Vacation

After two months in the parish, I am finally enjoying few days of vacation. For the next two weeks I have headed north to my family home in Brookfield to hide from the world, put my feet up and take it easy. The nice thing about being in Brookfield is that you are so far away from everyone else you get a free pass from everything. The bad part is you are so far away from everything else. This Sunday I will be headed to Nashua for the Latin-American Festival at St. Aloysius Parish from 1-6pm. I will be in charge of the Cotton Candy machine. Come on by and mention this post and I will hook you up.

Aside from taking it easy I have also been working on designing some uniforms for the St. Mary's Seminary Soccer Team. Last year we competed in a four seminary tournament and were crushed. Now it is one thing to be crushed when playing rivals, it is another thing to look horrible while playing horribly. One of the things we have been discussing at the Seminary is how to build a sense of pride and tradition. Recognizing the need for both the Rector has authorized us to get uniforms for the first time. (last year we looked like the bad news bears). After much searching I will be proposing the following.

A Quick Trip

Thursday night I took a quick flight down to Philadelphia to spend two days volunteering at the St. Francis Inn. The Inn is a Soup Kitchen in the Kensington section of Phildelphia. Located in the heart of Philly's slums, the St. Francis Inn offers hope to the suffering. Each day the serve hundreds of warm meals to the homeless, the poor and the lonely. Rather than serve the hungry cafeteria style, they are waited on much like at a Restaurant. Why? The Inn waits on their guests because they believe it extends dignity.

This weekend I was the guest of an amazing group of Trinity Alumni who had given a week of their summers to serve the poor. Despite record temperatures and no air conditioning they served without complaint and gave from the bottoms of their hearts. It was truly inspiring to be with them all. Thanks guys for a great weekend!

St. Francis Inn

A Neat Little Story from Catholic News Service.



Madrid, Spain, Jul 14, 2010 / 06:05 pm (CNA).- Spanish soccer player Andres Iniesta, who scored the winning goal during the World Cup final in South Africa, has promised to walk the Way of St. James, which leads to Santiago de Compostela.

The Way of St. James is a pilgrimage route that for centuries brought the faithful from across Europe to the city of Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the saint are venerated.

According to the Spanish newspaper, Marca, months before the 2010 World Cup, the members of the Spanish team sent the newspaper sealed envelopes with the promises they would keep if they won the title.

Marca opened the envelopes after Spain’s historic victory on Sunday and found that Iniesta, along with Fernando Torres and Carlos Marchena said they would walk the Way of St. James.

Iniesta also revealed his promise in an interview prior to the World Cup. Speaking on Spanish television he said he would make the pilgrimage “somehow…I’ll do it however I have to!” His teammate Sergio Busquets, who was with him, made the same promise.

The Spanish media is reminding the players of their promise and although no plans have been officially made, reporters were convinced many fans would share the pilgrimage with them.

This year, Pope Benedict XVI will travel to the city for the Holy Year of St. James 2010, which is celebrated each year that July 25, the saint's feast, falls on a Sunday.

The next Year of St. James will be celebrated in 2021.

Welcome Back!

After the world's longest haitus from blogging I am proud to be back on line. I am not quite sure what has caused my long absence other than a desire to take it easy and relax. The reality is that blogging is ridiculously easy, but never-the-less it easy to fall behind. It is one of those weird things where the longer you put something off the more you realize you should do it, thus you put it off even longer.


My Summer:

This summer I have been assigned to help out at St. Aloysius of Gonzaga parish in Nashua. The parish is a neat little city parish with a diverse mixture of French, Poles, and Hispanics. The result is a tightly knit community with generous hearts. Just over a month ago when I first arrived I was warmly welcomed at every Mass by all the parishoners. Thanks to the suggestion of a good friend I made sure to use humor in my introductory remarks. By poking fun of the pastor and throwing a few barbs the people realized I was fun-loving person.

Since that first weekend I have been busy in tons of different projects ranging from visiting the homebound to door to door evangelization. Each one has taught me much and tired me out. I am excited for a couple weeks off in August before heading back to Baltimore.

This past week I had some extra time on the computer so I made some signs to post around the parish office. On Thursday the signs advertised "Father Daniel's Harvest Festival." Father Daniel, the pastor, has one sad tomato plant which he always forgets to water. So I grabbed a picture and made a poster advertising this important parish event. The staff and I celebrated with harvest pictures, tomato themed foods and many laughs. Sadly the one decreped tomato had a fungus and had to be thrown away.


The other project I worked on was advertising for our upcoming Latin-American Festival (Sunday , August 8th- 1:00-6:00pm). It is amazing what fun you can have with photoshop these days.

Letting Pictures Speak for Themselves!

Camino Day #3 (A look back)

After our first full day of hiking, the first night of post-hiking sleeping was amazing. Despite the fact that the evening was spent with 70 other strangers in cramped quarters, the fatigue more than made up for the conditions. Waking up in a hostel on the Camino is an interesting expeirence to say the least. First and foremost as if pre-programmed robots the entire hostel wakes up within five minutes of the first person to make a move. I am convinced that everyone is already half awake and waiting for the reason to make a dash for it. Once someone gets up everyone follows suits and furiouslly gets dressed, brushes their teeth and puts the dreaded boots on.

When hiking long distances you grow to love and hate your hiking boots. For me the boots were never as much the problems as the feet. One by one I would cram my swollen feet in the hiking boots only to begin walking with the words, ouch, ouch, ouch flowing from my lips. On day three of our trip I had developed my first blisters on my pinky toes. The problem was, every moment we walked, my blisters rubbed hard. Doing the only thing I could I took a lot of asprin and tried to forget about it, easier said than done.

On Day three of the Camino we made our way along a quiet road and eventually through hillside villages to our eventual Mountain top town of O'Cebreiro. During the first half of the day we hiked along a quiet road. It was quiet, but the pavement took a major toll on the feet. By 10am I was ready to call it quits. It was just then that a strange little dog began to journey with us. At first it was cute and fun to have company. But after several miles it began to get alarming that this dog was still following us, and thus leaving behind its home. For about 90 minutes or more the little dog, who we called Ralphie, was right beside us. He was a cute little fellow, excited and hyper. However, Ralphie did not understand that cars were a bad thing and gave us quite a few scares. Eventually he just ran off never to be seen again. I am not sure if he made it home, but I sure hope so.

After departing the highway we spent much of the afternoon winding up the side of a mountain. As the heat began to bear down and my weariness increase, it became increasingly difficult to continue on. At several points I wanted to strangle Alan and Jason my friends on the journey, not because they were annoying, but because I was convinced there was too much pep in their steps. I thought they were full of energy as I was dying. Only after we returned back to Boston did I realize I was dead wrong. Never-the-less in the mind of a tired, hungry and suffering person reality is not half as important as perception. At each stop along the trail I wanted to lay down and die. I am not sure what hitting the wall feels like, but I think on that day the wall hit me hard.

Eventually we made it to the top of the Mountain and crossed in the region of Spain known as Galicia. Galicia is a rural part of the Northwest corner of Spain. It is incredible fertile and very green because of the large amounts of sunshine and rain it recieves. It is often is compared to Ireland in its looks, heritage and music. I of course was doubly happy to be there. Arriving in the village we made it just in time to secure one of the last beds. We cleaned up, crashed for a bit and made our way for an amazing dinner.

Camino Day # 2 (a look back)

Our second day in Spain was an adventurous one. After having enjoyed a long nights rest we woke up early to begin the first real day of our hiking/pilgrimage adventure. After months of planning and preparation the time had finally come for us to begin the hiking portion of our trip. After packing our backpacks and stringing up our hiking boots we set out from the city of Ponferrada in the North of Spain. Ponferrada was a sizable city, so it took us a good hour before we were fully out of the city.








Shortly before the above picture was taken I was in charge of leading the group for while. In the process of our adventure I was amazed by all the people who were honking at us and by the incredibly warm welcome we were receiving at 6:30am. It was only after the fifth car stopped, rolled down its window, and pointed furiosly all the while mumbling in Spanish that I realized we were headed in the wrong direction.

As we left the city behind we passed a pilgrims statue and quickly found ourselves climbing along quiet roads. The roads were interspersed with buildings, houses and farms and high above us in the distance were snow capped mountains. I will not lie to you, when I first thought of Spain in May I thought of warmth, not snow capped mountains. Correspondingly I was beginning to get a little worried that my polar fleece jacket was not going to be enough to protect me from mountain top blizzards! Luckily for me the more we walked the farther away the mountains got.

Along the way the Camino is marked by yellow arrows.


The arrows appear every so often and point the way along the entire route. After awhile you take the arrows for granted, however they are a life saving guide for pilgrims. Throughout the entire pilgrimage I could not help but think that if this trail were in the United States that trouble makers would paint fake arrows to confuse people, luckily we were in Spain.

After leaving Ponferrada we spent much of our day climbing through rolling vineyards and the beautiful countryside.



By early afternoon the sun was beating down and I was beat. My feet were aching, my legs were tired and I just wanted to take a long nap under the tree. Luckily I did not and we dragged ourselves along to our first stop, a small country village, whose name escapes me. There we registered at a hostel which resembled a mountain lodge, and were welcomed with warm arms and hugs by the host family. For $5 we were giving a clean bed to sleep in, clean bathrooms and hot showers, something which is much appreciated after a long day. The only challenge for me was that the hot water pipe was solar heated and resulted in short supplies, and a lot of awkward and painful positioning under ice water interspersed with warmth. In the end I did not care as long as my feet could rest and that they did.

We arrived at the hostel, at the end of our first day hiking, at about four o'clock. After washing up we explored the town, had a simple dinner and called it an early night.



The hostel guard dog reflected how I felt by the end of the day.