What a year!
Just when I get used to being at home, the hustle and bustle of Christmas festivities kicks in! I've been told, however, that I wouldn't have it any other way.
Please head over to my main website for my Christmas greetings for this year.
This semester was challenging in new ways. Beginning a new year with new formation staff in the seminary, with new postulants (congratulations to them on a semester well-done!), and several transfers among the professed community, it has felt like starting over in so many ways. But it remains a fact that I began this year with one year of formation already under my belt. I sought to live this semester in the moment, aware of what may lie ahead and conscious of my past, yet not sacrificing the here-and-now for either of those realities. And I had a blast! It was great getting to know Rafael, Matt, Josh, and Scott, learning about their vocational journeys and growing in our relationships with the Lord and with each other. I think we all share the sentiment that it feels like we've been together much longer!
This semester, I completed the History of Philosophy sequence (Modern and Contemporary topped off Ancient and Medieval, which I had last year) and I am now in the final stretch of the Systematic Philosophy course, having just completed Logic & Epistemology, following upon last year's Metaphysics and Ethics (with Philosophy of Nature and some Philosophical Psychology). Next semester will be quite enjoyable academically as I complete my year of New Testament Greek, cruise through Philosophical Psychology, study Inculturation in Asia, and explore Vatican II documents and Old Testament scripture.
We balance the studies with solid prayer and enriching community time. We have certainly done many more varied things than I had experienced last year, from card games to Band of Brothers, walks around the Charles River and throwing darts. Our day trips have taken us out to Mount Wachusett and New Bedford, and our Thanksgiving weekend adventure in Montreal was a beautiful and rejuvenating one.
So at this point, looking back with gratitude and looking forward with a hopeful excitement, let us celebrate Christmas! As Pope Benedict XVI invited us to pray in his "Urbi et Orbi" message for Christmas this year, let us join in calling out, "[Domine,] veni ad salvandum nos" – "[Lord,] come to save us!"
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Closing another semester
Well, I am on the verge of completing another semester here in Boston. It has certainly been a wild ride, and it's not over yet! I still have Modern Philosophy to study for, which is going to be a difficult exam because the subject matter consists of philosophical errors. It is more like literature than philosophy, remembering what each thinker said (though it was wrong) and how they influenced each other.
For those of you who are curious to read some of what I wrote this semester, I've posted my major coursework on Scribd in this collection. Check it out and let me know what you think!
I'll write my end-of-semester wrap-up reflection when I get home... until then, there's plenty of studying, packing, and cleaning to do!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
For those of you who are curious to read some of what I wrote this semester, I've posted my major coursework on Scribd in this collection. Check it out and let me know what you think!
I'll write my end-of-semester wrap-up reflection when I get home... until then, there's plenty of studying, packing, and cleaning to do!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The final stretch
So here we are, the last two weeks of the semester! Actually it's just a week and 3 days. I still have all of my end-of-the-semester coursework due, beginning with a paper and final quiz in Film on Monday. Things are moving along well, but there is still plenty of work to do. We also have our Lessons & Carols service this Tuesday evening (see the St. Clement Shrine website for more information and join us if you're in the Boston area!)
Pope Benedict XVI has made his Christmas wishes public at the lighting of the mountain-sized Christmas tree of lights in Gubbio, Italy. Zenit published his wishes this week. The pontiff asked:
Something that lies at the intersection of the topics of this blog and my technical blog (Penguins 'R' Us) is the recent introduction of .xxx domain names on the Internet to designate sites with "adult content." A news story that was tagged as being relevant to the computer programming field described a business move by prominent academic institutions and various corporations to acquire the .xxx domain names that contain their respective trademarks and brand identities, in order prevent the public from scandal through a presumed affiliation of these organizations with the less-reputable web content that could be posted to sites hosted on those domains. This technique, known as domain squatting, is not an unfamiliar process for large companies, but this is a nuanced case that was not possible until the ICANN decided that it would permit the new .xxx top-level domain (TLD) suffix earlier this year. On the philosophical level, it is an interesting question to ask - is the public availability of .xxx domains a good thing or not? On the one hand, it does enable organizations to filter network traffic to exclude traffic from all .xxx domains, which is much easier than human-assisted blacklisting or keyword-based blacklisting (which inevitably yields both false positives and fails to identify other sites that the organization would desire to block). On the other hand, adult content can still be present on .com and other TLDs, and the press coverage and time and energy spent by the ICANN to decide whether to offer .xxx certainly drew attention to the multi-billion dollar industry and now provides a space within which it can thrive, in a sense enabling and possibly even legitimizing its existence and proliferation. It remains to be seen what economic and ideological impact this move will have on the adult website industry and on consumers of the Internet in general. As always, we can always pray and sacrifice more for the triumph of the culture of life over the culture of death, of which the adult website industry is a strong part, and we can do our part to call attention to the violence that it does to human dignity across the board.
Now it is time to prepare for Mass and then take to the kitchen for a Southeast Asian culinary adventure!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
Pope Benedict XVI has made his Christmas wishes public at the lighting of the mountain-sized Christmas tree of lights in Gubbio, Italy. Zenit published his wishes this week. The pontiff asked:
- "that our gaze, that of our minds and our hearts, not rest only on the horizon of this world, on its material things, but that in some way, like this tree that tends upward, it be directed toward God. God never forgets us but He also asks that we don't forget Him;"
- "that we recall that we also need a light to illumine the path of our lives and to give us hope, especially in this time in which we feel so greatly the weight of difficulties, of problems, of suffering, and it seems that we are enshrouded in a veil of darkness. But what light can truly illuminate our hearts and give us a firm and sure hope? It is the Child whom we contemplate on Christmas, in a poor and humble manger, because He is the Lord who draws near to each of us and asks that we receive Him anew in our lives, asks us to want Him, to trust in Him, to feel His presence, that He is accompanying us, sustaining us, and helping us;" and
- "that each of us contribute something of that light to the spheres in which we live: our families, our jobs, our neighborhoods, towns, and cities."
Something that lies at the intersection of the topics of this blog and my technical blog (Penguins 'R' Us) is the recent introduction of .xxx domain names on the Internet to designate sites with "adult content." A news story that was tagged as being relevant to the computer programming field described a business move by prominent academic institutions and various corporations to acquire the .xxx domain names that contain their respective trademarks and brand identities, in order prevent the public from scandal through a presumed affiliation of these organizations with the less-reputable web content that could be posted to sites hosted on those domains. This technique, known as domain squatting, is not an unfamiliar process for large companies, but this is a nuanced case that was not possible until the ICANN decided that it would permit the new .xxx top-level domain (TLD) suffix earlier this year. On the philosophical level, it is an interesting question to ask - is the public availability of .xxx domains a good thing or not? On the one hand, it does enable organizations to filter network traffic to exclude traffic from all .xxx domains, which is much easier than human-assisted blacklisting or keyword-based blacklisting (which inevitably yields both false positives and fails to identify other sites that the organization would desire to block). On the other hand, adult content can still be present on .com and other TLDs, and the press coverage and time and energy spent by the ICANN to decide whether to offer .xxx certainly drew attention to the multi-billion dollar industry and now provides a space within which it can thrive, in a sense enabling and possibly even legitimizing its existence and proliferation. It remains to be seen what economic and ideological impact this move will have on the adult website industry and on consumers of the Internet in general. As always, we can always pray and sacrifice more for the triumph of the culture of life over the culture of death, of which the adult website industry is a strong part, and we can do our part to call attention to the violence that it does to human dignity across the board.
Now it is time to prepare for Mass and then take to the kitchen for a Southeast Asian culinary adventure!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Busy-ness!
I can't believe it's been another two weeks since I last posted! What began as a fairly faithful weekly endeavor has now become bi-weekly, de facto, anyway.
I was going to title this post "Thanksgiving and Communion" but, alas, that's what I called my last post! We had a great time visiting with our Oblate brothers in Montreal last weekend. We got to see many beautiful churches and get a feel for the Old City, complete with fire-eating street entertainment. It had snowed the previous day (Wednesday before Thanksgiving), so things looked wintry, though the weather was fairly clear. St. Joseph's Oratory was great as usual; an added bonus was that the lights were on in the upstairs oratory for some kind of children's choir rehearsal, so it turned out that we could see everything well. We also heard the carillon concert and got to meet the carilloner, who is the daughter of a previous cantor at one of the parishes that our Oblates run up there.
But now, we're right back in the swing of things, beginning our dash for the finish line, which is a bit late this year. I won't depart Boston until the 22nd, leaving me just enough time at home to prepare for the festivities. In addition to writing papers, reading, and studying, there are several events that have made their way into our schedule for the remaining weeks:
On the spiritual side of things, I was struck by something that was shared at morning prayer today - the pope's intentions for the month December. They are the following:
The phrase calling peoples to "harmony and peace through mutual understanding and respect" also hits home for me now as I begin to write my final paper for Contemporary Philosophy, a class that has focused on the errors of our day in the realm of political philosophy. I plan to write on diversity, both ideological and cultural, and how the Political Liberalism of John Rawls would accept and promote diversity, and also how the Church approaches the kinds of "pluralism" that Rawls suggests are a given element of a society governed by a liberal democracy. This is also an area of particular interest to me, and it is possible that I may undertake an independent study course on the subject of inculturation... but that's just the beginning of a whole new semester.
Please pray for Br. John Luong, OMV, who was recently approved to make perpetual vows by the Provincial Council. He will make them in late January and subsequently be ordained deacon and then priest later that year.
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
I was going to title this post "Thanksgiving and Communion" but, alas, that's what I called my last post! We had a great time visiting with our Oblate brothers in Montreal last weekend. We got to see many beautiful churches and get a feel for the Old City, complete with fire-eating street entertainment. It had snowed the previous day (Wednesday before Thanksgiving), so things looked wintry, though the weather was fairly clear. St. Joseph's Oratory was great as usual; an added bonus was that the lights were on in the upstairs oratory for some kind of children's choir rehearsal, so it turned out that we could see everything well. We also heard the carillon concert and got to meet the carilloner, who is the daughter of a previous cantor at one of the parishes that our Oblates run up there.
But now, we're right back in the swing of things, beginning our dash for the finish line, which is a bit late this year. I won't depart Boston until the 22nd, leaving me just enough time at home to prepare for the festivities. In addition to writing papers, reading, and studying, there are several events that have made their way into our schedule for the remaining weeks:
- Mass for the President's Symposium of Thomas More College (Merrimack, NH) - this afternoon a bunch of us stepped in to serve this concelebrated Mass including Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR. It was a beautiful Mass with great music and a very sharp homily by Fr. Robert Reed of Catholic TV.
- Lessons and Carols at St. John's - this was tonight, and it was awesome! Great choral works, some accompanied by piano or woodwinds, a flute quartet, an excellent violin performance, and a very appropriate and uplifting meditative mood really made for a great evening.
- Appreciation Mass and Reception at St. Clement's this week - we'll all pitch in to thank our volunteers and benefactors in the Christmas spirit.
- Day of Recollection on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - we'll have a couple conferences from a Jesuit priest from BC and take the day off of classes, leaving time for prayer and reflection.
- Lessons and Carols at St. Clement's - I will be involved in this, and can't wait to see how we put ours together.
On the spiritual side of things, I was struck by something that was shared at morning prayer today - the pope's intentions for the month December. They are the following:
General Intention: Peace among All Peoples. That all peoples may grow in harmony and peace through mutual understanding and respect.
Missionary Intention: That children and young people may be messengers of the Gospel and that they may be respected and preserved from all violence and exploitation.Last year, a major theme was the call of Christ to his would-be disciples, to "become like little children" and so enter the kingdom of heaven. I had noticed the theme of growing in humility as a desire that was growing in my heart, and also a call to return to that simplicity of a child's faith - to trust more, and to "de-clutter" my life in so many ways. The line that struck me most from this month's intentions is "That children and young people may be messengers of the Gospel" - not only are all the faithful, including non-children, called to become like little children, but children are called upon to lead them! I think the pope is also calling upon youth to find their faith in a world in which God is violently ripped from public view and so many families are permitting their children to "make their own decision" regarding their religious practices and beliefs.
The phrase calling peoples to "harmony and peace through mutual understanding and respect" also hits home for me now as I begin to write my final paper for Contemporary Philosophy, a class that has focused on the errors of our day in the realm of political philosophy. I plan to write on diversity, both ideological and cultural, and how the Political Liberalism of John Rawls would accept and promote diversity, and also how the Church approaches the kinds of "pluralism" that Rawls suggests are a given element of a society governed by a liberal democracy. This is also an area of particular interest to me, and it is possible that I may undertake an independent study course on the subject of inculturation... but that's just the beginning of a whole new semester.
Please pray for Br. John Luong, OMV, who was recently approved to make perpetual vows by the Provincial Council. He will make them in late January and subsequently be ordained deacon and then priest later that year.
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)