This week has been incredible. I had two major assignments: a paper (25% of my grade) for Ancient Philosophy and a quiz (10% of my grade) in Latin. The paper was just a selection of quotes from a chapter of one of our texts, indicating the most important points, but those 30 pages of reading turned into 11 pages of quotes, almost 7,000 words, and took over 3 hours to type up, even with my quick typing (average 80wpm) - I had to do it in 4 shifts in order to avoid Carpal tunnel distress and combat typing fatigue that reduces my typing accuracy and makes everything take longer. The Latin quiz was to a vocabulary (translate single words) quiz of 10 questions, taken from a bank of over 100 words we have learned over the past 5 weeks. Each class meeting for the remainder of the term also contains a reading/pronunciation quiz for two students; by the end of the semester, we will all have had our chance at reading aloud, worth another 10% of our final grade.
Friday night, a few of us attended a diaconate ordination of 7 Jesuits at Boston College. Those who were ordained came from all over the country; the presiding bishop was Archbishop Gregory, of Atlanta, GA. It was very nice to see the religious in attendance; there were several Redemptorists, a few Dominicans from Ann Arbor, MI, and many Jesuits, who traveled to concelebrate at the ordination. The music selections were beautiful, including a song I sang with the choir back home: the Ignatian prayer "Take Lord, Receive", also known as the Suscipe, the first word in the Latin version.
Saturday after the Mass, the first Mass at which I played the violin here, I attended a talk by the vocation director of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, from Ann Arbor Michigan. She was accompanied by a 4th-year sister (who studied Computer Science in Texas) and a postulant, who just entered after studying at Harvard and making her Total Consecration to Mary under the direction of Fr. Greg Staab, OMV (just like me! well, not the Harvard part...). It was nice to see Dominicans, and to see that they are doing so well. The Motherhouse in Ann Arbor is bursting at the seams with over 100 members in community and a large postulant class of 22 this year (sounds just like the Nashville community). The sisters stressed how important it is that religious support each other (and, by the same token, that the whole Church support each other), and demonstrated that rather than seeing a decline of interest in the religious life, that vocations abound, witnessed by their 22 entrances and the 100 emails she receives each day. The Dominicans in Ann Arbor also take in a total of 400 women at 3 vocational discernment retreats each year.
We topped off the week with a gourmet pizza dinner, cooked by yours truly and Br. John last night. Till next week,
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
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