In this chronologically-titled post, I’ll try to recap the time since my last post and let you know what’s ahead.
Since April, I finished the semester with an unbelievable amount of term-paper-writing (see posted documents at www.scribd.com/paulmnguyen) and wrapped up the year with our Seminarian Scholarship Dinner the third week of May. I had made some progress in physical therapy after my shoulder dislocation due to my car-vs-bicycle collision in early April, but I would need much more attention to fully recover.
I flew to Nashville to visit with Sr. Anna Sophia for a couple days; it was a blessed time that we got to spend together there and her (my!) sisters commented later that I seemed very comfortable during my visit.
From there, I returned home to Long Beach for a couple months of physical therapy, wrapping up work projects, spending time with friends and family (including a camping trip and a little family reunion) and Oblates, and studying Portuguese using the very cool Livemocha online language-learning community.
In mid-July, I packed my bags, shipped a box to Boston containing things I would need there but not on this trip, and flew to Curitiba, Brazil! I spent a week there with the other World Youth Day pilgrims from Oblate parishes in Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Canada, Austria, Italy, and Nigeria, along with several Oblate priests and several sisters of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary of Fatima (founded by an Oblate priest a few decades ago). We had a wonderful time meeting one another, sharing our cultures, and expressing the one faith we treasure through prayer and missionary works in the neighborhood around the parish there. It was a blessed time.
The following week, we traveled to Rio de Janeiro, which took about 18 hours by bus. There, we assembled with similarly-motivated Catholic youth from around the world, all bearing their national and state flags, to attend catechetical lectures by various bishops, meet religious congregations at the vocations fair, and pray with our Holy Father, Pope Francis, as he led the opening prayer service, the Stations of the Cross, the prayer vigil, and the Mass of Sending, ultimately attended by over 3.5 million people! The next day, we visited the beautiful shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida to thank her for many graces received and to entrust our lives and vocations to her anew. I then returned to Curitiba for a few days of rest with the Oblate community before returning to the seminary in Boston.
I have spent the past week here recuperating from a complicated cold I developed while in Brazil and helping around the house here at St. Clement’s. We have several work crews remodeling the fourth floor of one of our residence buildings to become the novitiate residence for this year.
And that is where I will be! I am very excited to begin this special year of formation, my fourth year (my brother novices’ third year). It is a year of discernment and prayer, and learning about our founder and history and the vows taken by religious. It is also a year in which, in order to focus on these activities more fully, we renounce much of our communication with the world outside our community, spending more time in silence and with each other to study the material and learn more about ourselves and how to live charitably in community. We will make a trip to Italy, with the other novices from around the world, to visit the sites where our congregation was founded and experience a bit of our hereditary culture. At the end of the novitiate year, we may apply to make first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, for one year, and then study theology in preparation for priestly ministry. So this is a very special year, indeed!
All of this also means that this is most likely my last blog post until next August! You can follow Oblate news on our homepage, www.omvusa.org, and the Seminarians’ Blog at www.omvusa.org/vocation/seminarians-blog/.
Please pray for me and my brothers, and I will pray for you!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
