just chillin’
Trying to do as little as possible today. But I do need to review more Spanish.
WEB SURFING — found a blog post by a Protestant author reflecting on demonic activities in An Exorcist Tells His Story by Gabriele Amorth. He sounds very open to conversion.
TV — catching up on some “Office” & “Bionic Woman” episodes online from the NBC website. Watched “The Unit” & “Cane” tonight.
St Katherine Drexel Parish, Weston, FL
Today, while on mid-semester break, I went to St Katherine Drexel Parish in Weston for daily Mass. At 8:15am the Deacon led Morning Prayer and then did a Communion Service at 8:30am. A beautiful chapel to spend some time in.
St Bernadette Parish chapel, Hollywood, FL
Today, on mid-semester break, I spent some time at my home parish chapel at St Bernadette in Hollywood, FL.
home parish visit
Today, while on mid-semester break, I stopped by my home parish @ St Bernadette in Hollywood. I visited the afternoon RCIT (high school Confirmation preparation) class to discuss vocations & life in the seminary to almost 20 teens. I joined them for the 6pm Youth Mass, with teen ushers, readers and more. A great home visit!
Locke exam + Visitation Parish
MODERN PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — Mid-term exam on John Locke. 3 essays. — I think I did exceptionally well.
MID-TERM BREAK BEGINS — after, our last class today, we can leave for our weeklong break. Without anymore tests and papers due, some of us need to keep busy doing anything … even arm-wrestling before class … all in brotherly fellowship (… I hope).
VISITATION PARISH — On my way driving home, I dropped off a seminarian staying at The Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Miami. Fr Chris Marino is the pastor of a beautiful parish. I saw the newly redone interior, but the lights were off, so I only took pictures outside. There are also some great pictures on their website. It’s also the former parish of my current Pastor Fr Dalton.
ten piedad + soccer + lawn movie night
SPANISH 2 – (Dr Jimenez) — Spanish mid-term on chapter 12. — “Senor profesor, ten piedad de nosotros, por favor!”
SOCCER — with the stressful exam week, we had an evening of soccer (non-tournament) after dinner and played until we couldn’t see the ball anymore. — I was ball boy, again
WALK-IN MOVIE NIGHT — 8pm tonight we had a different kind of movie night for our last evening together before the weeklong “Mid-Semester Break.” We laid out on the grass & watched “Norbit” projected onto a wall outside. — Great idea! Need more OFF!
Plato mid-term + Hail Father 2
OUR FATHER — Today’s Gospel reading was Jesus teaching us the “Our Father.” Fr Vallee had the Mass and we did another “Hail Father” in Arts & Ideas.
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — Mid-term exam on Plato. 4 essay questions. — I think me do good.
HOLY HOUR — the Rectory told us news about Archbishop Ambrose Battista De Paoli, Priest of the Archdiocese of Miami and Apostolic Nuncio to Australia, who died. The funeral Mass will be some time next week.
TV — watched “Pushing Daisies” (car crash dummies episode) and “Bionic Woman.”
Italian food night
OLD TESTAMENT – (Fr Michael) — Mid-term exam. 2 wrong. 88%.
CULTURAL FOOD NIGHT — Today was “Italian Food Night.” We had tasty pasta, garlic bread, lamb and for dessert, so kind of donuts in a bag of powdered sugar (I forgot the name). — Great food!
TV — “The Unit” & “Cane”
mid-terms begin
This is mid-term week. Same regular class schedule, with worklist & house jobs, but more pressure with mid-term exams all week … one test a day for me. After our last class on Friday, we can leave for “Mid-Semester Break” until next Friday.
MINISTERIAL METHODS – (Fr Michael) — Mid-term exam … eight multiple choice questions. 1 credit class. — 8/8 is a good start for the week!
TV — Heroes.
St John Neumann + Jubilee Vespers
MASS – (Fr Michael) — Today was our monthly Sunday parish visitation. This week was 11am Mass at St John Neumann Parish in south Miami. All 64 of us seminarians were in the front rows in our black suits in a beautiful parish (tour of their parish on their website here). The homily highlighted the lives of both Pope John Paul II and the founding Archbishop Coleman Carroll. We stayed after Mass to talk with parishoner and were treated to lunch. — A great experience. Special thanks to Fr Carmelo Romanello for concelebrating the Mass.
JUBILEE VESPERS – (Archbishop Favalora) — today is the 49th birthday of the Archdiocese of Miami and the beginning of a yearlong celebration leading up to the 50th Jubilee of our diocese. At 4pm, the Miami seminarians joined Vespers (evening prayer for Liturgy of the Hours) at St Mary’s Cathedral led by the Archbishop. It was a beautiful service with clergy, religious and laity from all over the archdiocese praying vespers with cantors, organ & choir.
cross – MVP – goals
MASS – (Fr Santos) — today I was alter serving Mass with the “Cross,” which means I carry the cross, assist with alter preparations and assist with “washing of the hands.” [Note to self: on exit, run before every leaves without me.]
SOCCER — After “Spiritual Direction,” I went out to watch the second soccer game and was crowned “Soccer MVP” for “ball-boy” running all over the back parking lot for soccer balls. I couldn’t stay for the end of the game since “Archdiocese of Miami” brothers had a meeting.
GOALS & OBJECTIVES — today was the deadline for turning in “Personal Goals & Objectives” for this year. We need to set a general “goal” and at least 1 “objective” for each to improve in each of the 4 areas: Spiritual (improve prayer life), Human (be more communal), Academic (improve my Spanish), and Pastoral (assist my brothers more)
The Office
TV — watched the new season of “The Office” on NBC. Even through I missed last week’s opener, I joined a few brothers here that also follow the show. I also tried to watch last weeks episode on the NBC website, but the bandwidth here was too slow, but I’ll keep trying. — some classic Dwight Schrute lines: “Assistant TO THE Regional Manager” — “Two paintball lessons with someone as experienced as I am is worth easily like 2 grand.” — “If you can fool them into thinking that you really care, you can get them to do anything for you.” — “Do you have your tickets to the gun show?” — “Do you want to form an alliance with me?” — anybody have another?
care package
Busy day with 3 classes, worklist (mopping floors) and Holy Hour before a good pork – baked potato – kolleyflour dinner. Watched the new Pushing Daisies series and some Bionic Woman. Even with all that, the best part of the day was …
“CARE PACKAGE” — Yeah! Some “The Office” stuff, summer vacation pictures & the 2nd season of “The Muppets” on DVD. — life is way too AWESOME! Thank you, caring stranger!
Talledega food night
OLD TESTAMENT – (Fr Michael) — reviewed our test (83%). Covered “Pentateuchal Traditions” (J–E–D–P) and “Genesis.”
CULTURAL FOOD NIGHT — today was “Talledega” food night with some suthurn cookin’. We all got so excited about the AWESOME cornbread and fried chicken, I forgot to take a picture before eating.
volleyball
[this is a backdated post] All I can remember about Monday is evening VOLLEYBALL! (–but I’m sure I learned something in today’s 4 classes, too) — and I missed “Heroes”, but it was worth it … v o l l e y b a l l 🙂
Parent Day
Today we had lots and LOTS of vistors! It was “Parent Day” where immediate family is invited to spend the evening together for a tour, Mass, dinner and entertainment. With 65 seminarians, we had a record number of people (about 300) from all over the world. Everything went great! Everyone worked together to prepare, plan, execute and clean-up (I even served wine). We had some great entertainment, ranging from solos, poetry, skits (“Making Beans” & “Pick-Pocket”) and some music (including “Amore“). –We’ve got a talented & blessed house!
2 tests – Archangel Battle – tables
MODERN PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — Quiz on Decartes. 3 essay questions took the whole hour: How was he successful at determining “self” as the “rock of certainty”? How did he fail at proving “world” and “God” as “innate”? How was “world” distinct from “self” and “God”? — at least those are the questions I thought (through subjective perception and err) I answered.
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — continued Plato’s Phaedo to explore personal, social & objective immortality. Body vs soul. 4 Causes: material, efficient, formal & final.
ARTS & IDEAS – (Fr Vallee) — test on Classic Greek Culture. Also turned in a 3 page Reflection paper on “Greek Hellenic Idealism vs. Hellenistic Reality.”
SOCCER TOURNAMENT — Soccer has become some big here that we have a 4 team tournament going on. Today was game 2 of round 1. It was called the “Battle of the Archangels” because one team is called St Raphael and the other ??? Today’s game was supposed to be last night, but there wasn’t enough light. — today was too hot (1:30pm)
TABLE SETUP — in preparation for Parent Day tomorrow, we set up the tables in the Refrectory for 300 people! — wow
VOCATION LINK UPDATE — Yesterday I had a record 35 hits on my Vocations link page (& 190 for my whole site), so I decided to add more than just Miami links. Added some links for general vocation info, seminary listings and all the diocese of Florida with their vocation links. I even found some profiles of some of my brother here. — it only took me 4 month to add stuff in a half hour … procrastinator
pre-T house blessing
Today, the Rector’s staff met with the Board of Trustees, who are mainly the bishops of Florida. Just before lunch, we had all the Pre-Theology guys and bishops at the 2 new off-site housing locations (1 block away) to be blessed. The picture I took of Rector Fr Michael and Archbishop Favalora blessing the grounds was located in the shared back yard of both duplexes. There’s still some detail to take care of (like adding grass), but the new residences look great.
Bishop Estevez – name graces – volleyball fix
MODERN PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — started John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” Empiricism vs rationalism.
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY – (Fr Santos) — continued Plato’s Phaedo with “knowledge as recollection” and “the indestructibility of the soul.”
ARTS & IDEAS – (Fr Vallee) — finished the Greek handout for our test on Friday.
WORKLIST — in “Sacristy,” I had bathrooms, so I finished pretty quick with time enough to help mop. The tapistry of St Lawrence (hurricane damaged) was also being put up, so I took some pictures up close.
HOLY HOUR — with a small delegation of visitors from a Cuban priest and religious conference in Miami, we were blessed to have Bishop Estevez presiding over Benediction & Vespers. He mentioned some words of wisdom from a formator in seminary that stood out for him. He said we should NAME the graces we receive throughout the day in order to trace our journey with the Lord. — that’s a great idea … like “Connect-the-dots” of grace … I should do that, but I probably won’t stick to it
VOLLEYBALL TONIGHT — I finally got my fix tonight from 9-10pm in the gym. I hope we can have it more regularly (weekly at least).
CONNECT-the-DOTS — (since holy hour🙂 rain … benediction … air conditioning … Bishop’s blessing … good food … table fellowship … quiet study … volleyball … health & safety … refreshing shower … did I mention volleyball? 🙂
Matrix acolyte + Vietnamese food + choir tryouts
MASS – (Fr Joseph) — the homily story was the “2 brothers’ grain exchange,” but more importantly (to me), today was my first time serving as Acolyte. I haven’t been an alter server at Mass since 6th grade 20 years ago … so I was nervous. Since I didn’t have a cassock & surplice, one of my seminarian brother gave me an extra cassock (black robe) he had and I borrowed a surplice (white top) from another brother.
Here’s what I can remember (that I haven’t repressed): everything went well, until I presented Fr Joseph with the water & wine … I forgot to take the tops off! … and had to fumble around on the alter to get them open (--I don’t know how my heart restarted). If that’s not enough … after the Eucharistic prayer, when I tried (important distinction) to get up from kneeling, I forgot to pull up my cassock, slipped (repeatedly) and fell back like Neo dodging bullets in the Matrix. I thought everyone saw me, but later found out few noticed. —learning the hard way.
OLD TESTAMENT – (Fr Michael) — our first test was 36 multiple choice questions. I know I missed the 3 about names of specific Vatican documents (– didn’t see those coming). Then we covered various Biblical translations and the history of our Canonical books of Scripture.
CULTURAL FOOD NIGHT — Today was “Vietnamese Food Night” — with some Vietnamese carrot cake for dessert?
CHOIR TRYOUT — all new guys were required to tryout for “Escoela,” the choir that practices on Wednesday nights and sings at Sunday Mass and special events. —la-la-lA-LA-LA [I didn’t make it — found out Wed morning — ok by me]
TV — watched the season opener of “The Unit“
SJVCS Seminary Life Album
July '09 -- hospital chaplains @ IPF
Easter '09 -- Miami SJVCS friends
the Son always finds a break in let the clouds
Feb '09 -- school vocation talks @ AMHS
Feb '09 -- cold breakfast with brothers (Matias, Fenly & Randy), now at SVDP and Imad (at SJVCS)
Superbowl '09 -- eating great @ SJVCS
Sept '08 -- Worklist Coordinators?
St Raphael Chapel mural @ SJVCS
Sept '08 -- retreats @ SJVCS
"It's not easy being green"
Catholic Kermit 
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