What a life! And it is mine, as a Priest of Jesus Christ!

It just feels odd . While there are indeed many, many other words I could use to describe my feelings right now, I'll just stick with odd. It feels odd that tomorrow will be my first  Thanksgiving away from home and that I won't get to see anyone in my family... It feels  odd that I will not be attending a Stoughton/Canton football game... It feels  odd that I won't be chatting on the sidelines with fellow SHS alumni whom I probably haven't seen since the previous Thanksgiving--ONLY to cease our conversations to watch the Black Knight Marching Band and Color Guard half-time show... It feels  odd  that I won't be at my TEN YEAR  high school reunion on Friday... It feels  odd  that I am in a country where tomorrow is just  another Thursday on the calendar... However, we at the North American College will be celebrating Thanksgiving! In fact, the college has many  events lined up this weekend in the hopes of getting our min...

At the praying of Evening Prayer I tonight, the Church begins the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (which is the last Sunday in the Liturgical Year of the Church. Next Sunday Dec. 1 we begin the Season of Advent).  This year however, the Solemnity of Christ the King also marks the end of the "Year of Faith" (declared by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2011), which began on Thursday October 11, 2012, the same day the Church marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council (and the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church). One of the goals for all Catholics during this Year of Faith was  to study and reflect on the documents of Vatican II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church so as to deepen their knowledge of the faith.  In his Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei , Pope Benedict called the Year of Faith the  “summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the One Savior of the world” ( ...

I love learning languages. I love learning about other cultures. I love visiting other cultures and experiencing what they have to offer (do I sound like a former foreign language teacher?!) but at the end of the day… I am an American. There’s a certain way in which things are done that are my preferred way of doing things. Road building is one of them. If you’ve ever been to Europe, specifically, parts that were once dominated by the Roman Empire, than you’re no stranger to the cobblestone roads. Even today, there are cobblestone roads that remain in parts of the Eternal City. Because some of them lack levity, sometimes they are bumpy and pot-holey roads, which makes them hard to walk on, easy to trip on, and can make anyone consider going into the field of podiatry! (You’d make bank!) In my opinion, a lot of these roads need to be torn up, evenly leveled, and then paved over… but for understandable reasons, these cobblestone roads are valued as part of Roman history that is t...

I do realize it’s been a while since I last updated…and like I’ve blogged before, once in the routine of classes I won’t describe my daily activities—classes and such, rather I’ll blog about experiences/sharable thoughts I have during the course of the year. We’re now into the 5 th week of the semester and settled into the academic year schedule at the college. This past weekend was travel permitted due to the All Saint’s Holiday on Friday. A few guys and I decided to seize this opportunity to get away from Rome for a few days, and left on Thursday afternoon for a weekend in Firenze (Florence). The city of Firenze is BEAUTIFUL. Dare I say, in some ways I preferred it to Rome! The streets were wider and not as hard on the feet when walking, the city seemed cleaner, and surprisingly, I heard a lot more English than in Rome! After Mass at the Cathedral on Friday, the girls who were sitting in front of us heard us speaking English, and began a conversation with us. As it turns out, t...