Saturday, December 28, 2013

Packing and unpacking


We are getting close to our departure date (t-minus 3 days), and so I am finally starting to compose my mental list of what I want to bring with me to Israel.  As usual, the greatest problem of any seminarian is what to read.  We always get lots of books from various people for Christmas (in my case, my teaching parish pastor, the vocations director, the rector, and the Archbishop), which when paired with the books that we should have been reading over the semester, and fun literature means that I have a lot of options to pick from.

The other thing that I needed to do was go to confession.  This helps satisfy the paranoid part of me that if something happens when flying (I hate to fly), I’ll die with fewer sins on my soul (and so get to skip over or spend less time in purgatory).  But all joking aside, I know that when we travel in these large class groups, I tend to lack patience, and so it’s better to be fortified with grace before getting into these stressful situations traveling with large groups.
Fortitude from the Saint Paul Seminary.  I wanted to include
 the painting of patience from the dome that's over the high altar
at the Cathedral, but couldn't a picture online.  Fortitude is the
 governing virtue for patience per St. Thomas Aquinas
I still have a lot of packing to do before leaving, but I’m starting to get really excited about our pilgrimage.  Please keep praying for us, and if you have any particular intentions, feel free to leave a comment.
-JP

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