Well, my laptop is bricked. No, I didn’t do anything to it. It’s still fortunately under warranty, so I am going through the process of sending it back to ASUS for repair. What this means, though, is that I’ll be set back in working on my thesis, secret writing project one, and top-secret project H.
Thankfully, I can work on those LaTeX documents with any text editor.
Ab omni malo: Libera nos, Domine
Ipsissima Verba is currently the first result for a Google search for “Dylan Schrader”.
You know, I actually don’t search Google for my name very often.
I hate doing these “I’m not dead posts,” but I’ve been working on my thesis and many many side projects to such a degree that I simply do not have much material to contribute to the blog. That’s the way it has to be, too. The blog is a way for me to put down thoughts for my family and others to read. I also use it to record ideas that I have not fully developed necessarily but that I don’t want to lose.
Some writing news:
1. I’ve written a reflection on the beauty of Christ’s passion. I don’t know what to do with it, so I may post it here. It really has too many different thoughts to be presentable.
2. I’ve started a few short stories (one in particular) that I’d like to finish some day but that I don’t have time to work on right now. I’m sure people will roll their eyes at this one.
3. I wrote something else that I hope I can mention soon.
4. There is one piece of writing that I have not mentioned yet and will not describe until I am satisfied with it. Those who know about it know who they are. I really really want to get this one done, and I’m not sure it will be that good. I think I may be pandering to myself too much. Then again, maybe there are others like me.
If you’ve ever seen the St Vincent de Paul chapel in the Rigali Center, you know that it is designed for the extraordinary form of the Mass with seminarians or clerics sitting in choir. Today, we were fortunate to have a solemn high Mass in this beautiful chapel as part of a workshop on the older use of the Roman Rite.
Here I am receiving Holy Communion. Open wide!
We bid farewell to Archbishop Burke at his last official event in St Louis at Kenrick the other day. His homily and his words to the seminarians after Mass brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think many people realize how much he cared about the people of the archdiocese, how much he prayed for them, and how hard he worked. It was very hard to see him go, and I don’t think I will ever really know how much of an influence he had on me. Though he was not my own bishop, I studied in his archdiocese, and he always took great paternal interest in and care for the seminarians here.
Thank you, Your Excellency, for everything.
“Quantum potes, tantum aude.”
Well, I can’t donate blood for a year because on one trip to Puerto Vallarta from Guadalajara, our bus went through the very tip of a yellow area on the map that the Red Cross people showed me. I thought for sure that the indigenous village, if anything, would get me blacklisted.
Sanguis vetatus, by the way.
I’ve had a good last week for productivity. I’ve finished (or improved greatly) several personal writing projects and done some work on a few websites that I run for others. It’s true that I haven’t blogged much. Maybe I can improve that when I get back to school. Certainly, once I get those Mexico photos, it’ll be game-over as far as the blog’s concerned.
Also, I translated some responsa ad dubia for a friend of mine. Of course, I lost the file and had to start over at one point.
I really need to work on my thesis now…
Today is my mother’s birthday (also the optional memorial of the dedication of St. Mary Major, though the basilica is older than my mom). The occasion reminds me that I’ve used one’s mother’s birthday as an example before in a discussion about interpreting the Gospel for preaching.
Basically, my point was this: We need to avoid an approach that makes the stories in the Gospel generic. They’re not fables or fairy-tales. They contain archetypes, but they’re archetypal only secondarily. They are only exemplary because they are first concrete and unique occurrences in history.1 When interpreting the Annunciation, for instance, we can’t let our preaching reduce it to a model of being called by God to do something that seems impossible or hard. Yes, it is a model, and the model applies to all of us, whereas none of us is going to be called to be the Mother of God. Nevertheless, it is first a unique event. The Annunciation is not only a species of the call-scene genus, it is more like the perfect form to which all other call-scenes are what they are by resemblance.
In a similar way, today is important to me not because it is an instance of “one’s mother’s birthday” but because it is my mom’s birthday.
I got the “Windows Key” on my laptop to be used as a modifier key to get international characters in x.org.
¿Tienes sueño?
The pastor of the parish taught Ryan and me to play Dominoes last night. I think I understand how to play. We begin classes a week from today.
