Life as a new man: it is new.  None of us had experienced the St. Charles' Experience beforehand.  Each new man has been experiencing at least one new thing: being away from home, living in community, strictly humanities classes, in different languages, waking up before dawn, dressing like Mormons, the horaria, formation issues, or perhaps all this singing and chanting.  My biggest challenge has been the earlier rising, but the Holy Spirit has awoken me in time every day.

At the Opening Day Mass, Monsignor Prior announced the theme for the 2009-10 academic year, an aphorism of St. Jean Vianney: “Priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.”  This simple statement reveals the great sacrifice that is required of priests, reminding us that the vocation to the priesthood is death to self in the same manner as Christ, for the salvation of souls.

The following Monday, Cardinal Rigali celebrated Mass in Saint Martin's Chapel and declared St. Jean Vianney as a Secondary Patron of the seminary, joining St. Joseph. St. Patrick, and St. Thomas Aquinas as secondary patrons.  With our year's theme, the additional patron, and the Church's elevation of St. Jean Vianney to patron saint of all priests, Rector's Dinners are peppered with questions about the life of the Curé d'Ars.

The Rector's Blog (www.rectorsblog.us) has also been a big topic of conversation at Rector's Dinners.  It was at a Rector's Dinner that Monsignor Prior increased web traffic to his blog by announcing that we must visit his blog to discover the date of our dies non granted from Archbishop Broglio's (Archdiocese of the Military) visit in the spring.  Lacking an illustrative drawing of it in my Lingua Latina textbook, I was unsure if a dies non was good or not.  I quickly discovered that the dies non is a free day on Tuesday, October 13, extending our Rector's Weekend another 24 hours!  One of my favorite features of the blog (I promise that Monsignor Prior is not bribing me) is the interviews with the deacons, whom we New Men otherwise might not know.

While the theologians had their retreat the first weekend of the year, we in the College Division had ours two weeks later.  For many of us, it was our first silent retreat, which certainly showed itself in the enlivened fraternity among seminarians in the refectory, the only place where talking was allowed.  Several of us (including myself) found the retreat enriching to our prayer lives.

Soccer practice rolls along, with our team in final preparation for the Rector's Cup tournament, which we host this year.  With great returning starters among the old men, excellent talent in the new men, several weeks of rigorous practice, and much prayer, our team has reason for confidence.  We also have home field advantage, consisting of: practicing on the rolling hills known as the soccer field and housing visiting players in St. Francis Hall, whose odor has devastating affects on lesser seminarians.        We all seem excited about our respective apostolates.  Santiago Mariani and I will be visiting the elderly and will each be teaching an elementary and middle school class at St. Maximilian Kolbe in West Chester.  This will be a great learning experience for both of us, as neither of us has ever taught a course.  Visiting the elderly fits in with past work I have made in Legion of Mary.  Speaking of which, the Legion of Mary has a large number of new men attending meetings, such that there is talk of splitting our Mary, Mother of the Eucharist Praesidium into two praesidia.  In addition to the Thursday apostolates, Legion members will participate in door-to-door evangelization on Saturdays this fall.

The Old Man-New Man Show practices are underway, and the new men are surely preparing a great show.  Our one concern is that we may make the old men feel inferior in comparison.

And from the realm of diocesan pride, this year the Diocese of Raleigh has the second greatest number of seminarians at the seminary, with fifteen!

Phil List
Pre-Theology I