Seminar: Good and ...

The past week started with 2 Masses at St. John the Baptist School on Monday morning.  Each of our Schools celebrates a mass around Thanksgiving and we celebrate the beginning of another School Year. I then went up to the Priests' Seminar - held each autumn, and which allows us to explore different Pastoral issues. Half of the priests go each week - about 160 at a time! (Fr. Sherwin will go in 2 weeks time)

This year's topic was Preaching, and the presenter was Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P. The Dominicans are known as the Order of Preachers, and Fr. Cameron had a wonderful method he shared with us - exploring texts, and asking questions.  We went beyond the "standard fare" of many Gospel parables and the homilies they typically elicit by spending time going into the text, over and over, and asking ourselves - what questions does the text propose, and what questions are the people in our pews facing.
It was a great week, well... as far as those presentations went.  The downside of the week was our collective prayer. All of the singing during the liturgies was Gregorian Chant.  While this certainly slowed down - and made our praying of the office more solemn and prayerful - it meant our Eucharistic liturgies were flat, and without life.  The Introit Chant (read "Gathering Song") did not gather us and did not help us to become one body in prayer. That is what the Gathering song is supposed to do... So some Good and some Bad...


This Saturday our LifeTeen youth are on retreat - please pray for them. Their theme is "Rooted in Christ" from the World Youth Day theme this past Summer...


Peace