Life at the Seminary

Well guys, before I depart for Rome (in 2 days) I thought I’d share with you what I will be up to. From January 2 through 4 I’ll be at the International Seminarians’ Congress at Castel Gandolfo, spending some time with over 100 seminarians from across the globe (although the location implies most of them will be from Europe). I am totally excited, because several of my friends are also going and it will be so great to meet up with them again!

Themes of the congress will be: being a priest today- dreams and challenges, Celibates not singles, God in today’s world, and a network for unity. I think it sounds interesting enough. There will be testimonies and discussion groups, and we’ll finish the congress by going to the angelus with Pope Benedict XVI. Sooo… just in case you needed another prayer intention, please pray for all of us attending the congress, and check back in January to get an idea of what we have been up to!

Sometimes God puts special people upon your path. Well, He probably does that all day long all our lives, but sometimes we limited creatures actually acknowledge how His Providence gives us these encounters to become more like Him.

Usually God puts a desire or idea in our heart that will lead to something else. For instance, I went to a congress once about brotherhood in the priesthood to learn how to accomplish that, but as a ’side effect’ the group we went with grew very close and we were actually able to experience some of it.

Now, the day before Christmas, I thought I’d call my cousin who is working in Brussels and couldn’t be home for Christmas. I figured I’d play some Christmas carols for her on my harp, so she would be a bit less lonely. Turns out I couldn’t find her number, so I taped it instead and put it on YouTube. Now, and here is the funny thing, while browsing for my own clip, I found a clip of two amazing people, Camille and Kennerly Diebold.

These girls are identical twins, and what’s more, they were voted “America’s Most Identical Twins” on the Discovery TV Channel. They describe themselves: “We are best friends and trusted allies. We have taken all the same classes and shared all of our jobs and gigs. We volunteer in athletic and “buddy” programs for challenged children, teens, and young adults.” Seeing as how we both posted Oh Holy Night on our harps we got in touch and I got to know them as very devout people who lead a life of high moral standards as well. How grateful we must feel to know God gives such blessings to the world, in the lives of many normal people all over the world who really live for his kingdom!

All the twins’ harp video’s have the embedding disabled, so for those of you who want to watch one of their vids without leaving my site, I am posting here below a video of Kennerly and Camille translating a clip into sign language for their deaf friends. However, I am encouraging all of you to watch some more of their videos. Their harps are amazing (and sooooo expensive!) and they play like angels!

The weekend right after our last week of classes for the year, I got a real nasty flu. I think the ol’ battery just ran out of juice, simple as that. Seminary life isn’t always easy, because a lot is happening to you. Not only the many classes we are taking this year (15!), but there are also all the other things that you feel are important. Mainly, we all want to be men of God, and we try to choose the paths in our lives that will enable us to become just that. It’s something that is constantly on your mind, and it is one of the things that makes seminary life the biggest adventure of my life, but also the most demanding period. Point is, the days I spent sick at bed really taught me something.

It were quite a few tough days where I really was in terrible pain and completely exhausted because I couldn’t really sleep because of it. One of my favorite books to read is Lettersof St. Therese of Lisieux. If you haven’t read it, it is beyond good and will definitely help your spiritual life. In one of her last letters that she writes to a seminarian she is in touch with, she gives him the crucifix that hung in her room, and which she held later on during her time of illness. What a relic! I felt a little jealous when I read it, to be honest… apparently she had clutched that cross for weeks and kissed it so many times…!

Well, in my room I have a little crucifix as well. I got it from the Brothers of St. John where I spent two years before going ot seminary. It’s always been in my bedroom, and I figured I should hold onto the cross in my pain. Well, my friends, what I want to share with you is this: Christ’s cross is not a teddy bear. It’s wood, it’s square and it’s hard and it is not comfortable to hold at all!  Again the physical we encounter in our lives is a perfect symbol for the spiritual we experience.

This whole experience did bring me a whole lot closer to Christ. I had to hang onto Him, because there really isn’t that much else to hang onto in our lives. Everything changes, everything fades, except for His Love. I felt so terrible I could barely move, but decided to get up and call the rector to ask him to bring me Holy Communion. I think I cried for like half an hour until the rector showed up. When we celebrated the small liturgy surrounding the distribution of the Holy Communion outside of Mass, I think I felt as close to Christ as I had for months, or maybe even years. I think this was Christ’s crash course to prepare me for the holidays!

Hello friends,

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but just after my last week of seminary I fell really ill for a few days. I am now back to working order and took a few days of rest. Fortunately, we Christians celebrate 8 days of Christmas, from the 25th of December (or the 24th, if you will) to January 1, where we celebrate Mary, Mother of God.

Anyway, it still being in the official Christmas time, I hope no one is going to mind me posting a little clip of myself playing Oh Holy Night on the harp. Being born on Christmas Eve myself, this has always been my favorite as far as Christmas carols go! I hope you will enjoy it! Merry Christmas to you all!

Well, the order which I placed with Amazon.ca has finally arrived! They had estimated the delivery date somewhere in February, but I am quite convinced they just did that so I would pay more for faster shipping. In an attempt to get my stuff before Christmas, I therefore upgraded shipping, after which they estimated the delivery date around January 5. However, it just came in. The crooks :p

In any case, it has the Sophocles book I ordered and wanted to read over the holidays. Sophocles was a Greek tragedy writer, who wrote a beautiful play called Antigone (as well as Oedipus, by the way). We’re in a pretty interesting philosophy class about tragedy in philosophy, and Antigone’s character came up. In short the idea is that she is torn by a decree from her ruler not to bury her traitor-brother and an inner appeal from the gods, who dictate that one should give their family members a decent burial. In the end she attempts to do just that and gets caught, after which she commits suicide in prison. To top it off, I think her husband/lover kills himself as well when he finds out about her fate. The question we are looking into in these classes is whether, with the disappearance of the gods in our modern society, tragedy is still possible.

Another bonus were the four CDs I ordered, one being The Priests’ CD. Three Irish priests are singing religious songs, a perfect all year round CD, although especially great during this holiday season. While listening to it, I was again struck by the beauty of the Abide with Me song, which you probably know, written by Henry Lyte.

Lyte was in­spired to write this hymn as he was dy­ing of tu­ber­cu­lo­sis; he fin­ished it the Sun­day he gave his fare­well ser­mon in the par­ish he served so ma­ny years. Here is an ex­cerpt from his fare­well ser­mon: O breth­ren, I stand here among you to­day, as alive from the dead, if I may hope to im­press it upon you, and in­duce you to pre­pare for that sol­emn hour which must come to all, by a time­ly ac­quaint­ance with the death of Christ.

I think the song is based on the beautiful passage from the gospel of Luke (24:29) where the disciples urged Jesus strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’” I couldn’t find a video from the priests online, but I did find this beautiful version by a New Zealand (and half-Dutch) singer, Hayley Westenra. After listening to it, I thought “Darn… Now I have to order another CD!”

From Wikipedia:

Sinterklaas is a traditional holiday figure in the Netherlands, celebrated every year on Saint Nicholas’ eve. The feast celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas’ Eve (December 5th) is the chief occasion for gift-giving. Traditionally, presents are ingeniously wrapped, and are therefore called surprises. Also, presents are traditionally accompanied by a poem from Saint Nicholas.

Okay, so now everyone is up to speed on St. Nicolas, I can announce that this weekend I went to my mom’s house to celebrate St. Nicolas eve with my family. My sister Nini, my grandparents and my aunt/uncle/cousin also came. Since we don’t do much in gift-giving around Christmas here in Holland, this is really a nice tradition.

Sadly, I don’t get spoiled as much anymore as when I was a kid :p In fact, since a few years our family has adopted the ’secret Santa’-formula, where we each draw tickets with the name of one other person to by a gift for. I thought it would be fun for my teenage cousin to get a DVD box from That 70s Show, which is not only fun to watch, but also gives you some insight in how things went in the 70s and the weird clothes they were wearing back then. Probably my aunt and uncle will love watching it with him, recognizing many things from the time they grew up in. I figured it wasn’t a bad gift, was it?

I in turn got a wonderful gift from my secret Santa, a.k.a. mom. She got me a beautiful harp CD from Letizia Belmondo, one of the winners from the prestigeous International Harp Contest in Israel. I have yet to listen to it, but it has some works on it from Scarlatti, who was a great harpist himself. She also got me some store credit at a local CD/DVD store, which was really very sweet of her, because the harp CD itself probably was pretty expensive already.

Also at the seminary we have celebrated St. Nicolas. My fellow seminarian, Francis, and myself were in charge of the organization of last Thursday’s evening. We asked our teacher, Canon Cor Mennen, to play Sinterklaas and arranged two students in the deaconate program as Sinterklaas’s helper, called ‘Black Pete’. Instead of dressing them up in their usual frivolous Spanish-looking Black Pete costumes, we got two red dalmatics and had them act as (sub-)deacons during a ‘ceremony’ in which Sinterklaas would address the seminary.

Having bought presents for a large selection of seminarians, staff members and employees (usually with a particularly obvious pun to them…) we gave Sinterklaas enough background info on everyone so he could -in a nice and funny way- say something about that person’s peculiarities. After Sinterklaas had left the building, each year presented some sort of sketch, some of which were just too hilarious. Even the staff managed to put up a good show which amused us until the end of the evening. Our cook had outdone himself by baking various cookies, hot apple pastries and whatnot. All in all, I feel I couldn’t have asked for a nicer St. Nicolas this year!

Well, this weekend, all of us seminarians were in Ameland, one of the Dutch islands. We had a great time there, so for more information, please read my next post ‘Fun in Ameland’.

In this post I would like to share an experience of last Sunday with you, which was shocking to say the least. A Mass was scheduled at the local parish that morning, after which the local priest would talk about experiences as an island pastor.

The Mass turned out to not be a Mass at all. There was no valid Confiteor, there were only 2 instead of 3 lectures, there was some weird sort of ‘creed’ -people say the stupidest things!- and now the most shocking: no valid Eucharistic prayer. To top it off, aside from hosts, cookies were ‘consacrated’ to be given out to the children as well.

When I learned what was scheduled, I gathered up my bags and left the church. Others stayed there out of politeness… it is not my goal to criticize my brothers here, but I personally think it is a big mistake to be present at such a gathering. Because who are you showing politeness to? The ‘priest’ of that church? The people going to that church? If you do that, you forget whose church it really is – it is the Lord who you should show politeness to! It is his house you are in!

This episode showed me how far we are in my country from growing to a new, vital, faithful Church where we let God be our God and do with us as He desires, instead of doing with and to Him what we desire. Because only if we let God work in and through us, we can change something. Else we are doing nothing but building our own church, and everything we build is temporary.

All these parishioners there that have been lied to all these years, it is hard to blame them. But we are not changing a thing by sitting in on their celebration out of politeness as Christ is suffering for what is being done in His Church. We should be clear in what we believe in and communicate in clear and loving terms why we cannot accept what is happening.

As you might have guessed, I haven’t gone to this ‘priest’ talk about his experience as an island pastor either. Because he is no pastor. He is no priest. Let us start calling things what they are, instead of calling them what they are not. In any case, this is what we are facing here today. Maybe you think I was wrong to react the way I did, or maybe you agree – in any case, I wouldn’t mind to hear your views. I also wouldn’t mind if you could keep our country and Church here in your prayers. A lot of healing has to be done, and I think I have enough motivation to get me through seminary for the next four years!

Ameland, you ask? Okay, so you’re not Dutch It’s one of the small islands north of the Netherlands. To be honest, I’d never been there before but I was there last weekend. Once a year, all the seminarians celebrate the seminary’s ‘birthday’ in one way or another. Last year, it being the 20th year the seminary had been re-opened, we all went to Rome for about a week. This year was a bit more modest, although I really consider it a luxury (!): we all went to Ameland for the weekend.

After a four hour drive (and, of course, a trip by boat) we arrived on Ameland. The hotel we stayed at was really quite nice, with spacious rooms, private washrooms/showers and your own TV. This in itself is a luxury unknown to the seminarian :p We only have a common TV room here, and it was actually quite amusing to find out that half the seminary had watched program X, until someone remarked ‘wasn’t that on at 01:30?’ Heh. I guess we figured out the reason we don’t have our own TVs…

The first part of the weekend (Friday – Saturday noon) was a silent day, where we could spend some time in reflection, preparing for Advent.  The rest of the Saturday turned out to be wonderful as well: we all went on a bike trip around the island in two teams. En route we were supposed to answer a question here and there, as well as perform several assignments such as an obstacle course (blindfolded!), building a tower out of bamboo and building a sand castle (or in our case: cathedral). Evil tongues rumour that I was even seen sabotaging the one of the opponent team’s bike. Heh.

After the tiring, beautiful, cold and exciting bike tour/competition (which our group won, of course ) we retired for a hot shower, followed by a warm meal. It was a wonderful three course dinner, after which a few of us found the energy to entertain ourselves in the amusement hall next door with air hockey and some arcade games. My knuckles still hurt from all the air hockey I played and, sad to say, mostly lost.

On our way back home on Sunday we stopped for an amazing meal at one of the seminarian’s parents’ place. I was surprised to find out they could cook as well, if not better, as the restaurant people could and I think few of us needed supper that night at home.

While we all had a fantastic time, something not-so-great happened, about which I will make another post. Keep on checking back and leave me some comments, will ya?