Classes Begin

I am very happy to say that I have now been in my suite for almost two full weeks. The oak floors in the rooms are beautiful and, when combined with my area rug, couch, and two Queen Anne style chairs, together with a little music from Handel, provide a very peaceful and relaxing place to read and enjoy life.

Parish life continues to go very well. I am still rather amazed at how very different each and every day can be. I am also still learning that most of what I plan to do on a given day somehow never quite seems to get accomplished that day. Regardless, though, priestly life is great!

With the first week of classes just next week, I am hard at work trying to put together at least the first few lessons of my class with the juniors at the high school. Throughout the course of the year I will be teaching them Church history - all two thousand years - and the seven Sacraments. It will be a great challenge but one that I am think I am up to.

While I am teaching at the high school I will be visiting the grade school and seeing what sorts of mischieve I can cause there. One of my duties - as I am quickly learning from the grade school students themselves - is to play at recess. Apparently they can only play kickball if an adult pitches and few of the moms and dads want to pitch, so I guess it is up to me.

I think that's long enough for a post - especially since it's been so long since I've posted. It's time to run off anyway and prepare for a high school faculty meeting.

Peace and Joy,

Fr. Daren

I Live in My Car . . .

The Lord give you peace!

It has been quite some time since last I posted a blog and the time has now come. As I write this blog, I sit in the parish office of my new home, St. Anthony of Padua parish in Effingham, Illinois. You can take a look at the parish's web site at www.stanthony.com.

After a two-week tour of the midwest through Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and back to Illinois attending the ordinations and first Masses of a number of classmates, I have now begun to move into my first assignment, claiming some office space in the rectory and my former suite (this was my internship parish). I cannot finish the move until the current parochial vicar leaves for his first pastorate in Calhoun County.

Life as a priest these first few weeks has been amazing! They have been filled with much tedious and boring driving, but also with many inspirational and profound moments, together with very good times spent with dear friends.

This weekend I will celebrate the weekend Masses at my deacon parish, Sacred Heart parish in Effingham, to give my thanks to God and to the parishioners for their support and prayers. Early next week I will make one more return to Quincy for about a week. I will be visiting with family and friends and baptizing a cousin. The final week of June I will part of Christian Leadership Institude with high school students and will return to St. Anthony's the evening before my assignment takes effect.

I am very happy to return to Effingham and look forward with great joy to serving the Lord God and his people at St. Anthony of Padua.

Peace and Joy,

Fr. Daren

The Big Move

With ordination now - God willing - just ten short days away the grace of the Holy Spirit must surely be working for only real pressing concerns and worries at the present are the issues surrounding my move out of Mundelein Seminary.

From the beginning of the planned move out of my move most all of my plans have fallen fall through. Now I have rented a U-Haul and will move most everything out of my room tomorrow morning and store my things - including some thirty boxes of books - with friends in Springfield until I learn of my first assignment and can move in.

It is a very frustrating and aggravating process, packing. I cannot say that I really would recommend it to anybody as an activity for pleasure but only as one for penance and for those in Purgatory.

After Mass this afternoon in a little more than two hours I will - hopefully - load the majority of the remainder of my belongings - expecting a few books, clothes, toiletries, shoes, vestments, and my computer - into the U-Haul for the journey tomorrow morning.

Once I have packed up the truck I will be able to take up my carpet and turn over a couple of chairs and tables to other seminarians who will inherit them as did I. I must say that I feel very strange sitting in my room across from the wall my large bookcase once stood. The room seems so very empty without my books . . .

I think now I will go for a walk around the lake before Mass and then prepare myself to serve as deacon this afternoon. After supper I will then begin tedious packing venture and then go for a swim and then probably watch the behind the scenes footage from the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Perhaps - if I can arrange it - I may see Star Wars Episode IV: The Return of the Sith, but only if we do not leave for Springfield in the morning until 10:00 or so.

Peace and Joy!

A Midafternoons Walk

Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, being some eighty degrees and sunny outside, the time had come for a walk around the lake. The day thus far had been one filled with paperwork and frustration and I needed to get away from it all and enjoy some peace and quiet.

As I set out on my little journey around the lake, I all but immediately stumbled upon a sight I had not yet seen in my years on campus: two adult geese bookending, as it were, four small, newly hatched goslings. It was a charming sight to see the six of them waddle across the road and go gently into the water under the shade of an evergreen tree. I stood on the bridge going over the lake and watched the family for several minutes just taking it in. I was reminded of the many encounters St. Francis of Assisi had with geese in the fields and how he encouraged them to sing praise to Lord. After urging them to do the same, I continued on my venture.

About halfway around the lake I noticed a van approaching that slowed down and rolled down its window as it neared me. There were two marines inside who lived and worked on a base not far from the seminary. They were recruiters who saw the sign for the University of St. Mary of the Lake who wondered what kind of university it was. I spent several good minutes talking with them and had a delightful conversation with them. When we parted ways, I spent the rest of my walk praying for them and for the members of the military throughout the world.

These two experiences during the course of my walk filled me with peace and with joy and brought great relief to what was becoming a stressful day. Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks to him and serve him with great humility!

The End of the Year

I now have completed my Reconciliation and Mass practicum courses and so the last of my preparations for the priesthood here at the seminary come to a close. It is a time both of sadness and of great joy. I will truly miss my brother classmates whom I have been privileged these past few years. They are men of great faith of zeal and will serve the Lord in love and devotion. I am honored to be numbered among them.

In just a few hours the University of St. Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary will hold its Convocation and will award certificates and diplomas. I am to be granted both a Bachelors of Sacred Theology (S.T.B) and a Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) today. This will be the last time that I will see a number of my classmates until we return to the seminary in the Fall for a brief visit. I pray the Lord will grant us the perseverence to keep in close contact with each other.

Pray for us in these final days before priestly ordination.

It's May!

Happy May Day and Feast of St. Joseph!

It was my hope today, as has become a sort of little custom for me, to celebrate May Day in my own fashion by watching the musical Camelot, paying careful attention for the song, "It's May." The song has been a favorite of mine for some years now, as have all of the songs of the musical, but today May Day just was not the same.

In part, because I had to settle with only listening to the musical rather than watching it because my movies are currently packed up in boxes and sitting in the hallway outside of my room, and in part because the temperature here in Mundelein did not rise above a very cool and dismal forty-five degrees. Hardly a proper way to begun the pleasant and splendid month of frolicking and rejoicing in the joys of a full-blown Spring!

Habemus Papam!

When the smoke begin issuing forth from the Sistine Chapel I was sitting in my room talking with a couple of friends. As we watched the smoke rise it looked white enough but there were no bells accompanying the ringing so I assumed a Pope had not been elected.

Being a bit disappointed, I went to the mailroom to drop some things off and returned to my floor to find a couple of guys intently watching the television to determine the actual color of the smoke since it continued to come forth for some time.

I joined them and grabbed a priest to ask his opinion. All of this was taking place just before 11:00 a.m. And then, the bells of St. Peter's began to ring and we could not figure out if they were tolling the hour or tolling an election since the smoke looked white and had been rising for some time. Then, a few minutes later, with great excitement, we heard the bells very clearly tolling the election of the new Pope.

We then ran down to the recreation hall to watch the announcement on a big screen television. When we arrived, there were probably thirty other people in the room all filled with excited and wonder at who the Holy Father was.

We watched the balcony of St. Peters, waiting and waiting to see the Cardinal archdeacon emerge to say those wonderful words: "Annuntio vobis guadium magnum; habemus Papam: Eminetissium ac Reverendissium Dominum, Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger, qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI."

Waiting for the announcement, tears filled my eyes and I was filled with a wonderful joy knowning we had another shepherd to lead us. Pope Benedict XVI will provide excellent leadership to the Church and to the world.

We can get a glimpse of his thought in the homily he gave before the opening of the Conclave. He said:

"Truth and charity coincide in Christ. In the measure that we come close to Christ, also in our life, truth and charity are fused. Charity without truth is blind; truth without charity would be like 'a clanging cymbal'."

"There are no secrets between friends: Christ tells us everything he hears from the Father; he gives us his full confidence and, with confidence, also knowledge. He reveals his face to us, his heart. He shows his tenderness for us, his passionate love that goes to the folly of the cross."

"The more we love Jesus, the more we know him, and the more our genuine freedom grows, as well as the joy of being redeemed. Thank you, Jesus, for your friendship!"

Pray for Pope Benedict, that he may be a good and faithful shepherd of the Church, that God may fill him with the courage and strength needed to carry out his ministry.

Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a Pope! Viva il Papa!

On the Death of the Pope

Like so very many people throughout the world, I sat with my eyes practically glued to the television these past several days watching and praying with and for Pope John Paul II.

Saturday afternoon I was sitting at the kitchen table at my parish in Effingham inserting reply cards into my ordination invitations, watching the news the all the while. I had been sitting there for a good two or three hours. I had heard the speculation throughout the morning and afternoon that perhaps the His Holiness had already died or perhaps slipped into a coma. When the scheduled bulletin on the Holy Father's condition was pushed back some forty-five minutes by the Vatican late in the morning I knew his condition must have become worse.

Somehow, even though I had watched the television for nearly two solid days waiting for the death of the Bishop of Rome, when he did die the news still came to my ears with great surprise and shock, as well as much sadness. I heard the news just as it was announced in Rome that the Pope was dead and my heart and spirit were deeply grieved.

I spent the next day and a half or so in a state of shock, confusion, and grief, never quite knowing what to do or to mourn the passing of so great a man, a man who has inspired my brother seminarians and I in ways that we do not even fully know.

I always imagined the death of the Pope would be an exciting time, one filled with the pomp and ceremony of the Church that I so much enjoy. A time to witness the great processions and prayers of the people of God. And, yes, a time to wait anxiously for the announcement of the new Supreme Pontiff.

The death of the Pope, though, was none of this, really. His death is one that fills me still today with deep sorrow and loss. I have come to realize that my love and affection for this man runs deeper than ever I knew.

On Monday morning I watched the ending of the private viewing and the transfer of his body in Basilica of St. Peter with fascination, recalling the month I spent in Rome last year and remembering speding much time in the Basilica. I recalled with great fondness the general audience in which we partook and sang "Ad multos annos, gloriosquae annos, vivas, vivas, vivas!" to the Holy Father and how he smiled at us with genuine appreciation and love as we sang. I remembered being in St. Peter's square three Sundays in a row for the Angelus. I recalled processing through St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday evenings for Solemn Evening Prayer with Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and seminarians from throughout the world.

As they brought John Paul's body through the doors of the basilica I wept for quite a long time, truly grieving the loss of a man who was a sort of father figure, a man who was a source of inspiration and comfort and encouragement.

His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, truly served the Church well. May he always be remembered for the father that he was and will continue to be to the Church.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen!

John Paul II, the Great, pray for us!

Easter Joy

On Holy Thursday I finally went about searching for Easter cards to give to a few people. Once I found the humorous cards for a select group, I then began searching for cards that spoke of true importance of Easter: the empty tomb.

I was quite astounded to find very few cards that mentioned either the empty tomb or the Lord Jesus. The overwhelming majority of the cards I was able to find simply said, "Happy Easter; Happy Spring." While it is true that the origin of the word "Easter" may come from the word "Spring", there is much more to this holy day than the coming of green grass, blue skies, and warm temperatures. Secular society has already managed to take Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day; now I fear they may be taking Easter.

With that said, let me move on. I had the awesome privilege and pleasure of proclaiming the Easter praises of the Lord on the day of my birth. What an amazing gift! The great Exsultet has long been my favorite song - it goes back some 1700 years or more. Easter Vigil 2005 will be a night I long will remember.

A blessed and joy-filled Easter to each of you!

A Taste of Spring

Yesterday's weather was simply amazing! Although the day opened with a cloudy sky and chilly temperatures, by the early afternoon not a cloud was to be seen. A pleasant breeze blew the air around with a temperature in the mid to upper 50s. It truly was a glimmer of hope and glance of spring!

How wonderful it felt to sit in my room with my windows open, listening to the blowing of the wind, the chatter of the squirrels, the chirping of a few birds, the arguments of racoons, and the conversations of passersby. I could feel the fresh air invigorate my body and my senses and what joy coursed through me then.

I am ready for spring; may winter's death be at hand. Come, spring, come! Do not delay!

The Scribe of the Servant and Steward

As this post is being typed, I am simply sitting in my chair at my desk speaking out loud into a microphone and my new computer program simply types in what I say. It is a lot of fun and I do wish I had been begun to use it some time ago. I am still in the process of training the program in the way that I speak and in recognition of my own voice. I think this training will take several more days as the two of us learn to work with each other.

I think this new software will come in very handy when I sit down to prepare homilies and letters and e-mail. Because I think faster than I type I now can simply speak what I'm thinking - which I think everyone will agree that I'm good at doing - and have all my thoughts recorded for me. It is like having my very own scribe :-).

The Extermination of Chivalry

This weekend I returned to Springfield to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for the Rite of Election and the Call to Continuing Conversion. Those catechumens of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois - those seeking Baptism at Easter - were accepted by Bishop Lucas and enrolled among the Elect of God. Those who are seeking the completion of their Christian Initiation at Easter were encouraged to grow in conversion and love of the Lord.

The Rite itself is one of my favorite liturgies of the Church. What joy filled my heart as I served as deacon this evening and looked upon the congregation. The Cathedral was packed, filled with those seeking to follow after the Lord Jesus Christ and to receive his Body and Blood. Each year it is truly a time of great inspiration to see so many gathered in one place who have heard the Lord calling them to the Catholic Church. Praised be Jesus Christ!

After the Rite on Saturday evening, five of us were the last to the reception, an occurance that is not all too uncommon. We were two women and three men. The men were packed in the Cathedral lot just outside the doors while the women were parked in the lot across the street from the Cathedral.

We realized this shortly after the two women began to return to their car and so we three men quickly followed after them to see them to their car. Once we reached the street, the women protested, saying there were already people in the lot from the Rite and that the lot was well lit. They simply would not let us walk them to their car.

Why is it that men are no longer allowed to be gentlemen? Why are we met with complaining when we attempt to walk a lady to her car, to open a door for her, or even to stand when she arrives at table? The complaint is often heard that "chivalry is dead." I wonder instead if it has not been exterminated.

The Ailing Pontiff

Please keep His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, in your prayers. As you have surely heard, the ailing Pontiff is in the hospital in Rome for precautionary measures concerning his current bout with the flu. May he be quickly restored to health and strength!

Respect for the Living

Last weekend I attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Together with tens of thousands of other people, I marched to the Supreme Court building and to the Capitol Building and as I did so I had one thought: it is no wonder nobody listens to us.

As I marched along with the delegation from the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois - some two hundred youth and adults - I watched with surprise as various groups pushed right through our group, separating and dividing us. My ankles were continually hit by the bottom pole of a banner held by a group coming along behind us who apparently could not see me. Time and again I asked them to stop walking into me, pointing out the thousands of people in front of me who prevented me from moving any faster, and still they nearly ran me down.

I was quite appalled at the lack of respect given by the marchers to fellow marchers. Here we were touting and crying out for respect and life for the unborn and we could not even show common decency and respect to those already living. Is it any wonder then that our message is not heeded or heard? How very sad this is!

And yet, it is for just this reason that Christ Jesus came among us and calls us to himself. It is for this reason that he gave his life on the cross.

If we hope to convert those who support abortion; if we hope to convert those who do not yet believe; if we hope to bring the love of Christ to a hurting world, we must first humble ourselves among our brothers and sisters in Christ and deomonstrate to them all that we ask of the world. Then they may see our good deeds and glorify the heavenly Father.

Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing . . .

- William Shakespeare

The Deacon Detective

This afternoon, shortly before Cardinal George spoke to the seminary community, I realized that my flag of Great Britain which sits atop my television, was missing. My immediate thought was, "The swine!"

I then quickly thought through all of my visitors and realized that it could only be one man and that the theft must have occured last evening since I had not received any visitors until that point today.

He visited me last evening about 9:15 for only a few moments. As we chatted, I watched him playing with the flag and I thought then to myself, "He's going to take my flag." But when he left my room I thought that I saw my flag on my television. I clearly was mistaken last night.

I paid a visit to the thief-suspect about 8:45 this evening. He did not deny having knowledge of the flag and told me that if a piece of Irish paraphernalia appeared in its place by the feast of St. Patrick, the flag would be returned.

I simply told him that I would instead place a large flag of the Sceptered Isle outside of my door. He laughed and then explained to me how he took the flag lastnight and that I must have mentally placed the flag in my sight.

He then returned the flag and told me he was surprised that I had figured it out so quickly, and on the first try. I then explained to him how I arrived at my conclusion. I was the last person he expected to see this evening, he said.

The flag is now happily in its rightful place in my room.

Peace and Joy!

In the Bleak Midwinter

George Herbert once said, "Every mile is two in winter." How right he is! In addition to our twelve inches of snow, last night and today we are to receive one to four more inches of snow, with sleet and snow throughout the day as well. The attempts at writing papers and finishing other course work are proving a bit difficult lately, due in large part to the bleakness of this winter. Although the length of the day has been increasing since late December, we have not seen much of the sun in recent days to verify this scientific fact with our own eyes. The sun is supposed to return to us on Thursday, but the price to pay for the sunlight is temperatures below ten degrees.

Today I shall remove myself to the library in a drastic attempt to force myself to complete several papers that are due tomorrow and Thursday. They shall be completed on time and well!

In addition, I think I am going to have a bit of "liquid sunshine": DrPepper :) Toward the close of the day, those of us who took part in the forty-second annual Diocese of "Madison Caroling Tour" will be going out to dinner at local Italian restaurant to celebrate. Although today will be one largely devoted to work, it will not be without its amusements and enjoyments.

Peace and Joy!

Let It Commence

This evening I have decided to have a go at the growing popular means of expression and communication in the modern world and have thus begun this "blog," as they are called. I am not entirely sure what the excitement and attraction of blogs is, but I am at least willing to give them a try and see if I discover the draw of blogs today.

If you find this blog and would like to link to it, please let me know. If you want me to link to your blog, also please let me know.

Today has been a day of relaxation and laziness up to this point and now it is time to get at least a small amount of work completed. My goal is to finish reading St. Ambrose of Milan's, On Naboth. In this work, Ambrose reflects on the account from I Kings of the vineyard of Naboth stolen by King Ahaz. I am about half-way through the saint's reflections and am very much enjoying them. After I finish reading his reflections I will have to write a brief reflection on his work myself. And so, here I go!