This past Saturday I had the oportunity to attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey in London. The Abbey was of course absolutely stunning, and although the service had a great boys choir, I cared nothing for it as I was concetrated on how distant from God I felt. Here I was in a glorious abbey, a place constructed for God and His pressence, listening to the Word of God, and yet I felt no connection whatsoever. I literally felt an deep cravass of emptiness inside of me. Realizing that I had lost my sense of the Divine left me feeling destitute and thristy. There is nothing more that I want at this moment than to feel His pressence.

But this feeling doesn't really just stem from that one experience within Westminster Abbey. As all feelings, there was a great deal leading of to this point. Like the fact that I have not received Communion (as in Catholic Communion) since the Fourth Sunday of Advent. In fact, I haven't even been inside a Catholic Church since then! So, to me, it's almost makes sense that I've lost my connection.

Hopefully when I attend Mass this weekend, I'll feel a little bit better about this.

Advent

So Sunday the priest reminded us that Advent is a time to prepare for the coming of the Lord. As such, I have a few plans for preparing my heart.

First, I would like to make it to Confession. This might be a bit difficult, though, because Wednesday masses are no longer occuring on campus and that was when Confession was available. Plus, I really don't know the confession times for any other churches in Evansville or in Lexington. Or even back in Boulder! I guess I should try going to Confession more often!

Second, I want to start something. I tend to be very bad at saying my morning, evening, and even meal time prayers, so maybe I'll try to be more consistent with those. I'll probably start out small with meal-time prayers, since those tend to be the easiest to remember. With morning prayers it's so often when you wake up and being a student, I almost always wake up about a half hour before class and then I'm so busy getting ready for class that I never remember to say my prayers. As for evening prayers, I just...well, I think I'm just so tired from the rest of the day that all I can think of is sleep!

I did do better with praying when I wrote them down every time. I might do that for morning and and evening prayers--keep a little blank notebook by bed to write my prayer in every morning and evening.

Finally, I'm preparing for the Lord by inviting two Korean girls to my house for witner break (of course, they are my friends, but hospitality can be given to anyone). I'm sure it will be a good and fun time.

Retreat

Let me just say that the monks at St. Meinrad's must have great calves.



This weekend, the Newman Center at UE went on a retreat at St. Meinrad's Archabbey. The retreat was very nice. St. Meinrad's is a beautiful abbey, and almost all of the buildings were built using stone and wood from the area.


We left Newman at 3:30 Friday afternoon and arrived just before 5:00; in time for evening Vespers with the monks. The service was beautiful in its utter simplicity. It was so quiet and we were lucky enough to share in the service with some Little Sisters of the Poor and several other groups of people.




After Vespers, we walked through the Stations of the Cross. The Stations are set up under the boughs of a stand of trees in a mile long loop that begins and ends at a dedication to Mary. The dedication is a white stone statue of the Virgin that stands out wonderfully from the trees. I'm sure it's gorgeous when the leaves have all turned, as well as in the green of summer. Ending at Mary's feet was a nice and peaceful way to end the Stations.


The rest of the evening was dedicated to our talk on Faithful Citizenship. Most of the talk I didn't really connect to all that well, but it was still good to hear everyone else's views. In any case, we stayed up until close to 1:00 in the morning talking.


Saturday, we had to get up at 7:00 in order to be at Daily Mass at 7:30. Again, the service was very pleasant, especially the chanting. Very calming and peaceful. After Mass was breakfast and then we walked the Rosary. We prayed both the Joyous and Luminous Mysteries on our walk to and from a grotto dedicated to Joesph. The statue of Joesph was fairly large and made from wood that was stained dark (that or it was ebony). From the grotto there was a really nice view of the Archabbey through the trees.


Next we had another talk and then we headed home, stopping by the gift store on our way.

The reason I started with the sentence I started with is because we walked everywhere. Including up and down 4 flights of stairs at least 8 different times. If I had to do that everyday, I'd have pretty muscular calves myself!

Introduction

I realized that in my blog "The Life" I talk about religion a lot, so I thought I'd go ahead and create a blog for my Journey in Faith.

Just so everybody knows, I'm a confirmed Catholic and my confirmation saint is St. Anne. My parish in Colorado is St. Thomas Aquainas University Parish and while I'm at school I mostly attend mass through the Newman Center at Neu Chapel. When we don't have mass on campus, though, I go to St. Ben's down the street. I attend the University of Evansville in Evansville, IN.

I haven't found a church to call home yet where my Mom lives in Lexington, KY.