Cool

North Wind
Originally uploaded by notraces.

Hey, so it's Friday night and I have some time to post about what's going on. A few of you either e-mailed me or I told you that I would call you or something but I haven't. Well, I can explain. The past 3 weeks (ending this Sunday) we've been having initiations for us new men. We were matched up with "big brothers" (older seminarians) who were supposed to look after us, keep an eye on us, and help in our formation. Speaking of formation, I hope to talk about this sometime with each of you, cause it's really cool. Here at the seminary we each have a formation director who is in charge of our Human Formation (stuff like keeping our rooms cleaning, watching our tongue, waking up on time, etc.), then we have a spiritual director who is in charge of our spiritual formation. The spiritual director works more with our "internal forum" matters, and our formation director is in charge of our "external forum" matters. It's an amazing system. So anyway, our big brother helps us with whatever human formation stuff he thinks we need to work on during these weeks. So yeah, on Tuesday night at our all-seminary dinner the rector Fr. Baer announced that we were going to have 2 days of discipleship. In other words, each of us new men would have to follow our big brother everywhere. To class, to morning/evening prayer, mass, holy hour, all that stuff. That just got over last night and I can tell you that the people in charge here know what they are doing. It was very beneficial to all of us. I mean, think about it, how often are you around people who know you. It forces you to think about each word that comes out of your mouth, and to really consider all your habits. Anyway, so that's what went on this week.

Classes are going pretty well. I have Latin, basic Philosophy, basic Theology, and English. Latin is by far the most difficult class, but I'm enjoying, Theology is growing more and more on me. I don't have the greatest teacher in terms of orthodoxy, but we're pretty much using the bible as a textbook so it's good. Oh, and there are quite of a few other freshmen in the class, and they ask a lot of questions and the teacher kind of beats around the bush instead of giving them the truth! It's frustrating, but if anyone ever approaches you with questions about the Catholic Church, religion, God, or anything partaining to, please, don't for a moment be reluctant to answer. It's very sad sometimes being on this campus and see some teachers feeding genuinely curious students with lies. I haven't really experienced it yet, but I know those professors (and, of course, some students) are out there. Now, most of the time you can't bring anything up during class because that would not be very respectful to the student. Plus, if the student asking the question is genuinely curious, they may be more likely to believe the prof, so it's a losing battle. The best thing would be to pray for them, and if you feel compelled to, talk to them outside of class. Ok, I'm not preaching, this is coming straight from the rector here at the seminary. So I'm just passing on the good truth.

Anyway, I gotta get going now, feel free to give me a call. I probably won't answer it, but I will be sure to call you back.