The USCCB website released a variety of study materials (in PDF format) for the upcoming revised English translation of the Ordo Missae (the translations we use for the English-language Mass). You can browse through their 'Roman Missal Formational Materials,' or just read the whole White Book here.
Well, at long last, here are my impressions and pictures (click the link for a full album) of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI. (Unfortunately, the weather wasn't that great, so I have few outdoor pictures). We arrived after a good night's sleep at the Shrine for Morning Prayer and a reflection (one of two for our Day of Recollection) from Archbishop Burke. We then attended Holy Mass, ate lunch at the wonderful Shrine restaurant, and returned to the Church for Daytime Prayer, a Holy Hour, the Rosary, another reflection from Archbishop Burke, and the Stations of the Cross (the Shrine has a beautiful and contemplative hillside walking path with the stations and mysteries of the Rosary).
All of the St. Louis seminarians and I will be leaving for Wisconsin around noon today to travel to the Our Lady of Guadelupe Shrine in La Crosse. Most of the trip I'll be away from the computer, so I won't be able to upload any full albums of pictures. However, if you watch the Twitter feed on the left side of my blog's home page, you will be able to click on some links to find individual pictures of different people and places here and there!
If you've been following things in the Twitter feed on the left column pane of this blog's homepage (or if you click here and visit my whole Twitter feed), you'll notice that I'm on the verge of getting an iPhone 3G... this will likely happen tomorrow morning, if things go as planned. This will help me start remembering things a little better than my current system of post-it notes stuck in every nook and cranny of my wallet and desk (hopefully!).
Last Saturday, I visited the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, along with a couple of my brother St. Louis Seminarians. I've already posted a gallery of my pictures from the zoo, but I wanted to also post a little more information about the visit, and also compare it to the Saint Louis Zoo, from my home town.
The Omaha Zoo has a very distinctive 'Desert Dome,' which is one of Omaha's landmarks. Inside a glass-enclosed dome, the air is very arid, and there's an environment able to support a variety of desert life, including different flora and fauna. Unfortunately, since I visited the dome last, later in the day, it was much too crowded to spend any time taking pictures, so I only had a few from there, including the picture below of a bird about the size of an owl, but with the largest beak:body ratio I've ever seen!
I've succumbed to the twitter bug (or bird, as it were). I signed up for the service, and you can now see my twitter feed over on the left sidebar of this blog, under the main links section, on the blog home page. I'll likely be upgrading to an iPhone soon (I have an old one right now, but it's not activated...). Once I get the phone, I'll likely just post a few twitters here and there for some of the smaller things I'd like to blog about, but can't. Of course, when large events occur (such as Ordination Masses), I'll still be posting to this blog.