The excitement is building!!!

Before the academic year starts here in the Eternal City,  one of our highlight events of the year happens: the Diaconate Ordination of our Fourth Theology class. 

Tomorrow, thirty-nine men from different dioceses around the United States, Canada and Australia will process into St. Peter’s Basilica to lay down their lives in service to Jesus Christ and His Church at the Altar of the Chair. One of those men is a diocesan brother ("db") of mine; Kevin Staley-Joyce. Please keep him and his classmates in your prayers tomorrow (Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux!) as they take on a new identity, being conformed to Christ the Servant.

Tomorrow will be a day of many emotions (happiness, pride, and excitement being just a few!) not only for the ordinandi, but for almost 2500 people who have come to Rome to witness this event! It will also be very exciting for my class, because we will then be "on-deck" for our diaconate ordination in the fall of 2016.

When a seminarian returns to Rome for Third Theology after a summer assignment in his home diocese, it is said he’s “crossed a bridge” in the formation program as third year will be his last of formation before diaconate. So, as this year progresses, I will be praying that my classmates and I will continue growing in conformity to Christ so that next year when our names are called, we can stand tall and say to our ordaining bishop “Present” as we lay down our lives for the Church...

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I've been back in Rome for almost a month now, but still relishing in the summer back home, and my parish assignment.

As I stated earlier, classes haven't yet started---our academic year begins the first Monday in October. So, what do we do during September? Read on my friend...read on.

The first week back my class had Advanced Homiletics Workshop a majority of the week. For 4 hours in the morning we met with a priest from the Archdiocese of Washington who tried to stretch us in our preaching abilities, and train us how to know our main point and be able to give a few supporting statements for it, so that the message of our homilies is very clear to the listener. On two afternoons that week we were broken into smaller groups and given a priest moderator and did practice homilies. (During 2nd year we do 13 practice homilies throughout the year, and 3rd year we will do about 9 or 10).

Towards the end of the week we had 4 presentations on Hispanic Ministry in the US. The highlight speaker was Archbishop Patrón Wong who is the Secretary for Seminaries of the Congregation for the Clergy, and a native of México.

The second week back was our annual silent retreat. In 1st year the retreat is silent, but preached, meaning we have a morning and afternoon conference with periods of silence between those sessions to pray, reflect, and meet with a spiritual director (at least 2 times during the week). Second year there is only a morning conference...and by 3rd year we've moved to a directed retreat with no conferences. Each man is assigned a director and meets with him daily for 40-45 minutes. We typically follow the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. The director will generally give the seminarian 3 Bible passages to meditate on for 3 separate hours of that day. He encourages the seminarian to use Lectio Divina or Imaginative Prayer to enter more deeply into the passage. Journaling is highly encouraged! The following day when you meet with your director you talk about the "movements of the Spirit" the previous day---what about the passages struck you? Did anything else strike you about yesterday? (In the homily at Mass, while on a walk in the mountains, while reading the biography of a saint, etc.).

I had an amazing retreat. My director was fantastic, and always gave me passages that were great to pray with and meditate upon. I was having a hard time with imaginative prayer, but he encouraged me to stick with it. I drew upon my pilgrimage to the Holy Land last Christmas, and that helped me to place myself in certain scenes better (i.e. the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the scene of Peter's "undenial" of Christ...) I was able to pray a lot about my summer assignment at IC Marlborough and sort of sift through what I learned, where I was stretched, and what I saw that I need to work on this upcoming year of formation. It was a good recharge before we came back to Rome for another week of conferences.

Last week we had workshops on Pastoral Counseling. Our in house counselor Fr. Gerry, a PhD from CT and a Sister from Franciscan Life Center (originally from Assisi) came in and  helped us develop skills for Pastoral Counseling. We talked about a wide variety of issues, how to spot if a certain issue is beyond the realm of what a priest can handle, when to refer to a professional etc. We had multiple role plays where someone would be the priest and another would be the parishioner with a certain issue and we tried to fine tune our active listening skills. It was a long week with 6 hours of workshops a day, but it was overall a valuable week.

This week is sort of a "rest" week. The house Mass is at 9am, and our community evening prayer is at 6:45pm. Other than that, we are free to do errands in the city, start preparing for school, pray, exercise etc...After the ordination tomorrow we will have a reception at the NAC for families and friends of the newly ordained. Unfortunately it will probably rain, so the reception has been moved inside. After 5pm, when clean-up is over, we are released from the house schedule until 11 pm on Sunday. Men are free to travel if they wish or stay at the house and relax for the weekend. On Friday afternoon, I will be heading up to Turin with a friend who is running the Turin Marathon on Sunday. Once classes start it will be a short few weeks until my class elects our DPC (Diaconate Planning Committee) Chairman who will start the process of planning for our ordination next fall!

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As always, your prayers and support during the upcoming year of formation are most appreciated!!! God love you!

Praised be Jesus Christ...

---kpl