Last Christmas, I woke up early in the morning and drove with a small group from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. We made our way into the Basilica of the Nativity, finding the sacristy to prepare for Mass. I was somewhat alarmed at how quiet and empty the church was; after all, was this not the very place where our Lord came to dwell among us, in a cave on the hillside of the City of David? We processed quietly and solemnly to the grotto, careful on the steps not to trip, and found ourselves at...
Once a year, the Atlanta men take a fraternity weekend away from Rome. This year we traveled to Padua in the northern part of the country.
Padua is famous for three things:
1)It is the burial place of St. Anthony of Padua;
2) It is the burial place of St. Luke the Evangelist; and
3)The Scrovegni Chapel, one of Giotto’s masterpieces, is found there
Frankly, there is not a lot in the town with which to keep oneself busy for a whole weekend, but since the purpose of a fraternity weekend...
With less than a year (God-willing!!) until my ordination to the Diaconate, I have been reflecting on the promises that I will make during the liturgy when I stand before a genuine successor to the Apostles and offer my life to God in a definitive way. In the Rite of Ordination, the bishop asks, “Do you promise respect and obedience to your Ordinary?” If the seminarian isn’t looking for an extraordinarily awkward public conversation, he replies, “I do!” This promise is...
The North American College is back in session, classes have resumed, and the long transition period when the seminarians are in Rome but without a regular schedule has been replaced by the day-in day-out rhythm of life. After a hiatus from writing, conditioned primarily by the haphazardness of my own availability, Led Into the Truth is entering a new phase. I am less than one year from my ordination to the transitional diaconate, God-willing, and suddenly the place to which I am being led...
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My mother returned to the Lord just months before I entered Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in August 2005. She had fought a long battle with a physically debilitating disease and succumbed to an infection the previous May. Both my brother and I were given the grace to be there by her bed as she took her last breath, an image now burned into my mind. Perhaps because of the decision I had finally made to enter seminary or perhaps just because I was a little older, her passing and the funeral...
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Each of us has a different experience of what it means to be part of a parish. For some people, their parish is something geographically close to them and nothing more—a place where they reluctantly trudge for Mass on Sunday. For others, it is a center for their life—a place to encounter God sacramentally and in other people, to make friends, and to sustain their strength in the daily struggle to follow Christ.
For diocesan seminarians, our parish experience is even more complicated...
A few days ago, I was in St. Mary Major, one of the four major basilicas in Rome. I had some friends in town, and we decided to see one of the famous displays in the city—the Bone Church—where hundreds of Capuchin monks are buried and their bones integrated into the decoration of the crypt chapels, the point being to remind the living of the proximity of death. After that experience—feeling a little shaken—we decided to head over to Mary Major because we heard that there was a...
