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This morning, our beloved electrical power was gone at the seminary (apparently it left us at 4:50 a.m.). Needless to say, there was much confusion for some time. But, in the end, everyone set up flashlights so we could see while getting ready for the day, and we found that ol’ St. Nicholas had remembered not only candy in our shoes, but also a bright, red candle for ever-needed morning light. The electrical power returned just before we began morning prayer, and now we are back online and operational.

This made me think about things in chapel (where we each were holding one or two candles to read our books for morning prayer). What is power? What is our ‘guiding light’? Who controls it? Surely we lowly humans, sinners that we are, do not control our power—we are shown this in many ways, the least of which being the power outages such as the one this morning. In our society, being without electrical power degrades our feeling of power. But who gives us any power we may have? God. We must remember that all of our modern conveniences are given to us by God through the work His creation, men.

Before I go to bed, I pray this seminarian's bedtime prayer:

God, thank you for this day.
I am sorry for all the wrong I have done.
Please forgive me, and give me a restful sleep,
so I may live for you tomorrow,
in all that I do, in all that I say,
everywhere I go, and in everything I pray.
Amen.

Good night!

Esta mañana, cuando me desperté, usé una computadora leer mi correo electrónico y leer el periódico electrónico y escuchar a la música. In generalmente, comunico con mi familia vía correo electrónico o el teléfono. Vivo en el semillero, lejos de mi familia. Mi familia tiene cuatro niños y dos padres (uno madre y uno padre). Cuando voy a casa en mi carro, miro a veces la televisión con el resto de mi familia mientras meriendaba algunas pretzelas. También lavo la ropa en la lavadora. Muchos familias hoy en día no tienen dos padres, como mi familia. También muchos familias hoy en día no tienen muchos hijos, generalmente solamente uno o dos. Muchas familias se separan porque tenen las problemas y mucho tension y están con uno pocas veces.

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world… ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come, and you will see.’ So they went and saw where he was staying." (John 1:29, 38-39)

This weekend the Cardinal Glennon College is holding one of it’s two yearly Come and See weekend retreats for high schoolers who are discerning a call to the priesthood. This weekend, we have 15 high school youth!

Please remember to pray for all those discerning God’s calling for them. For more information on my views on discernment, click here (there’s also a cool video I made about discernment in that link!).

Quote of the Day

"The way to become boring is to say everything." (Voltaire)

I was just thinking about a MAJOR flaw in Aristotle’s thinking of the ‘unmoved mover’; if god, as Aristotle says, is only thinking the purest thoughts, and the purest thought would be of himself (self-contemplation), why did Aristotle’s god ever have the gumption to ‘move’ stuff? Wouldn’t that be not thinking of himself? Hmm…

Some people seem to think Monday is the worst day in the week.

I am one of those people.

But that’s besides the point. After confession last night, I thought it interesting the words that came to mind for me: accountability, culpability, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, sin, procrastination and repetition. What most alarmed me is the fact that I have, for the past few years, repeatedly mentioned certain venial sins in my confessions that could be grouped under the umbrella of ‘procrastination’. And, repeatedly, I have promised Jesus I would try to get rid of those sins.

But it keeps coming up again. A lot of people might give up on the Sacrament of Penance because of its seemingly everlasting inability to change a person for the better, but I don’t. I have realized that it takes a lot of time (and LOTS of effort) to get rid of certain sins. We must use all that is given us to do this – prayer, family, friends, and our talents.