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. |