Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Novitiate heats up

So we have some homework now.

Each of us has to do a presentation on 4 of the 12 patron saints of the Society. My four are: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Francis de Sales, St. Paul and St. Alphonsus Liguori.

(FYI, the other 8 saints considered special patrons of the Society are: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Patrick, St. Joseph, St. Phillip Neri, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and last, but hardly the least, the Blessed Virgin, especially as the Immaculate Conception: the Society was formed in 1858, the year St. Bernadette had her vision of Our Lady at Lourdes.)

We've been plowing through two books on the life of Fr. Hecker: Vincent Holding CSP's Yankee Paul (1958) and David O'Brien's Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (1991).

Over the course of the year, we are supposed to read 13 other books, from a long list covering areas such as Paulist History, spirituality, priesthood and sexuality/celibacy.

In a few weeks, we start preaching (well, giving reflections at daily Mass). This is a preaching order, so I guess they want us to start early!

And for the winter apostolate (each of us is assigned to a parish for Lent), we are supposed to come up with a 4 week program that we will run in the parish, something centered around one of the areas of the order's mission: Evangelization, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue or reconciliation.

Wow!

I'm pumped!

3 comments:

Susan Rose Francois, CSJP said...

Enjoy!

Too bad you don't have Philip Neri. He was quite a funny guy.

St. Elizabeth of Cayce said...

You got St. Paul! How cool is that!

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Oh yes, St. Philip rocks! -- for a lot of reasons, but not least because of the music! :)