coping up

When I started with my graduate studies at St Meinrad Seminary in Indiana last Fall semester of last year, my monastic life has changed tremenduously as far as its routine is concerned. From being a silent monk who does not talk for hours of days and weeks of months inside the cloister, I was transformed to a talking-monk who needs to talk things out to fit in and measure up with the demands of academic life in the seminary.

In the past years, I have been so immersed with writing reflections from my daily Lectio Divina inside the cloister that at the end of the day, I would end up with a significant mystagogical reflection and would gladly share it thru my blog. I missed those moments when I would bury myself pouring out my thoughts in a mystagogical reflection!

It seems that I just could not do it anymore. It seems that I lost the chance of writing my thoughts and reflections from my daily 4:00-5:00 PM Lectio Divina simply because I had to spend more time with my academic papers and bury my face in thick pages of reading assignments in Philo and Theo all the time for the rest of the semester.

I remember last year that I gave up posting in my blog to give way and accept the challenge of seminary activities in the seminary: listening to my professors for hours, spending late nights writing analysis papers and research papers, attending colloquoys and class workshops, out-of-town group trips for pastoral works and off-campus ministries. But I tremendously missed blogging! (the rationale behind my comeback to the blogosphere sometime last December of last year.)

But indeed, the idea of seminary life is much more complicated than simply living inside the cloister, praying the Psalms seven times a day, and spending quiet moments contemplating on the Scriptural readings of the day.

But I need to cope up.

I need to fit in.

I need to measure up.

I need to pass the courses, not necessarily with A's or A minuses but simply pass them with concrete knowledge and wisdom gained from the program offered for educating future priests toward achieving their ministerial commitment as ordained ministers of the Church.