Language Notes

Well, I'm back from my weekend trip to the general curia, having visited for a couple days in order to be introduced to some of the little things that will constitute my new job. The friar who has been the secretary for English up to now is moving back to his home province next weekend, so it was important that he show me things.

Having returned for supper at the little friary where I have been staying (because of the easy commute to the language school), of course the friars quizzed me about my weekend. Among other things, I told them of my great embarrassment at having mispronounced a word while reading one of St. Francis's Admonitions in chapel. I just put the 'wrong emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble' as they say. One of the friars--Italian being his third language at the very least--comforted me with these words: "The accent in Italian is something like their politics; it's hard to know where it's going."

Later on in the meal, partly because the school I go to is called Torre di Babele, The Tower of Babel, and because this is a funny--if not downright inauspicious--name for a language school, the brethren got to talking about the unified human language as it was, perhaps, before the whole Tower incident. I, of course, put forth my tentative belief that this language is now lost, and that this is why we humans have a hard time making ourselves understood by the animals. They expect to hear from us the names that Adam gave them. Of these, unfortunately, we are ignorant. Of course there are a lot of hard theological problems embedded in this question, such as, for example, the divine name as revealed to Moses. One of the friars put forth strongly his suggestion that Adam, Eve, and their pre-Tower of Babel descendents all spoke Ge'ez. I had neither heard nor thought of this before. I'll give it more thought.

My News and Coming Transitions

Within the last few weeks, new developments in my life have brought me into a new time of transition and reorientation. In a post a couple of weeks back I asked your prayers for the situation, and I have been grateful for the strength of that encouragement.

So here's the news: I have been asked to join the ministry of the Order's general secretariat at our general curia in Rome as an English-language secretary. This news came as a complete surprise. As I calmed down inside, however, and was able to start to think and pray about it, I became grateful and happy about this new possibility and direction in my religious life. My spiritual director confirmed these senses for me.

I don't, however, have to move until spring, towards the end of the school year.

As happy as I am about this new assignment, it left me in an awkward condition in my current assignment as a student at Boston College. I'm still in the beginning stages of the STD program there, and so this new assignment necessarily interrupts my studies in some way or other. Exactly how to craft this interruption into shape has been occupying my thoughts and reflection ever since I first got the call about the new assignment three weeks ago. After thinking various things through as best as I could: my own academic situation, the possibilities of the current moment before I move, my relationships with my teachers, and especially the whole history of my successes and--I confess--failures in obedience since I was first asked to apply to BC two years ago, it has been decided that I will take a leave of absence from the BC School of Theology & Ministry. The new assignment seems to have a probationary period of a year or so; applying for leave now could preserve the possibility of returning to BC if I don't work out.

With the time that will open up as I begin my leave and until I am supposed to move to Rome, I will seek further priestly work here in Boston.

Thank you for your prayers as I continue to try to be faithful in these transitions.