A Wintry Walk

I went for a walk with Br. Jerry this afternoon; it was brisk out but very picturesque! Here are a few shots to give you an idea...


This week was quite busy with studying for a Modern Philosophy midterm examination and reading up on John Rawls' Political Liberalism for Contemporary Philosophy. Greek demands more and more time as we go along, to keep all of the grammar and vocabulary fresh, but it is an exciting course and a fun, deeper look into more authentic textual interpretations of Sacred Scripture (and I've always loved studying languages!). We got our grades back on our Logic exams, and were proud to hear that Dr. Lang was impressed with them! Since we know our Logic well, we now proceed to Epistemology, the study of the certitude (truth) of human knowledge and how it is that we know.

It's also been quite cold this week - things really cooled off on Wednesday into Thursday, at which point, with all of us freezing everywhere but the kitchen, we decided it was time to fire up the boiler and warm the house up a bit. It's still frugally cool throughout the house, but at least it's liveable. Boston saw its first snow Friday night and a little more last night, as you can see in the photos, but things should warm up a bit before we really hit winter. It doesn't typically snow until late December, but may snow as late as April or even May.

The next three days will be interesting. Tomorrow night, we begin the vigil of the Solemnity of All Saints (All Hallows' Eve, or Halloween), at which point we postulants will begin a day of recollection at our St. Joseph's Retreat House in Milton. All Saints is a feast to acknowledge and rejoice in the lives and gifts of those who have gone before us and done the Will of the Father. These men and women whose lives of faith were heroic in various ways, some through their radical conversions, some for the testimony of the sacrifice of their lives, and others through their quiet fidelity to Christ's invitation to a life of love. We can find great encouragement in knowing that they were able, insofar as their humanity was capable of embracing God's grace allowing Him to work through the willingness of their lives, to do what the Lord asked of them, and that, as we find ourselves in similar circumstances, we may do the same. We can also beg their intercession for us in our many and varied trials, that they intercede for us with the Father in obtaining graces for us, for our many needs.

Then Wednesday, we will commemorate All Souls' day, a time to remember those who have died, especially those who have died over the past year, and to offer prayers of intercession on their behalf that God might bring them into the glory of His eternal kingdom. We find evidence of this both in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews and in the second book of Maccabees - those who believed offered prayers and sacrifices on behalf of those who had died, in order that they might be granted eternal salvation. We often hear the phrase "the poor souls in purgatory," which has some truth, as many common phrases do: the souls in purgatory, while they do not suffer eternal fire, nevertheless endure a pain for their purification, a pain brought about by their sins, and their poverty consists in their helplessness on their own - they need us to pray for them, to offer sacrifices for them, and to allow them to help us on our faith journey. We also hear the souls in purgatory referred to as "holy" and "blessed" and this, too, is true, for while they had sufficient faith and good works in their lives to merit salvation from eternal punishment, their shortcomings in "making up" or atoning for the sins that they did commit require the satisfaction of purgatory as a final cleansing of their souls before their entry into the fullness of the beatific vision in heaven.

So let us ask the intercession of all the saints, those canonized and those as yet unknown by name to the Church on earth, and that of the poor holy souls in purgatory, that we may persevere in faith in our lives, bearing the fruit of good works, that our lives may be pleasing to our Maker and we may join Him and the angels and saints in the light of eternal glory!

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Mount Wachusett Hike

I took a few pictures on our Mt. Wachusett hike for Columbus Day. The Fall colors are just starting to come in. After the hike, we had dinner with Josh's parents, who live just a few miles from there.

Back to studying for another busy week of classes!


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Descartes and the Holy Rosary

What do René Descartes and the Holy Rosary have in common? Not too much, actually. They just coincided for me this week!

In Modern Philosophy, we completed our study of those thinkers who made the transition from the Medieval period into the Modern period in Philosophy. Prior to Descartes, we had studied the Italian Renaissance philosophers Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Francisco Suárez, and others. The major idea in the Modern period was coming to some understanding of how we do or do not come to know things, especially the "physical" universe and our senses, and also approaching the "God question." The Contemporary period, which I am studying concurrently, focuses on political and legal philosophies, questioning the basis for morality and how that should be incorporated into governments to support stable and diverse societies. Descartes doubts everything, which eventually leads him to concede that his being deceived is a proof for his existence, though this doubt and deception are only mental, thus: "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). A bit strange... and his example of his experience of wax melting and all his dreams makes me wonder whether his Meditations on First Philosophy inspired the movie Inception, which contains dreams within dreams and ends in a suspenseful state in which we are unsure whether the whole thing was a dream or whether it, in fact, started in reality.

On Friday, October 7, we celebrated the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. The morning homily reflected on the Rosary's structure and usefulness in our lives - it is a prayer composed of short prayers that are very familiar and thus frees us to meditate on the mysteries in the life of Christ, seen through Mary's eyes, and can calm and even heal us. In the evening, we carpooled to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross for the solemn profession of vows as a diocesan hermit of Mary Thérèse Inoue, the sacristan at our St. Francis Chapel in the Prudential Center. Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley, OFM Cap. began his homily with a story of living through the Cold War era, seeing the fear in peoples' faces and all of the precautions taken to have shelter in the case of an attack. He then brought the warfare idea into the spiritual realm, calling to mind the many attacks against our faith and against human dignity in our time, and identified the Rosary as a primary means of engaging in this spiritual warfare. He then shifted to the heroic statement of Mary's response to the Lord's call for her to live a life dedicated to prayer and penance as a hermit here. We all noticed the strong spousal imagery throughout the ceremony, indicating that the hermit now takes Christ as her bridegroom and draws ever nearer to Him in order to be united to Him at the end of her life.

Tomorrow, we will take our day off for Columbus Day and go for a hike at Mt. Wachusett, and make a couple other stops before returning home to study for the week of classes to come. We should be able to take some good pictures of the Fall colors here in New England!

With the feast of the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima approaching, let us renew our zeal for asking the intercession of Mary, our Mother, for a renewal of Gospel values and respect for human dignity everywhere in our times, especially by praying the Rosary well and often.

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Recollection and Evolution

Today was a nice break from the not-quite-fast-paced-yet-full schedule of the seminary. We had a day of recollection with two conferences from Fr. Chris O'Connor, Vice-Rector of St. John's Seminary. It was good to have another of the faculty join us here at St. Clement's to get a more personal sense of who the Oblates are.

He spoke on various themes surrounding priestly formation, primarily the need for honesty and trust on both sides of the seminarian-formator arrangement. He also shared many stories of his own priestly ministry that illustrate the various points he was making. He opened with the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19, inviting us to take notice of the Lord passing by and respond to His presence by "climbing a tree." This relates to a previous image that came to me in prayer, accompanying the phrase from a Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer: "You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank You is itself Your gift." My image was that of a turtle reaching up its head while the rest of its body remained on the ground under its shell, a symbol of the weight of worldly realities of our human experience that we seek with the slightest movement of "our own" to reach for higher things, the things of God.

Evolution comes into the picture with tonight's movie choice. A fellow postulant chose Expelled, a documentary by Ben Stein about the arguments not only in support of Evolution as a partial or complete explanation of the origin and history of life on earth but also in support of Intelligent Design as such an explanation and then about the startling atmosphere of censorship with respect to raising the possibility of Intelligent Design as such an explanation. Stein follows several researchers and leading authors in each school to determine not only each of their stance with respect to the scientific theories and/or world view, but also their perception of the reality of censorship of not only proponents of Intelligent Design but honest scientists and journalists pursuing reasonable dialogue on the general question. In the documentary, Stein continually refers to Naziism and the Berlin Wall as a direct analogue to Darwinism (and actually investigates a real connection there) and modern-day censorship of the voice of those seeking to investigate Intelligent Design. He asserts in closing that truth and freedom will prevail, using quotes from Reagan's famous "Tear Down This Wall" speech.

Otherwise, this week was more normal and packed full of interesting things in class like the irrelevance of truth in John Rawls' political liberalism, the modern era philosophers who filled gaps in their science with faith-based explanations, a soup of Greek pronouns, and the mighty Categorical Syllogism! I also got to meet briefly with pilgrims going with Fr. Jeremy to various religious sites in Canada and praying for vocations, and I donated platelets downtown yesterday.

Today, as we celebrated the memorial of St. Therese of Lisieux, we were invited to reflect on her life of complete self-sacrifice, in the smallest things, and constantly, to the point that this way of life was so instructive that the Church calls her "Doctor." Let us take her example of humility and offer the daily sacrifice of our lives for the salvation of all!

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca