+Feast of Mercy

I’m not much of a one for private revelations.  I can take ’em or leave ’em.  Sure, I say the Fatima prayer in my Rosary, and I’d like to see the shrine of Guadalupe someday… but it’s not that big of a deal.

But the Feast of Divine Mercy?  It works. 🙂  I don’t know how else to say it.

All unwitting, it’s become important to me the last few years.  Maybe because the Pope made it official and all, I don’t know, though it was creeping up on me before that too.

This year I decided to do the Novena to prepare for the Feast.  To be honest, I find the Chaplet very difficult.  Without some sort of structure like the Mysteries of the Rosary, I feel kind of left high and dry;  it’s hard to make it more than series of repetitious words.  But… They start to sink in.  I find myself saying all through my day, "Have mercy on us, and on the whole world."  And I sometimes sing to myself the closing "Holy God" line.  (It’s from the Byzantine Liturgy, I think?  I wonder if St. Faustina had been exposed to it?  Or if Jesus just plain told it to her, without her ever having heard it before?)  And the intentions of the Novena are just spot-on;  hard to see how they could be improved on.

There is a whole lot I want to write about.  But I’m not sure I want to write about it here any more.  The last time I wrote a little about what was going on with respect to prayer, it seems to me that I killed off what was happening.  I found a little peace from getting it off my chest, but I think I was better off before.

Not that things have been dry since then.  Oh, no.  Just different.

I just have so many questions and doubts and desires and fears and joys right now, I sometimes have trouble keeping them all to myself.  I want to talk to someone who can understand it all and tell me if I’m on the right track.  Sometimes I’m afraid I’ve just gotten really good at deceiving myself, but thus far the fruit seems to be good.

Praise God, Fr. Gerald is *finally* back.  (Though his mother is probably dead. 🙁 Please pray for her.)  I’m seeing him tomorrow.  This is one of the longest times I’ve gone without seeing him, and it’s partly my own stupid fault.  So much has happened, I hardly even know where I’ll *start*.  I’ve only got an hour.

Regarding SOLT, things seem to be proceeding apace.  I spoke briefly with the vocation director, for an amusing reason.  (Well, it seems amusing *now*. :P)

I was having so much trouble doing the application on my own that I did it around other people.  Like, I took my laptop to Chris’ place and did it on his kitchen table, because I just couldn’t stick with it in my own home – too many distractions and things to do.  Chris also helped talk me through a couple of the harder questions.  I have to say, some of those questions are so vaguely written it’s hard to even know how to approach them.  Chris thought some of them were really weird too, but his perspective helped me.  (My ‘favorite’ was, ‘Share some thoughts about your view of your masculine sexuality.’  Do most people sit down and develop a ‘view’ of it?  And thoughts about my view, instead of about my sexuality itself? What?  I know I’m very literal-minded, but come on! 🙂

Anyway, I also did some of the questions in Marie’s office.  I finished the application there, and made a copy of it on her office machine.  Here’s the amusing part:

A couple weeks later, Marie hands me a sheet and says, "This apparently got left out of your copy."  I looked at it and suddenly realized it was from the *original*!  Somehow it had escaped when I was stapling the application back together and didn’t get mailed with the rest.

So I called up Fr. Glenn and had to tell him what happened and that I’d be mailing up the missing sheet separately.  Heh.  I shouldn’t have worried.  He hadn’t even had time to look at my application yet, so it was news to him!

Anyway, we talked a little more.  He’s going to call me sometime this week to discuss matters.  And he’s going to be meeting with the guy in charge of lay formation in May, and they’ll discuss my situation.  But he sees no obstacle to my coming for the formation probably in August, and after that’s over, ‘then we’ll look at moving on to the brotherhood and, God willing, the priesthood.’  Needless to say, that was very encouraging – especially since he’s surely already talked to the guys in Chicago?  (I sure hope he has.)

Please keep praying for me.  I’m trying to be neither too positive or too negative, but just seek God’s will.