Monkling's Blog

When the young men are considering entering the seminary, they can attend an open house. In Stephen’s senior year of high school, we attended the open house. There are a lot of details that are faded in my mind already. This was, after all, 6 years ago and I can barely remember one year ago.

One thing I remember very clearly, though. The rector (now, one of our auxiliary bishops) said to us, “In this house, the men are all brothers and I am their Papa.” He instilled in them that sense of brotherhood, something I think is very important & I see evidence of this whenever I see the seminarians together.

God willing, in 3 years, my son will be ordained. But even if he’s not, I am so proud of him for even considering this life. Equally, I am proud of all these men. In a world that seems increasingly self absorbed and selfish, they are willing to sacrifice their entire lives in the service of others. Our lives have been so blessed simply by knowing them.

In Sept. of 1999, my son entered high school. During that first year, we got to know the students, the faculty and fell in love with the school. One boy we met that first year was Danny. Like Stephen, Danny loved music and played the organ. Danny was the school organist and Stephen joined the choir, helping out at the organ.

I will never forget our first Mass at the Prep, the first time I heard all those male voices singing those hymns. It was pretty much the first time I ever heard an all male choir and it was beautiful. But I digress…

At Danny’s graduation, Stephen played the organ since, obviously, Danny couldn’t be playing it. Since Steve was just under 15 at the time and didn’t drive, we were at the graduation, as well. At the graduation, something was announced that we already knew – Danny would be entering the seminary to further discern a vocation to the priesthood.

Danny was the first seminarian classmate of Stephen’s that I knew. It also seemed that Stephen was following in Danny’s footsteps – from playing the organ in high school to entering the seminary, being sent to D.C. and then to Rome. (Then there is also that they are both Italian and both uh.. on the small side.)

The ordination was on Saturday, Stephen’s 24th birthday. Steve couldn’t be there because he’s not allowed back in The States until next summer but we were there, bright and early.

Three men were ordained that day. The seminarians, priests & bishops processed in. Seeing huge smiles on the faces of our 3 almost-priests, was just so cool.

The ceremony itself was amazing, as it always is. In a way, it reminds me of a wedding. You walk in single. You leave changed, bonded by the sacrament of marriage. Here, too, these men were changed up on that altar. They received the sacrament of Holy Orders and they are now priests.

One particular part of the ceremony I love is when all the other priests attending lay hands on the newly ordained priests. What I found especially cool that day was seeing our parish priest, who was only just ordained himself last year, laying hands on Danny.

Saturday evening, we attended the reception to celebrate Fr. Danny’s ordination. I don’t think I stopped smiling the entire night. So many priests were there, so many seminarians, my boys.

We were sitting with family of other priests & seminarians. I’ve met some parents before but had never met any of these people. I found out it works both ways. These boys I like to call “my boys” because I have a special affection for all these young men but there is also a bond with the other families. It’s like we are all connected. These men are brothers and, so, we are all one family.

It was just an amazing weekend. Stay tuned. More tomorrow.

As we usually do, we attended the Easter Vigil tonight. In some ways, this Easter Vigil was special. Our parish built a new Church and it was the first Easter Vigil in the new Church. We also have a newly ordained priest assigned to our parish and this was his first Easter Vigil as a priest.

For those you unfamiliar with this particular Mass, it starts out with the priests & deacons starting a fire in the entrance to the Church. A few days ago, I saw our parish’s Plant Manager carrying the uh… no clue what it’s called and I said, “Oh! It’s the fire thingie!” You’d think the mother of a seminarian would know the proper term for it.

When you go into the Church for the Easter Vigil, it’s dark. Mass started at 8 but we got there early. It was still light out but as it the time crept towards 8, you could see the light through the stained glass windows fade. It seemed like someone was outside hitting a dimmer switch.

It’s late so I’m tired and all over the place tonight. Remember a while back I said I was asked to write something about being the parent of a seminarian for a new website our diocese was preparing to launch? It’s now live. If anyone is interested in checking out the website, use the email link to contact me & I’ll send you the url.

Yes I did initially have that information here but it revealed way too much – our last name, our parish… I don’t want that stuff posted here for the entire world to see but I’d be happy to share it via email.

Do you want to know how to tell when your brain is on overload and it’s time to quit? I think I discovered this today.

I’ve been studying Italian. Previously I had planned on giving up, concluding it’s never going to happen, I will never be able to learn a word of Italian and I must be an idiot. That changed when I started realizing some things were sticking. After trying about 34,294 different methods, I finally hit upon what I need to do to actually learn it – thus the continuing ed lessons for me. It turns out I’m not stupid after all. I just learn differently.

After that revelation, I sprung for a more expensive software package and have religiously been studying it every day for an hour a pop. (Okay, so I’ve only had it for 2 days. I will keep up this pace!) It was going along great. Until I tried it again tonight. Initially I was getting a few things wrong; little things like remember the difference between ‘he’ and ‘she’ but I was surprised by how much I knew. Ah, well that all went out the window tonight.

I know I’m tired but I didn’t think I was that tired. I mean come on, the entire world knows ‘mangia’ means eat so how the heck did I get that wrong? Then I found myself clicking on the wrong answers even when I knew the right ones. Yep, it’s time to quit studying for the day.

Oh, and another thing – what is up with the whole voice recognition thing? Because I was saying ‘bambina’ perfectly fine. It’s not a hard word. It kept telling me I was wrong. I suspect it was the NY accent. Not that I have an accent. Well that’s it for the stupid microphone. If people don’t understand my Italian with the NY accent, tough luck!

I went to the noon Mass this afternoon. As usual, I found something to distract me. After all, without distractions, I just might get to thinking I’m way too good.

I do try to eliminate one particular distraction. There’s this woman who attends daily Mass. She’s a good woman. But she crosses herself every 5 seconds. That’s almost as bad as Curtsy Man. This was a guy who genuflected multiple times. He’d walk into Church and genuflect. He’d take a few more steps and genuflect again. It got to looking like he was curtsying, thus my nickname for him. Today’s distraction was a man in front of me on the way up to communion. He had on a belt and suspenders. Is it just me or is that overkill?

Later this afternoon I took a ride out to my sister’s and to my sister in-law’s to pick up some pictures my niece & nephews drew for Stephen. A friend of mine is going to Rome next week so she’s going to bring some stuff to Steve. I love the notes the kids wrote. My favorites, though, were some lines my 8 year old nephew Joey wrote:

This is a picture of me riding in a motor car in pencilvaniua.
How is roam?
We’ll see you in a long, long, long, long, long time.
Why did you want to be a prest in the first place?

I can’t wait to see how my son answers that last question!

This past Sunday, at the 9:30 a.m. Mass, they had the Catechists Commissioning. A catechist is someone who teaches religious education. My daughter is one. She teaches 2nd grade, which is a big year – First Communion for the kids. Theresa has been doing this since high school (6 years) so we’re familiar with the drill.

Now I am not an early morning person. I’m generally up by 7:30 during the week & by 8 or 8:30 on the weekends, depending on how many times I hit the snooze button. It’s not like I’m not up early enough to make it to the earlier Mass. I just don’t like going. It means I can’t leisurely drink my coffee, nuking it a few times as it cools down. It means I can’t take my time in the shower. And don’t you dare suggest I skip either of those things before heading out. Trust me, you would not want to deal with a decaffeinated, unshowered Monkling first thing in the morning.

But being Mother of the Year, I made the sacrifice to get to the early Mass this Sunday. Theresa didn’t come home the night before so I sent her a text asking if she was going to meet us at Church. I didn’t get any reply so we just headed up there. As we were walking, we see Theresa driving past. I point her out to Frank & we wonder if we should just head into the Church or wait outside. We opt to go in. We stand in the vestibule, talking with friends, waiting for her. No Theresa. It’s getting late. Thinking maybe we missed her and she’s already sitting, we go into the Church and look around. We don’t see her anywhere so we sit down. I text her to ask where she is.

Mass starts. Frank is getting a bit worried. Me, not so much. I figure she’s around somewhere in the building or maybe on her way in, something came up. About 5 minutes into the Mass, I get a text from her (luckily I had it on silent) saying she had a meeting & that she wasn’t going to that Mass.

Now what I want to know is, who was in the exact same car we have, with a driver who, to both her parents, looked like Theresa? It seems there is a Theresa clone out there. Too bad she can’t track the clone down. She’s involved in so many things, having a clone would sure make life easier.

This afternoon, I went to get the mail. Nothing exciting. Some catalogs, some bills and mostly junk. Then there was the magazine put out by Theological College in Washington, D.C. where Steve lived for the past 3 years.

I put that aside rather than tossing it straight into the recycling bin, because sometimes there’s a photo of him in there. Actually the only photos were of his entire class each year. A tiny photo, him being one of many. Then I flipped it over and this was on the front:

Yes, that handsome, short guy in front, on the far right is my boy. (The scanned copy doesn’t look as good as the original. Plus I had to crop it to fit on the blog page. If you want to see the entire cover, which I think is a bit clearer, click on the photo. It’ll open in a new window and if you click on that photo, it’ll enlarge it to full size.)

I only have one copy of the magazine so no one is getting this.

* Editing* to say that back in April, I had posted about him telling me he had stared down the pope. This was the moment he was referring to.

Many nights I sit here staring at the screen with no idea what I’m going to blog about. Other times, like tonight, I have way too many things to write about. I’m saving most for another time (including the award I got from Nancie) & will stick to just 1 story that is relevant to something happening tomorrow.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know my sister, Janet, has had oh, just a few stays in the hospital & some surgery. (If you’re really bored, you can catch up with December of last year.) Let’s just say I lost count of how many & this has been ongoing since she was 12. So pretty much all her life she’s been having so much fun with all this.

Tomorrow is yet another surgery, to reconstruct the right ureter. Ya see, when you have tons of kidney stones forcing their way through that little, itty bitty tube, they can tend to tear the crap out of said tube aka ureter. Thus the surgery.

Now, quite naturally, Janet’s been getting just a bit discouraged with all this. She wants to be healed. In our family, we joke about her and call her St. Janet of ____ (the town she lives in) but the truth is, if anyone is deserving of a miracle, it’s her. That’s not the point of this post, though. Getting back to her being discouraged, she’s been praying to Pope John Paul II, a man who we’re pretty damn sure will be canonized. Actually the entire family is supposed to be praying to him for her. Don’t tell her but sometimes I forget.

A few weeks ago, she was having a little conversation with God saying she needs some sort of sign. He needs to give her some hope that her entire life isn’t going to be like this; that things are going to get better. Now, my sister doesn’t just ask God for a sign. Nope, she then has the nerve to tell Him what the sign should be! Pope John Paul often said, “Be Not Afraid” and that is what Janet said she wanted to see. Not only did she want to see it someplace, she wanted it to smack her in the face.

The following day (or was it later that same day?), she gets a magazine in the mail called Envoy. On the outside, there’s a paper wrapper and the first thing she sees on it is, “Be Not Afraid.” Now how weird is that? But it gets better. She opens it to the front cover and they have a list of some of the feature articles that are inside so again she sees, “Be Not Afraid” and underneath that is another line, “This means you.” Oh, and wait. It gets even better. The article is by a priest friend of hers. She had no idea it was going to be in there, much less what the title of the article would be.

In yet another odd coincidence, she also decided to pray to Our Lady of Czestochowa because Pope John Paul had a particular devotion to her. Guess when her feast day is? Yep, tomorrow, the day Janet’s having surgery.

If any of you pray, Janet could use a few prayers. For those of you that are Catholic, well you know exactly who to ask for favors now – Pope John Paul & Our Lady of Czestochowa. By the way, my sister is a damn showoff. She knows how to pronounce that.

For those of you who are not Catholic and find all the devotions to saints & the Blessed Mother as strange, let me leave you with this analogy. We don’t worship saints & the Blessed Mother. It’s more like – say I worked in Madison Square Garden and I had access to all the big name stars who perform there and you wanted an autograph. Now wouldn’t you ask me to get one for you because you know I’m right there?

Back tomorrow with:
1. A Janet surgery report
2. The blog award I got
3. How I got my job as a parkie

That’s how many years we’re married today. Frank is home from work, but not because it’s our anniversary. He was up half the night coughing so he stayed home. But hey, who am I to complain? Anything that keeps him home is okay with me, especially since he seems to be feeling up to dinner out tonight.

Our anniversary is also a feast day, one I had no idea about at the time we were married. In Rome, a few hundred years ago, there was a miracle on August 5th. On a hill in Rome, it snowed. A beautiful basilica was built on the spot. Every year, on the feast day of Our Lady of the Snows, they have a special Mass at this Church, Santa Maria Maggiore. They shower white rose pedals from the dome and at night, firemen use a snow machine in the piazza there. Steve had been hoping to take a train down today from Assisi but it didn’t work out. I’m thinking we really need to be there next year for our 25th.

Tonight at our parish, they are dedicating our new Church. That means we get the bishop for Mass on our anniversary. I’m considering asking him for a photo of himself that I can throw darts at for taking my boy away from me.

I am not terribly familiar with other Christian denominations & how their services are, so I’m not too sure how widespread the whole ‘sign of peace’ thing is. If there’s a lot of you out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief description. During Mass, there’s a part where you’re supposed to turn to the people in your immediate vicinity and shake their hand or offer some other sort of ‘sign of peace.’

Now some people are very enthusiastic about this. They jump over the pews and give everyone a huge bear hug. Some pretend they didn’t hear the priest say, “Now let’s offer each other a sign of peace.” (Don’t quote me on whether or not those are the exact words. I’m tired.) Those people don’t want to shake anyone’s hands.

Yeah, y’all are thinking that since I’m the reserved sort, I probably am one of those pretending I didn’t hear it so I don’t have to shake anyone’s hand. I don’t mind it. I’ll even turn around to the people behind me & shake their hands. Hubby gets a kiss, as do my kids. If I’m near people I am friendly with, they may even get a hug. I do not, however, go running around the entire Church.

But that’s not the point of this blog post. It’s about kids. Now I love shaking hands with any kids that around around me. I think the enthusiastic ones are adorable. I think the shy ones that sort of stick out their hands are adorable. Here’s the thing, though. Say you’re sitting there in Church and there’s a kid about 5 years old in front of you. During the Mass, you see the kid oh, let’s say licking their hands or picking their nose or something. Now you have a dilemma. You don’t really want to be touching their hand after that. Then you have to be sneaky about avoiding them. That’s the time you have to suddenly be intent on shaking the hands of everyone behind you until they priest gets to the next part of the Mass and the kid is safely facing forward, eh?

Aren’t you all so glad I shared this little tip with you? Now tomorrow when you’re at Mass, I know what you’re going to be on the lookout for!