty (roast beef, corn, salad, mashed potatoes, and cheese cake).  During dinner the Bishop recounted some stories from his attending WYD last week in Brazil with Pope Francis. Everyone had a good laugh when the Bishop mentioned that a young priest at one of the parishes in Rio knew (now deacon) Steve Arisman, one of the Springfield seminarians.  The joke has gone around (before) that if you dropped the name "Steve Arisman" in the middle of a tribe of cannibals in, you know, some remote jungle, the cannibals would know Steve.  I guess the joke wasn't too far from reality...  After dinner we had all of our pictures taken, this year with a professional setup (backdrop, umbrella light thingy, etc.), so hopefully those will turn out.

Gosh, last night was so much fun!  After the pictures were done, everybody settled down to talking and stuff.  One moment my abs were hurting from laughing so much (there are some pretty good stories from back in the day at Mundelein) and the next moment we were talking about some awesome topic of the faith.  Some examples:

In ancient Israel they placed coins over the eyes of a corpse while wrapping it for burial, and so, on the Shroud of Turin one can see the image of ancient coins.  Some say this shroud is a medieval forgery, others say it is the true burial cloth of Jesus.  Get this: the coins visible on the shroud were only produced between about 25 and 35 AD and all (or almost all) of this particular type of coin were subsequently destroyed by the Roman empire because there was an error that had been inscribed onto them. Interesting...

The Hypostatic Union, the really awesome phrase used to describe the mystery of how Jesus is fully God and fully man has some really amazing (and hard to explain/understand) implications on the connection between His human knowledge (and intellect) and His divine one.  I don't recall all the intricacies, and even if I did, I try to avoid heresy, so I will just say that it was really fascinating.  Give me a few years and some Theology and I will have to revisit the topic...  (Topics that were mentioned included the passive/active intellect, infused knowledge, and others).

Of course, we talked about much, much more (I didn't get to bed until after midnight, and others were still up...), I just wanted to give you guys an idea of how amazing these other guys are - tons of fun, and totally rock-solid in their faith at the same time!

This morning we had a Holy Hour from 7:30 to 8:30 AM, then breakfast, and then a talk by Bishop Paprocki.  He talked about how we often think of evangelization as this complicated process but that really, at its heart, it is just growth.  Growth in individuals (learning and growing in their faith) and also in people on a larger scale (coming into the true faith).  By using the word "growth" he wasn't watering down the need and importance of evangelization, but was using new vocabulary to make the concept more accessible.  I can't recall his entire talk (unfortunately), but I will note that he boiled down the way we can go about working towards this macro and micro level growth in faith (in Jesus Christ through His church) into several areas.  The Mass is, of course, first; we need to grow in our own knowledge and love of the Mass, and not hesitate to invite others to come [back] to the Catholic Church and experience the Mass.  We believe it is the closest thing to Heaven on earth - why don't we share it with everybody?  Another point He made was becoming familiar with the Bible.  This is the Word of God, why aren't we reading it, meditating on it, living it?  Of course, he said lots and lots more...  Unfortunately, I have both limited time and limited memory, so I will have to leave you with that.

Anyway, after the Bishop's talk, we had Mass (which I had the privilege of serving) - which, of course, was great.  Then we had lunch (where we, at least the table I was at, got to talk with the Bishop about his marathon running).  After lunch, everybody said good-bys and took off for their respective homes/assignments/seminaries.

All in all, the get-together was fantastic.  Being with those guys is such a great opportunity to have fun and grow in my faith at the same time.  I wish I could spend more time with all of them; it is somewhat infrequent that I get together with the guys from the other seminaries, and, wow, its just a really awesome time.

Do you all like these style of posts?  I don't really know, they are easy and enjoyable to write, but reading about my (sometimes) boring life could get a little old.  Let me know in the comments!