The dedication of a church

So yesterday, all the different other major seminarians started arriving from all their many different walks of life. Our residence is now quite full of people and with classes starting this coming Monday, I have been running around once more trying to get everything and speak to everyone I need to before school starts. I’ve found my spiritual director, Father Peter, who is also the rector of the minor seminary, for the high school students. He seems like a very nice and holy man. He was one of the monks who gave us a teaching yesterday on how to study and the attitudes one should have when studying. Fr. Peter specifically gave us a class on memorization, which I’ll be talking about in a later post.

I’ve also been trying to adapt to the prayer life out here. It takes a whole lot of discipline to do all that the monks are doing on a daily basis. Today, being the dedication of the abbey church, I joined them for their morning lauds which, following the Sunday schedule, starts at 5:30 am. Believe it or not, that’s already sleeping in for them… On weekdays and Saturday, lauds is at 5 am! 🙂

The feast of the dedication of a church is quite a big deal over here… We wore suits the whole day almost, we “slept” in, we had a special divine office and mass, and one of my personal favorites, we had salmon for lunch! 🙂 There goes my plan of losing weight while here… Sigh.. At least we do get lots of exercise!! So it all balances out in the end… So I’ll have to end it here for now… I want to get up early once more for lauds tomorrow. God bless!!

PS. My room number here is 316… Reminds me of the very famous verse from the gospel of St. John!!