Birthday week

At the Morning and Evening prayer hours of the Liturgy of the Hours, we have an opportunity as members of this community to voice specific prayers of intercession after the given prayers of intercession have been recited. Often Oblates will pray for intentions present in their lives; we pray for any Oblates who are traveling or for important meetings that are going on in the government or in the Church. We also offer prayers of intercession for our immediate family on their birthdays, as well as on the birthdays of Oblates everywhere in the world (yes, we keep a list). This week was full of Oblate birthdays (hopefully mine will be among them soon) including Fr. Jeremy (vocation director). It is really nice to celebrate milestones in each others' lives with a personal touch added at dinner that day, whether it is for a birthday or an anniversary of vows or ordination. The sense of family, community, brotherhood, and, in all of these, mutual support, is very evident.

Since my brother, John, is learning to write and is now expressing himself in more complete sentences, he wrote me a birthday note, which my parents scanned and emailed to me. Here it is. Corrected for spelling, it reads: "Happy Birthday, Paul! Dear Paul, In all of the years that I've known you, I have noticed how smart you are about computers." Awesome!

This week was a bit more challenging than most with respect to obligations at school; I had a major presentation on Friday in Medieval Philosophy, covering the second half of Book IV from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy for the second hour of our class period. I had to prepare an exposition of the text, relate it to the rest of the book, and relate it to other philosophers, while fielding my classmates questions both of clarification and of relation to still other philosophical thinkers and ideas. It was a great experience and I think it went well. Our instructor, Sr. Mary Veronica (same name as Sr. Teresa's novice mistress!), asked me later to do further research on a connection we made to Einstein's theory of relativity to present briefly next week and that she might use in future classes. Apparently she's interested in philosophy of science and seeing concretely how thinkers in ancient and medieval times anticipated modern technical discoveries.

In Shakespeare this week, we covered The Merchant of Venice, a charming comedy about a young man who seeks a wife but needs to borrow money from his dear friend in order to pursue her. His friend procures a loan for him on the credit established by his sailing ventures, which fall through. The woman he seeks is very clever and virtuous, and meanwhile clandestinely goes to court and to settle a disagreement between her suitor's friend and his creditor, bringing everyone home happily and married. As always in Shakespeare, there is much intertwining of plots and, as we are studying specifically this semester, hints at authentically Catholic doctrine as concerns ethics and virtues and vices. Here, the primary themes are justice and mercy, while there is also a representation of liberality, as taught by Aristotle and later Aquinas. There are also scenes that use a liturgically-inspired form or uniquely biblical images, and where the church is rightly involved (such as in a marriage), it is. Another thing that we highlighted in the course is that Shakespeare often places his personification of virtue in a female character, which is consistent with the Catholic view of the dignity of the human person without preference of gender and as a challenge to male-dominated social structures.

So it's been fun, and I look forward to many more fun and intense weeks such as this one! 



Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca