I am halfway
into the Summer holidays and it seems that our family is not going anywhere
this year. Which is fine by me: no setting up tents, no lazy days with
breakfast at 10am, but lots of opportunities to visit friends.
At the
beginning of the month we went to visit our diocesan brother, who studies in
Eichstätt (close to Munich). If I recall correctly, Eichstätt is the oldest
seminary still extant, the second established after the Council of Trent. They
celebrated the feast of their patron saint Willibald and went in festive
procession to the cathedral for Mass and later for Vespers. (I was late for the
second procession and pursued my bishop’s vanishing scarlet appearance like a
lost penguin in cassock and surplice.)
Later on in
July we had a children’s camp at our seminary. With a group of ten leaders plus
a young priest, we entertained a group of 28 children aged eight to twelve. Fun
was had by all: we ran around in the seminary backyard (a little forest) and
introduced the children to Adoration, the Rosary and daily Mass, insofar as
they weren’t familiar with it already. The weather was excellent; it started
raining only when the parents came to pick up the children.
And then there
are the books. I have been delving into The
Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (which was scheduled for
last year already) and Sacred Causes
by Michael Burleigh, a book about the displacement of religion by politics in
the era after World War I. (An earlier book, Earthly Powers, deals with the same phenomenon from the French
Revolution to World War I.)
