The Last Few Days

Wednesday night was the unofficial kick-off of the youth group year. I am a member of the adult team at St. John Neumann in Canton. This isn't my apostolic assignment, which I'll be getting soon, but just some ministry I enjoy doing on the side. It was a great opportunity to start off the year and catch up with the teens. It's a great group and I really enjoy the opportunity to see God work in these teens.

Thursday is our Archdiocesan fraternity day. Seminarians from the Archdiocese meet for evening prayer and then we have dinner together in the refectory (it's our seminary word for cafeteria/dining room). It is always a great time to build brotherhood with the guys from our diocese. More and more there is a greater emphasis being placed on the importance of fraternity in the life of the diocesan priest. There is a strong effort to help build up supportive relationships between priests because they are best suited to relate to and support each other (iron sharpens iron).

After dinner, was our weekly holy hour of adoration and benediction at 8 pm. This is an opportunity for each of the priests at the seminary to preach on readings he selects and gives us further formation as a whole seminary.

To make Thursday even more exciting, our campus pub, O'Berg's (named after the late Fr. Berg a beloved member of the faculty and basketball coach) had it's grand opening for the year. That's right, our seminary has a bar (gasp, the scandal!!!). It's the main social area for both houses that has a loft with pool, air hockey, and ping pong tables, a TV room with a big screen donated to us by a generous sponsor from the Lansing dioceses and a very nice bar with fridges packed both with beer and soft drinks (for the underage guys and those that don't drink). The idea is that instead of having lots of seminarians with private fridges for their beer, we have a big community bar staffed by seminarians that sells beer at cost (about $1.50 a bottle) so that it becomes a building block of fraternity. The rector was even so generous as to buy each of us our first round! All in all, the year is getting off to a great start