Whew!

Whew!

As I’ve mentioned before, each Wednesday at 1pm (right after Mass), the chaplaincy sponsors a talk on some interesting topic to encourage students to “think outside the textbook.” It’s called the Veritas Seminar Series. It gets about 30-40 people per week, and always ends with a question and answer session. When I first made contact with the chaplaincy staff back in June, Daniel Hill asked me to give one of these talks, booked me in for today (the second one of the semester), and so “The Pursuit of Happiness: A Lost Art?” was born. I spoke about finding lasting happiness in a world increasingly concerned with material success with a little help from Aristotle and St. Thomas. Since this is not exactly an area of expertise for me, writing the talk was a good challenge for me. I got a good response from the audience (probably closer to 30 today), so I count it as a success overall. It certainly does feel good to have that little obstacle behind me!

Let’s see, what else has been going on?

On Sunday night, I had the privilege of having dinner with Cardinal Pell, the archbishop of Sydney and the highest ranking Church official in Australia. He is a family friend of the Langrells and a frequent dinner guest. Dinner was a low key affair with a lot of discussion about rugby, but there was naturally also some discussion about various things going on in the Sydney church. I was impressed with the intimate knowledge of the things going on in his diocese – not just about events and the goings on at parishes, but he also seemed to know well many of the young adults involved in the Sydney Catholic scene. This gave me some insight into the success of young adult programming in the diocese – when the cardinal is interested in and encouraging what you do, it’s certainly gives you the motivation and support you need to succeed!

On Monday, I worked at our weekly “evangelization stall” on one of the main walkways on campus, did postering (You’d be amazed at how many posters get put up on this campus, and you don’t need approval to put anything up! So foreign to my SAIL-trained sensibilities!), went to Mass, prepared for a 2pm bible study but then did not have the bible study because the two girls signed up for it currently couldn’t come.

Tuesday was a bit of an annoying day at the chaplaincy because we lost power for a lot of the day, precluding a lot of office work, and it rained, so we had to cancel our barbecue. I did have a fun adventure making iced coffee with Sr. Maria Cecelia, did a bit more postering on campus (so strange seeing my own name plastered all over the place), went to Mass, and ran a bible study with Beth at 2. I think I’ve said that we are studying Luke this semester; this week we did chapter 1, which contains accounts of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Annunciation to Zechariah, and the birth of John the Baptist –its absolutely beautiful and led to some great discussion. I spent much of the evening putting finishing touches on my talk and practicing it with Lauren, who was a very attentive audience of one!

This morning, I made a combined calendar for all of the chaplaincies activities at the JPII Center, at Sydney, and at UTS, a long saught-after dream of Dan Hill and prepared for my talk. Then we had Mass, I gave my talk, answered questions, had a makeshift reception outside the lecture hall with potato chips and soda (this is what usually happens; one of the types of potato chips Rita bought for today was CHICKEN flavored – it really tasted like chicken, so weird!), had lunch, and had a lovely D&M (Australian term for deep and meaningful conversation) with a girl named Katie who goes to the music conservatory. I then helped Beth design wallet sized cards with information about chaplaincy events at UTS and headed down to Notre Dame for Christology. Tonight’s lecture was on heresies in the early church, which I just find so interesting. Although heresies are certainly not a good thing, they have challenged the Church over the years to better define what it believes, making it stronger. My professor was particularly enthusiastic in his descriptions of St. Athanasius, who was chiefly responsible for combating the Arian heresy (essentially, that Chirst was not fully divine), which made me chuckle.