Greetings, fellow Pilgrims! Annuntio vobis gaudiam magnam... habemus "pictures"! Do any of the students know when those words in Latin are used by the Church? I hope I spelled them right!
In any case, after much confusion on my part, I've finally got some more pictures posted on the web. We will continue to have a couple in each post, however, to keep it from loading too slowly, the rest will be at the following website:
At first it will just be the pictures, in time there should be more captions. Theoretically, Mike and I would have had this blog and pictures stuff all figured out ahead of time! So, we're learning on the fly with an often tortoise-like internet connection!
Recently we had a day of prayer for the Immaculate Conception. This title of Mary was made official Church dogma in 1854, but is has been believed and prayed down through the centuries. Mary the Immaculate Conception is the patroness of the United States, and of Mundelein Seminary. So, all of us seminarians here in the Holy Land joined our brother seminarians at Mundelein with a day of prayer. We sang the Divine Office in common, we had a wonderful talk from our Pastor-in-Residence, Fr. Dan, we prayed the Rosary in 5 of the languages represented among us, and we had adoration all afternoon closing in Solemn Vespers and Benediction. A wonderful day of reflection. Even here it is easy to get busy and distracted!
I was signed up for the 4:30 pm slot for adoration, so before that I went over the the Church of the Nativity to pray in the cave below the main altar, the very spot where Jesus was born. As I kneeled and then sat on the marble floor, I thought about how God worked so wonderfully through the Blessed Mother. Her Immaculate Conception, that is, being conceived without original sin, set the stage for all that came after. Especially, this made it possible for her go give her Fiat, her Yes, to the Angel Gabriel, unloosing, as it were, the Incarnation. Her freedom from Original Sin still left her freedom, actually a truer freedom than any except Christ has experienced. This is where I felt myself drawn into the mystery... what might God do in and through and with me if my yes became just a little stronger, a little more complete? What might He do in You?
As I prayed, I saw many different people from many different places come to visit the Birthplace: Spaniards, Italians, Indians, Muslims, etc. In particular, a guide came in with two people who might have been Korean, the man in a wheelchair. I think he had cerebral palsy. The guide wrestled him down the stairs, with the woman following dragging the big clunky wheelchair. As they settled him into the chair, his face split into a big grin! The guide pointed out the birthplace with the gold star, then the manger nearby. I felt like I could see his joy in his eyes, very evident. I was humbled and impressed by their resolve to get down into this little cave, and I felt united to them, in a way, by that joy.
Come Lord Jesus!
-Ben
1 comment:
The pictures on Picasa look fantastic. They probably work a lot quicker over here!
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