New Floors!

We have new floors! New room furniture is still en route, but the rooms are nice and simple, but very bright-feeling due to the new floors. Here are some pictures I took over the last couple days while unpacking things in my room.

Now we're off on retreat - please pray for us as we pray for you!


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Airplanes and Chinatown

Sounds like another fantastic movie I haven't seen!

Actually, "Airplanes and Chinatown" abstractly defines my imminent return to Boston for my third year of seminary formation. I'll fly a 1-stop flight from Los Angeles to New York's La Guardia, and then hike to Chinatown NYC to catch a bus to Boston's Chinatown, a solid 20-minute walk from home at St. Clement's. If you see me after this ordeal, ask me about it!

I am excited to go back. I'm told I often hide my excitement, so here it is in writing: I'm excited! It has been an incredibly busy summer, with lots of work and lots of get-togethers, and I've enjoyed being busy. But the time has come, as inevitably it does, and now I must return to the seminary in Boston.

In one sense, I haven't left - keeping most of the Liturgy of the Hours over the summer months is a constant reminder of the community I belong to. And I've kept in touch with my brother Oblate seminarians, hearing of their adventures and sharing mine. In another sense, I have definitely been away. The type of work I was doing (technical writing, computer programming, and various technical labor) was inconsistent with the work and study of a seminarian, and the spectrum of social interactions I was a part of during the summer are not typical of seminary life per se.

This discord or discrepancy is, at least, an opportunity for discernment. Seeing the contrast, to which lifestyle am I being called? What elements of each am I called to combine, and are they altogether compatible with one another? This is by no means science built from matrices of experimentations, most of which yield no result. But in our humanity, these questions can begin to frame our discernment.

For me, general sentiments have played a large part in my discernment so far. Noticing how I feel as I begin to consider one state or option is so very important - is this situation troubling me and how? How would I characterize my discomfort in considering this option - do negatives rightfully deter me from it or are perceived negatives actually positive challenges I am called to face? This is at the heart of St. Ignatius' discernment of spirits - understanding that for a soul in a particular state, the good spirit may either challenge or encourage, and the bad spirit the same, but we have to train ourselves to recognize and follow the possibly painful good, always.

So off I go, with good material for meditation, and with plenty of time to do it! I greatly appreciate and humbly request your prayers for me and my brothers, and offer mine for you. As Fr. Jeremy articulated this morning, your prayers bear the fruit of men and women being open to hear God's voice calling to them, and being open to his strengthening graces to respond to that call.

As always, let us place our lives in the hands of our Blessed Mother and beg her to offer us to Her Son!


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Fly away!

It's been a month since my last post, and even longer since I really shared something here. Tomorrow morning my family and I will fly out to attend our sister, Sr. Anna Sophia's first profession of vows with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, TN. This is a really special moment for her and for us, considered in the terms of religious life to be her wedding day! And I think I can share similar sentiments with the exclamation: "My little sister's getting married!" Only in our case, without the anxiety that often accompanies it.

So I humbly ask your prayers for her and for our travels. I also ask you for your prayerful support of our newest Oblate priest, currently Deacon John Luong, OMV, who will be ordained by Archbishop José Gomez the following Saturday, August 4, 2012 at St. Peter Chanel Catholic Church.

This summer has been a very packed summer for me, working full time doing technical work and having little time at home. The family time that I have had has been great, and it's nice to be in my hometown to also visit with friends from high school and college and go to some of the places we frequented when we were studying together.

It has also been nice to be close to the Oblate community here, to have that sense of continuity, even though I am not living at the rectory or taking part in all of their daily schedule.

In my ongoing discernment, I am continually reminded of one of the more common signs of vocation, identified in a powerful way by an Apostle of the Sacred Heart sister during my visit with the Redemptorists in New York a few years back. And that is that we can discover our vocation and become convinced of what we discover by the deepest desires of our heart. A question I pose to myself and which others have asked me recently is: "How sure are you?" And by boiling down the signs I have received and my peace of mind and precisely these deepest desires, I am able to say: "I'm sure!" We have to leave room for God to intervene and understand Him to have said that I was supposed to be there then but that there are new plans. That is a possibility, and it is also a possibility that I have made mistakes in discernment and treated as clear something that was not. But moments like the one I had last week serve to confirm what I have discerned thus far - waking up with the singular phrase and sentiment: "In my heart of hearts, I want to be in Boston." And it is these treasured moments that carry us through.

So we set off with a lot of excitement to spend time with our new extended family of new Dominicans and their families, and then visit more family in the southeast before coming home for a couple weeks before I return to Boston for First Theology. Again, quite the appropriate finish to my jam-packed summer!


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

For Religious Liberty

As so many pastors and Church leaders have taken the opportunity today to extend the Bishops' invitation to stand up for the full meaning of Religious Liberty to their flocks, I also wanted to provide some resources via this blog. From Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, find his opening message and homily on YouTube. From the Archdiocese of Boston, find Cardinal Sean O'Malley's address and various materials: www.bostoncatholic.org/Freedom.

Today's celebration is particularly interesting because June 24 is the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist. As Fr. Bill Neubecker, OMV pointed out this morning at St. Peter Chanel, John was an outspoken activist politically, challenging the immorality of his king, Herod. This characteristic makes him a great patron of this particular movement in the Church and in our country, giving us an example of where we must draw our bottom line in insisting upon the dignity of all of humanity and the standards that this dignity demands. Fr. Bill and Archbishop Gomez both insist that Religious Liberty has always encompassed more than freedom of worship and faith; it also includes the freedom of conscience, to be able to follow our faith-based morality without coercion.

Fr. Larry Darnell, in his brief talk this past Thursday to open the Fortnight observance at St. Peter Chanel, addressed the fact that most charitable activities of the Catholic Church, if they are not limited to serving only Catholics, effectively declassify that church or institution of its religious status. That is, by exercising the Christian spirit of charity toward all human persons in their basic needs, those institutions become legally non-Christian and thereby waive their First Amendment protections. This is huge! This kind of disqualification policy certainly does not flow from the sentiments in which our founding fathers fled their homeland and certainly does not reflect the decades of legal and judicial process in this country up to this point.

As Fr. Bill also pointed out this morning, echoing the warning of Pope Benedict XVI during the US Bishops' Ad limina visit to the Vatican, what we are experiencing is a radical secularization in our culture - a forceful removal of God from every public equation, and now extending into citizens' private affairs as well. And the Pope has written extensively on the topic of secularization and its dangers both here and in various European countries, as I was fortunate to read in my Contemporary Philosophy class this past Fall.

Joining with the whole Church, let us again implore the intercession of Mary Immaculate and the Forerunner, John the Baptist, for the restoration of the protections that millions of Americans agree religion deserves, and for the swift repentance of this great nation in every way.


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Fortnight for Freedom

It's been a month since my last post! How the time flies!

I've been working, doing software development and IT work up in Burbank, plus some website-related and Oblate-related tech work on the side. It's been great being home and spending time with friends and the Oblates out here.

In the name of both truth and charity, as this blog is named, I wanted to make sure you are all aware of the US Bishops' call to observe the two weeks beginning today as the "Fortnight for Freedom" - an observance of "prayer, study, catechesis, and public action" surrounding the topic of religious liberty. This time period was chosen as it leads up to the commemoration of Independence Day on the secular calendar, and contains several saints who fought for their rights to religion despite political persecution.

I therefore invite you to visit the USCCB page, and inquire at your local parishes as to how you can participate more fully in this event, which calls us to invest ourselves in learning about what religious liberty means and why it is important that it be preserved.

At our Oblate parish in Hawaiian Gardens, CA, Saint Peter Chanel Catholic Church (12001 East 214th Street, Hawaiian Gardens, CA 90716), we will host the following events:

• Holy Hour - June 21, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.
• Talk - June 25, 2012, from 7:45 to 8:45 pm in the Old Church: Fr. Larry will give a talk on St. Thomas More and the present crisis of Religious Liberty. 
• Holy Hour - June 28, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.
• Talk - July 2, 2012, from 7:45 pm to 8:45 pm, in the Old Church: Fr. Larry Darnell and Fr. Ed Broom will have a talk on the Formation of Conscience on religious matters and politics. The life of some saints will be given as examples.
• Holy Hour - July 5, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.

I hope you can join us or find ways to participate in your area. Let us entrust this time and our nation once again to Our Lady of Guadalupe, our patroness, trusting in her motherly care for us and her powerful intercession with her Son on our behalf.




Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca