The Week in Review

Here's an update on what I did this week:

Monday:

I spent the morning in the chaplaincy working on a few different projects and went to the Sydney campus for a while with Beth, Rita, and Sr. Maria Cecilia to man their weekly evangelization stall. They set up a table at a high traffic area on campus, meet students, and publicize events. At noon, I carried a large image of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom down Broadway to St. Benedict's (interesting site) to be used for the 12:35 Mass, which was being said for the faculties of Theology and Philosophy. I stayed for Mass, which was beautiful, thanks to a great student choir. In the afternoon, I helped Beth run a bible study, which was an introduction to reading scripture and the Gospel of Luke.

I left the chaplaincy a bit early and went home in order to prepare for Theology on Tap, which started at 7:30. Along with Lauren, Jessica, and Amy from the ToT Team, we braved the Paramatta traffic and arrrived at P.J. Gallagher's with plenty of time to set up. Since tonight's talk was just a plain lecture with Q&A, set up was much more simple than it had been for the friars. I spent a bit of time doing my unofficial job of coordinating stage set up, including hanging the ToT banner, which is a bit of a process, and then I had dinner - the signature ToT $10 steak.

Me with the ToT team, Peter Holmes, his wife, and their youngest child

The speaker was a lecturer from Notre Dame named Peter Holmes, and his topic was "What Men Really Want." His answer was, essentially, that men want to be challenged to be men, to be held to reasonable, but high, standards, and to be taught by good role models what it means to be a gentleman. It was pretty interesting, and led to some good post-talk discussion.

Tuesday:

On Tuesday morning, I did some office work at the chaplaincy and went to Notre Dame at 11 to help Jessica set up for Hot UNDA the Colla. I helped Fr. Vincent light a gas grill using a candle (definitely NOT safe), chopped a lot of onions, and sold sausages and donuts. At noon, I went to the Sydney campus and helped set up for our barbeque, which is free. Then, I spent a great deal of time grilling sausages with Rita and Sr. Maria Cecelia while Sr. Mary Barbara and some of the CSSP members talked to students and handed out food. Eventually, I got rotated off the grill and got to do some socializing of my own. I met a great American exchange student from Maine who goes to UNH. He didn't have any particularly strong faith background, but he seemed to have a lot of questions and hit it off with Sr. Mary Barbara. Hopefully, he'll come around again next week.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning brought some office work, and then we went to the Sydney campus for 12:10 Mass with Fr. Dom in a lecture hall (this is a daily event). Despite its location, this was a very beautiful, prayerful Mass, and Fr. Dom gave a particularly good homily about Fr. John Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, whose feast day was today. After Mass, we had the first Wednesday forum of the semester with Fr. Bernard Gordon, the director of the first years at Good Shepherd Seminary. He spoke on the passions, which was rather interesting. I ended up being nominated at the last minute to introduce him which ended up going really well despite my lack of love for this sort of extemporaneous public speaking. Afterward, there was some socializing over soda and potato chips, and I met a few new students. In the evening, I went down to Notre Dame for Christology; the lecture was on Christ in the New Testament, particularly His revelation of Himself as the Son of God. During our breaks (its a 3 hour lecture with a break each hour) I had some good, fruitful conversation with Sr. Maria Cecelia about the role of religion in the life of Australians (its not a very big one).

Thursday:

Today Australia and New Zealand celebrated the Feast of St. Dominic, even though the rest of the world will not celebrate his feast day until Sunday. This is because the feast day of Mary MacKillop, who will be canonized Australia's first saint in October, is also on Sunday, so she trumps Dominic in this part of the world. As I heard from a few different people on Thursday, this is not the first time St. Dominic's feast day has been subject to some shifting. Dominic died on August 6, which is the the Transfiguration, so that could not be his feast day; it became August 4, but then John Vianney died on August 4, so Dominic's feast day got moved to the 8th. And now, in Australia, its been moved to the 5th. Whew! Sr. Mary Barbara told me that the sisters joked on Thursday morning that even St. Dominic's feast day is itinerant. Sr. Mary Barbara also made Dominican cookies for the occasion - specially shaped sugar cookies strategically dipped in chocolate to look rather convincingly like the shield of the order. We went to Mass at St. Benedict's, where one of the older Dominicans preached ever so joyfully about his "love affair with Dominic."

In the afternoon, we had long and fruitful discussion with some of the students about the Church in Australia and America and various religious communities over a long lunch at the JPII Center kitchen table. Rather unsurprisingly in a Dominican-influenced environment such as this one, our conversation frequently circled back to the power of the truth to speak for itself. I also spent some time in the morning brainstorming with Beth and Rita about ways to encourage students to take on more responsibility in the chaplaincy. We basically concluded that it would be fruitful to do some research into whether students taking on more leadership roles is even feasible given the other commitments that students have. Rita and Beth would like to see more students help out, but given the fact that students here are less involved with uni groups and more involved elsewhere, they also want to be practical. They hope that the volunteers they will get for the WYD scholarship program might be a precursor to a part-time student employee in the future. More on this as it unfolds.

Some of the office work I did this week included making signs for various chaplaincy activities, a WYD 2011 countdown poster (I loved the way this came out), and writing a few articles for the inter-chaplaincy newsletter than Beth publishes. I also did a bit of cleaning in the JPII Center, which is constantly in need of cleaning and reorganization.

On Friday, I took a day to see the sights in Sydney. I think that will deserve its own post!