It's over, it's over now...

WOOO!!!!!!!! After almost 9 weeks of "intensive Italian"...ABBIAMO FINITO LE LEZIONI D'ITALIANO!!!! (We have finished Italian lessons!!)

The past 205 hours of intensive Italian language learning have been geared towards preparing us to live in Italy, and for most of us, to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which required an Italian proficiency exam (similar to the TOEFL in the US) before a foreign student can take classes in the University system. The exam is a "written" part done on a computer, than 3 oral components; the first is an interview where I will speak about myself--who I am, where I'm from, what I did before seminary, what my hobbies and interests are etc. The second is reading a paragraph out loud so they can verify our ability to read; and third is being shown a random picture and describing it, saying an event it reminds us of in our past (so seeing our use of the imperfect) and then what we think (our use of the congiuntivo). Monday 9/30 and it's on like donkey kong!

Tomorrow will be a nice relaxing day---I hope. Not that it matters to the entry, but I will be doing laundry in order to pack my suitcase. Sunday afternoon the First Year men leave for Greccio, which is where St. Francis erected a recreation of the Birth of Christ (in the hills above Greccio) that we refer to today as a Nativity Set. The weeklong retreat in the mountains is a SILENT retreat---so I will not be on Facebook, checking emails or sitting intensely in front of my laptop laboring away for hours on the perfect blog update! This retreat is SO anticipated. I can not wait to be able to walk through the hills, journal, read some Scripture and Spiritual reading, and just BE with the Lord. Jesus said to His disciples and he is saying to me now: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” (Mk 6:31) 

As always, if anyone has prayer intentions, please get them to me before Sunday morning (aka before 3 AM on Sunday morning back in Boston!), as I will be leaving after Mass/Brunch. As members of the Body of Christ, it is our obligation to pray for each others intentions! I am humbled and honored when people confide in me their prayer petitions, and I take seriously their trust in me to pray for them on their behalf.

Today I was blessed to be able to spend about an hour on the phone with the Rector of St John's Seminary back in Boston. Msgr is SO pastoral and it was VERY therapeutic to be able to talk to a priest who has known me for a little while about the past 2 months of being away from home. He will be in Rome at the end of October for his Vox Clara meeting, and then again in late December/early January. Jokingly I asked him to check his calendar to see if he could stay through January 12, which is when First Year men are Instituted as Lectors.

On Wednesday I was SOOOOO blessed to be able to spend FOUR hours with Father (now Bishop) Barber, who was my spiritual director for 2 years at SJS before being being named a Bishop by Pope Francis in early May. He is in Rome for "new Bishops school" and said he wanted to make sure we had a chance to talk so he could see how things are going in Rome. It shows what a true pastor this man is...he is charged with the spiritual care of EVERY soul in the Diocese of Oakland--NOT just the 560,000 Catholics in the area! Yet, he still made it a priority to reach out to a former directee he knows is having a rough transition in a new situation...THAT ladies and gentlemen is a man after Christ's heart. We walked around--he showed me places he loved praying when he was here as a young priest in the mid-late 80s and early 90s. We visited St. Ignatius, where St. Aloysius Gonzaga and his spiritual director St. Robert Bellarmine are buried. Then after running into an Oakland seminarian whom Fr. Barber had not yet met, the three of us went to the Gesu where St. Ignatius is buried. We were also able to visit the rooms that Ignatius had in the house next door--where he worked, slept, the Chapel he celebrated Mass in, and where he died. It was awesome to be able to pray for my favorite Jesuit at the tomb, and in the death room of the founder of his order.

In a couple short weeks, the classes at "Mother Greg" (aka the Gregorian University) will begin, and there will FINALLY be some sort of routine going...albeit a VERY early routine (Morning prayer begins promptly at 6:15 AM, followed by Mass and then the half hour walk to the Greg...) It will be nice to finally have some sort of normalcy for more than 4 weeks at a time. I just hope my body will cooperate and start to go to bed at a normal time. I've not been able to get much sleep---as when I try to sleep my mind is fixated on "what's going on back home"--and I've yet to figure out how to clear these thoughts from my mind...so I typically nap mid day, when I know most people back home are just waking up/not able to talk...yet when it's midnight, 1, 2, 3 am here---I know people back home are between 6-9pm and out of work/Holy Hour and are Skypable! That's something I definitely need to work on---detachment! Please pray for me in this area!

I apologize for the lack of excitement in this entry. I hope that when I return next week from my retreat I will have a lot of graces to be able to blog about!

Until then---Praised be Jesus Christ...

--KPL