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Christmas in New York
2007-12-29 06:09:00
I have been home in New Jersey for about a week now and? well, I DO love my family, but? I?ve been home for a week now. Before I left for Christmas break, I was talking to my spiritual director and I told her that I was thinking about spending the night during break in New York City. My spiritual director asked why didn?t I take two nights. So I said, ?Hey, I?ve got a great idea ? why don?t take two nights??One of the great gifts of this life is the ability to have a place to stay in almost any region of the country, and the Paulist Mother House is located about a block from Central Park and is within walking distance of practically everything the Manhattan Christmas universe. And the nice thing is that, having been part of the community for eighteen whole months, is that now most of the New York guys know my name when I come into their common room and start drinking their beer.I hopped on the New Jersey transit, opened a book I got for Christmas (Into the Wild by Jon Krackeur),...
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Papal Fever!
2007-12-28 14:22:00
Last month the big news was announced that the Pope is going to be coming to Washington, DC in April, which has produced mixed reactions in the house. Now we have our contingent of ?Pope-a-philes? who have been trading Cardinal Ratzinger bubble gum cards since the Reagan administration. And we also have our contingent who, if they were not going to someday promise unswerving loyalty to this man, would be organizing protests and? well, I don?t know if they?d be burning Vatican flags? but they?d have big signs on any number of issues. BIG!!! As for me, I?m rather agnostic on the matter. On the one hand, being that we have a lot of spare rooms and the Pope will be saying Mass about a half of a block away, I think that our house should ring all of the money we can out of this event for the community. On the other hand, I don?t find myself compelled to join the ?People excited the Pope is coming? community on Facebook; I just saw Bruce Springsteen play two live shows with the E Stre...
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Ralphie and Golden Compass
2007-12-28 05:42:00
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me wondering what I thought of the big controversy with the movie "The Golden Compass ." At first I didn't know what she was talking about - I had seen the trailer in the theaters but it looked like another knock-off of "Lord of the Rings," except this time starring James Bond. But then when I heard that the movie was being condemned by the Catholic League, I thought to myself "Okay, what's Bill Donahue frothing at the mouth this time?"In the interests of full disclosure, I have not yet seen the film, so as much as I'd like to I can't throw in my usual argument of not criticizing a film until you've seen it. (Rats - I usually love that argument too.) But I had two knee-jerk reactions that I find worth exploring.My first is that by reacting hysterically to a movie... the terrorists win. At first, I didn't pay it too much mind because a movie reviewer for the US Catholic Conference of Bishops... who SAW the movie... gave it a good r...
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Christmas Grace
2007-12-25 13:32:00
For Christmas dinner, in my new state in life I am now being expected to say grace for all of the main holiday dinners. My family has never been big "grace-sayers," so a part of me is getting over some akwardsness at being the new "representative." But I did find a great quote by our founder Isaac Hecker in our Paulist Prayer book under the Advent prayers that I thought summed up the "reason for the season."To send a man back eighteen [or twenty-one] centuries, or tell him to read a book, however good, when he feels the pressing need of the love of the infinite God in his heart, is downright mockery. If Christ is to be to us a Savior, we must find him here, now, and where we are, in this age of ours also; otherwise he is no Christ, no Savior, no Immanuel, no ?God is with us.?So on this Christmas, we thank God for all of the times he has been with us in this past year, whether we knew it or not, and we thank God for all of the times He will be with us in the coming year and on th...
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Santa Claus and other Patron Saints
2007-12-24 19:38:00
A few weeks ago, the Catholic Church (as well as other denominations) celebrated the feast of St. Nicolas. Yes, the one and the same: Santa Claus . As it turns out, before his years of battling the Heat-Miser, he was a very important bishop in modern day Turkey in the early 300s - there is even a tradition where he served at the Council of Nicea. That evening, my formation director walked by my room with his head buried in the Ordo. The Ordo is like a Wikipedia of prayers and feast days of saints for the Church year? except in book form, so I guess you could also say it?s like an encyclopedia? except it?s more like a single volume encyclopedia, and it?s smaller? Okay, you get the idea. Anyway, he was completely amazed at the number of things that have St. Nicolas as their patron saint. A patron saint is kind of a ?sponsor? of a particular group of people or a specific cause, kind of like how Tostitos sponsors the Fiesta Bowl or how Good Year sponsors aerial footage. (On a side note, ...
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Christmas Cards
2007-12-17 16:36:00
Every year I try to make my own Christmas Cards . The past couple of years I sent out CDs of various mixes I have made, but most of the time I draw my own design. One, it gives me an excuse to pick up the pencil and paper - I used to draw comic strips and the Christmas Card always serves as a good excuse to put pen to paper. The other reason I like to do them because it gives me the opportunity to write a personal note instead of a prepackaged note like "Seasons Greetings" or "Blessings of Christmas" or "But this year I am feeling like I have boxed myself into a corner. Now that I am in this religious life, I am wondering what the expectations are now for the note inside. If some people just get wished a "Happy New Year" do they feel ripped off on some level because I forgot to wish them a "Holy New Year"? And am I supposed to end notes with "In Christ" now that I am a seminarian? And what does "In Christ" mean anyway? Would it make me seem less holy if I ended letters or car...
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Homily on John the Baptist
2007-12-13 22:58:00
I have been told that one productive way to read the Bible is to take a passage and imaging yourself in that situation. But I have to confess that when I read about John the Baptist , and imagine myself as an onlooker of the drama he was involved in, I get concerned. Have you ever been in New York City, and seen one of those guys with the sandwich boards saying that the world is going to end tomorrow ? Repent! John the Baptist reminds me of one of those guys? and if I lived back in those times and came across his path, I?d probably do what I do when I?m in Manhattan ? keep on walking. He dresses weird, his hair is all over the place, he eats locusts and wild honey in the desert, constantly screaming his head off. For a guy who was supposed to cleansing souls, he sure had a sloppy appearance. But this is where I have another confession to make: very passionate protestors really annoy me. Even when the Iraq War was getting under way, and I had mixed feelings about the whole thin...

Finals are over!
2007-12-12 23:01:00
I am in full frolicking mode. I just spent half of the day at the National Museum of Art with some friends - I have no idea what I am going to do tonight... but that's the whole point.Now that vacation is here, I am hoping to devote some more time to the blog. I have a bunch a posts from the past few months that are about half-written that I never got the opportunity to finish, so I promise to be more on the ball over the next couple of weeks. Thanks for all of the prayers and well wishes for finals!
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Last Final is Tomorrow
2007-12-11 05:05:00
I have my last final tomorrow night. After that, I will have FOUR WHOLE DAYS until we get to leave for home for the Christmas holiday. I will have four whole days to frolic - frolic I tell you, frolic - around the Mall of DC, watch Christmas movies, play video games. It will be glorious.But... that doesn't start for another 24 hours. Any prayers or well wishes are appreciated - going to be up LATE tonight!
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So... um... no nuclear weapons in Iran
2007-12-07 15:11:00
So... Bush knew that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons yet still kept up the rhetoric anyway in an effort to scare the American people. Wish this wasn't the first time he had done this.Testify Keith.
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Papal Names
2007-12-04 04:05:00
Today was the last day of classes, and I have to say that by and by, it has been a very good semester. Especially my Church History class - I know American History like the back of my hand, but there is so much Roman and Medieval History that I just don't know (outside of what I've learned form the DiVinci Code of course) that it was good to at least get a sense of where all of the "things" we do in Church come from and why.You know how one of the cool things about "Batman Begins" was that we finally learned about how Batman gets his Batmobile and Bat-suit? It was kind of like that... with Constantine playing the role of Commissioner Gordon. For our last class, our professor handed out for us a sheet of paper with all of the Papal Shields on them. I looked at all of the names, and it occurred to me that when somebody is elected Pope, they really don't have much time to chose the name they will assume. They get elected in the Sistine Chapel... and then they've got to rush to...
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The Biggest Loser
2007-12-02 07:00:00
Last night was weigh in for "The Biggest Loser ." A bunch of us. Being that I am about 3 slices of pumpkin pie from having to buy that manzier, I thought it would be good to participate. Seven of us are in it, and each week the bottom two "contestants" (the ones who have lost the least amount of weight) have to kick five dollars into the pot. It is based on the percentage of weigh in.So far, I have lost five pounds. At the same time, as much as it behooves one to personally succeed, it also behooves one to see that others fail. I came back to my room and there was a Heineken with two bags of potato chips waiting for me at my door. Like I drink German beer. I put the beer and chips above my door as a testament to willpower, to show all in the land that their silly attacks on me will be for naught... like England used to put the heads of its criminals on pikes and display them along the fence of the castle for ALL to see. So I am eating my carrots and biding my time. Retributio...
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Vocation discussion
2007-11-29 03:46:00
We've had a lot of discussion within the community regarding vocations. In absence of an actual post, I thought I would the two cents I sent out on our list serve.A lot of discussion has gone on concerning the state of vocations, and the same question continually pops into my mind:Is it our mission to be a religious community... or is it our mission to evangelize North America? In asking that question, I am in no way suggesting that we take our foot off of the pedal in trying to pursue more people to join our community. Indeed, I do agree that there is more that we could be doing to invite men to become Paulist priests and we should be doing all we can in that area. But it also seems to me that the heydays of vocations largely had a culture of vocation behind it (Catholic schools, families with eight kids, culture localized a local church, etc.) - for better or for worse, we no longer have that culture to support us in such a dramatic way. This leads into the question of orthod...
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4:30 in the morning (Part 1)
2007-11-25 14:15:00
I'm kind of a four trick pony in the kitchen. As it happens, three of those tricks revolve around Thanksgiving Day, so I volunteered to cook again this year for the big Thanksgiving feast along with another student. We were the same duo that cooked the feast last year and we compliment each other well. I make the turkey, sweet potato casserole, and homemade cornbread stuffing; he makes the greens, mac and cheese, oatmeal cookies, corn pudding, and spiral ham. If you have been taking notes, you will notice that all of the food items listed are brown; even the inconvenient color of the ?greens? is rectified by cooking them in grease and stirring in large quantities of ham. Because dinner is at noon, we have to get up at 4:30 in order to put the turkeys in the oven. It has been tradition of mine to listen to Frank Sinatra during Thanksgiving prep, so after the turkeys are in the oven I put on the "Franks Thanks" playlist on my iPod and start on the homemade stuffing. The corn b...
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4:30 in the Morning (Part 1 ½):Joe's Thanksgiving Homily
2007-11-25 07:37:00
Here is the text from Joe Gallagher's homily from 1984 read by my superior for Thanksgiving .I like Thanksgiving. There?s something very basic and uncomplicated about it. It takes a good old human sentiment like gratitude, and says to us: ?OK everybody, you know all those things you feel good about? Let?s all concentrate today and say thanks for them. Let?s have a party and celebrate. God is good and we?ve felt that goodness.? And that?s really all there is to it. The wonderful thing is that, with the possible exception of the turkey merchants, no one has yet succeeded in commercializing this one. It?s still ours and I hope we never let it get away from us.Also, it?s a native American product, as every schoolchild knows. It?s part of our history and our national life and that?s probably what makes it so comfortable and appealing. It belongs - - in our families, in our houses, and in our public life. No one is asking the Supreme Court to get this one off the public domain.So, in add...
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4:30 in the Morning (Part 2)
2007-11-23 13:31:00
There are many days when I lament celibacy. Valentine's Day is one of those days. The release of the SI Swimsuit Issue is another day. But while watching holiday movies Thanksgiving night and being subjected to commercial after commercial about husbands and boyfriends buying their significant others jewelry that's ON SALE for $5,000, a deep wave of satisfaction covers my being. On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful to be single.Seriously, what family sits sits around the dinner table and comments "He went to Jareds!" Dude, if you ever visit your woman's family and they know what jewelry store you went to, saw that ring off of her finger and get out while you can. If I ever do change my mind about this priesthood gig, I am going to do my ring shopping somewhere else, just so people around the holiday table can look at my fiancee's ring and say, "He went to Costco!"Not that I myself have not been swept up by the spirit of the season. The Pope is coming to Washington, DC in...
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And now they meet face to face
2007-11-16 19:03:00
It's not a big secret that when I first arrived at seminary, I didn't really want to be here. God was essentially dragging me by the back of my shirt into this new life with the Paulists and I was not happy... the blog is not entitled "Kicking and Screaming" for nothing.As many of you may know, the first few weeks of my novitiate (first year) was spent on the road visiting various Paulist parishes and foundations. At each stop, we would spend a few days and listen to the priests of each house... every one of them, every one of them... talk about their life as a Paulist while we novices ("freshmen") soaked in their wisdom like the SpongeBob SquarePantses we were.After a few stops, though, the Porifera of our heads were decreasingly able to absorb the holy water presented to us. One guy (who shall remain nameless) talked to us for two hours straight and DidNotInhaleOnce. About ninety minutes into his talk he mentioned something about AIDS ministry; I thought to myself "Thank Go...
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Prayers for Fr. Joe
2007-11-14 00:28:00
On one of my earlier posts, I mentioned Fr. Joe from Grand Rapids - a really great guy. I received world that he has suffered a big fall and is currently in the hospital. With the advancement of his Parkinson's, he is in really bad shape so I just wanted to ask for prayers on his behalf. Thanks.
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Please Re-Read Ground Rule Number One
2007-11-10 13:58:00
Warning: This post may get a little snotty. But I have to enforce some rules.I know that they are buried along the side, but I would like to ask some readers to visit the Ground Rule s listed in the right margin. Or click here for the original post.Rule 1: No advice giving.This is a particularly sensitive time in my life and I have a habit of thinking out loud, which I would like to do here for myself as well as to share any process I might be going through, warts and all. So for at least the time being, I'd feel better if I didn't receive any advice on what I write or where I'm at in my life unless I ask for it... even if it's blatantly obvious to everybody else what I should be doing, thinking, etc. That doesn't mean that I won't ever ask, but this way I'll feel a lot more comfortable in being as honest as possible, even if I haven't quite arrived at a certain place.For some reason (who knows, maybe it's because of the cancelation of fall) I have been getting a spike in ...
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An anthropologic observation
2007-11-05 05:38:00
I am doing a paper right now (after a crazy week of mid-terms), so I'm still not back in the place of writing long posts. However, I have made one observation while attending classes at the Theological Union. Whenever I have sneezed, the response from others has ALWAYS been "God Bless You." Now, it's not that much of a surprise, but I have noticed that I have not heard the word "Gesundheit" once. I mean... ever. It makes me wonder which would get me more dirty looks in the cafeteria, shouting the "G" word or the "F" word.I think one other reason I have not written a lot is that I have been doing a lot of wrestling with God as of late. Well, it's been all of the time, but I think that I've been getting pinned more lately. Before I was able to wriggle and worm my way out of any choke holds or death grips, but it gets tiring after a while. My opponent on the other hand doesn't seem to; God and Barry Bonds must see the same pharmacist. I will say that a lot of it has been g...
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Studies update
2007-10-19 02:28:00
Overall, classes have been going well - I am largely on top of things. But as I have mentioned before, it has been somewhat of a shock to the system from having nothing to do in the novitiate (first year) to being a full-time student with many house obligations and extra seminars. And there are snacks all over the house; a person goes to Costco every few weeks and makes sure that there is enough to satisfies everyone's sweet tooth and then some. With the time constraints, getting out and exercising has been difficult, so all of the sweets I have been munching on during studies are not being worked off in any systematic manner. When I was praying to God the other night and bemoaning the lack of breasts in my life, I did not think that He would respond my giving me some breasts of my own.
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Faith Club
2007-10-16 18:01:00
During studies... or lets face it, during ANYTHING... I have a hard time keeping focused. But during studies, it is especially hard. Especially if I go online and see what the latest news is; there's not telling what new and shiny link is waiting to tempt me into putting off my studies for yet another 4-and-a-half minutes. So the other day, while simultaneously prepping for my Philosophy mid-term and reading about George W. Bush's self-described courageous stance of denying health care to children on cnn.com, something caught my eye.Earlier in the day in the midst of studying... Okay, driving back from Dunkin' Donuts with a tasty Dunkaccino in an effort to rev myself up for studying... I was reflecting on why would people need faith in the first place. Don't ask me why my mind had wandered here - it might have had something to do with the fact that it would have been mine and my ex's anniversary - but it struck me again that people seem to truly need faith in when they ha...
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A Small Annoyance
2007-10-02 04:46:00
Okay, I hadn't been seeing this as much in my first year. But now that I am starting to read more theological material and I am starting to find myself surrounded - much like King Leonidas at the final battle in the movie "300" - by people who are really into this "stuff" in school, my gripe is this...Would it kill you to use an article with a noun?Seriously. Phrases with sentence structure like "Let us gather at Table" and "Using the bread and wine as Sacrament" are appearing with concerning rapidity in both the text that I am reading as well as scholarly conversation. Like, it's SO much more holy by omitting words like "the" and "an" from sentences. I'm sure God hears the phraseology of such religious commentary and thinks to Himself, "Damn straight!" Please, no wonder people think you have to become a zombie in order to become religious.My only request is if I start speaking that way, then could somebody please shoot me with Gun.PS: This post has a correction. Thanks for the c...
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Hometown Address
2007-09-25 03:41:00
Two Sundays ago, I went to my home parish in Baltimore to take part in a local celebration for my First Promises in August. It was a really great event and I will be writing more about it later. I have been swamped with work, so sorry for the long gaps in between posts, but here is the reflection I gave to the parish. If any one out there is wondering if our God is a patient God, let the fact that I am standing here right now give the answer, ?Yes? He? IS.? As you may have heard, I?ve been away for the past year. Last August, I sold my house, packed my car, and drove down to Washington DC to enter a year of novitiate with the Paulists. The Paulists are a religious community that was founded 150 years ago by Isaac Hecker. Hecker was born a Methodist in New York City in the 1800s and spent a lot of time with transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau before converting to Catholicism and founding the Paulists. He founded the Paulists in order to bring...
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A Reflection for the Day After 9-11
2007-09-13 04:59:00
I had to do a student led prayer this evening, so I thought I would do it on where we are at now as a country after 9-11. I played "Into the Fire" by Bruce Springsteen as part of the prayer, but below is the "reflection" part of the service.I know that not everyone in this room is from the United States, but as an apostolic society that is called to serve the North American continent, I thought today might be a good day to reflect. Not only to remember those who lost their lives that day, but being that today is the day after September 11th, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we are as a people now, six years after the event.I remember at the time feeling like this was a pivotal moment, that there was more going on than simply the first major terrorist attack on US soil. At the time, I thought I would never forget that day, what the country was like, what the country was feeling, what I was feeling. And I was wondering? how would a nation, that had not seen war on her...
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Busy Busy Busy
2007-09-06 02:54:00
So a friend of mine asked me recently, when I was talking to him about all of the free time I had during the novitiate, if this was like a prospective employer taking you out to a really nice restaurant in order to butter you up to join his firm. Then once you're hired, the nice lunches and the special treatment magically stop. And when you might confront your employer about this sudden change, you would hear "Yesterday you were a prospect, today you're staff." After getting the schedule for the coming year, I can see how that is indeed the case now that I am a student. Sex seminars (AKA "no sex" seminars), family time (time with our fellow students than can be very Oprah on good days and Maury on bad days), programs, and lectures... all in addition to going to class. The tragic reality that becoming a priest is in fact NOT about going to coffee shops in Berkeley and having gobs of time to read books and go to matinées. Talk about a bait and switch... I may be calling the Be...
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525,600 Minutes
2007-08-30 22:30:00
I arrived at St. Paul's College exactly one year ago today.... 4:30 in the afternoon to be exact. I remember driving down, half in a rush from packing up my house (as much as I could) and shoving what I was bringing with me into my car. The past week was a mad rush to take care of everything... I will forever be grateful for my sister, my sister's roommate, my next door neighbor, and a former co-worker for all of their last minute help in getting me out the door.Driving down, I could not help but feel that this day was a dividing line between my old life and what was to come. Things were going to be different now... and in all likelihood I was not going back. I had no knowledge of the spiritual and emotional roller coaster that lay ahead.The new novices arrived yesterday I am no longer the low man on the totem pole. Last night I walked by the room where the three new novices were sitting in for their opening meeting. I remember that meeting I went to last year that was bei...
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I have a question
2007-08-30 02:04:00
I'm feeling a little bit more nervous about classes, especially this Pentatah... Pentagogy... Penta... Pent up frustration that there is indeed a lot more history in the world that happened before the American Revolution. (I know... I can't believe it either!) I can name all of the Presidents... Pharaohs are a completely different story, and evidentially they were important in the telling of the Old Testament. The professor goes through a flurry of different civilizations that warred with one another, worshiped different Gods, built cities with big walls, all thousands of years before the Old Testament even takes place. I actually found myself wishing that the Fundamentalists Christians were right about the Bible so that there would be less material to cover. After a another flurry of rulers who seem to have no connection to each other, the professor finally writes "Ramses II" on the board. This jogs something loose in my brain; I raise my hand."Is that guy Yule Brenner?"The...
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August Repeats
2007-08-28 17:18:00
Today is the Feast of St. August ine. And I have to confess that I don't know a lot about him. But at some point I am hoping that the "Confessions of Saint Augustine" is going to be on a syllabus of a class I am taking. It would really help me to learn about how somebody who uttered the phrase "O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet" came to faith. After a sexuality seminar I took last week, I need all of the help I can get.So with that in mind, here is a link to the post I did linking Counting Crows and Augustine a few months ago. Sorry I don't have more time for more, but I'm back in school now. If I ever read the Confessions, I will let you know.

Back To School Again
2007-08-28 03:49:00
While I did take classes over the summer for philosophy, my real education starts today. Masters classes at Washington Theological Union. My five-subject notebook and my Trapper Keeper are ready.I can't get the opening song from Grease 2 out of my head, "Back To School Again"... damn HBO. I do know a few people attending WTU, but not that many. It's hard not to fall back into familiar patterns of wondering who are the equivalent of the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies; something tells me that there won't be too many Pink Ladies here. At one point I thought I saw a Franciscan with a big white "T" on the back of his brown habit, but that might have been a cross.My first class of the day is at 8:30 - the Pentateuch, which covers the first five books of the Bible. It's a bit of a struggle... I am not naturally a morning person, and given the timing I need to leave the house right after morning prayer at 8:45, which means I have to wake up even earlier than that to make sure I am ready to...
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