Wednesday, June 19, 2013

exams are over and... into great silence

before exam
 Dear Family and Friends,

Phew! Just finished my last exam. Walking out of that classroom was a great feeling, and I couldn’t help it as I started singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Thank you Mary Poppins! My only wish now is that I don’t forget all the great things I’ve learned in Theology, and that little by little I learn more and more about the faith.

after exam
There’s just 10 days left till ordination! Tomorrow night the 23 of us deacons-to-be start an eight day long silent retreat. So I guess this is the last of my emails until I’ll be signing off as “Deacon Kevin”!

Here’s how the next few days will look:

20th: Picnic in the mountains (by a town called Percile) before our retreat. The Retreat starts at night.

21st: First of the eight days of retreat. It’s all prayer, all day. No midnight bonfires, no email, just you and God.

27th: Day seven of the retreat. We’ll probably be practicing for the ordination mass today.

28th: Last day of the retreat. We have a mass in the evening where we renew our baptismal promises. Don’t know if I’ll be sleeping much this night…

29th : 10:30am (4:30am EST) Ordinations in the main chapel of my seminary. Archbishop Renato Boccardo will preside. It should be a full house. I invited all the missionaries of charity to come, so it will be even more of a full house! My dad will be there too! My estimates are that I’ll become a deacon around 11:15am or so. Afterwards we’ll have a big lunch with the Archbishop, and spend the rest of the day celebrating. Woohoo! It’s been 19 years preparing for this!

30th: 6:00am – I will deacon my first mass at the convent of the missionaries of charity (Mother’s Teresa’s Sisters). We’ll see how well they suffer through my first homily!

Hopefully I’ll have written you another message by then, but in the meantime, hang in there, please pray for us, and God bless you!

Brother Kevin